Before the Catholic Relief Act of 1791 , Norwich Catholics worshipped in the Duke of Norfolk’s Palace chapel on St Andrew’s Street (which appears to have survived until the 1960s as a billiard room). Just before that, in 1786, the conforming eleventh Duke succeeded, and Fr Edward Beaumont took his congregation to a house in Willow Lane. In 1791 they purchased land behind Strangers’ Hall off St John’s Alley and built a modest chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist behind some houses (demolished in 1835). Strangers’ Hall became the presbytery in 1797 and a school was built alongside in 1836. St John’s remained in use until the nave of the present church of St John the Baptist was ready in 1894. It and Strangers’ Hall were then sold, becoming the Maddermarket Theatre in 1921, in which use it remains, with the school as the scenery store.

From the mid-seventeenth century, Jesuit priests had been active in the city and secured a granary in part of the former Dominican friary cloister in 1687 for use as a chapel. It was destroyed in anti-Catholic riots the following year and after using various locations, a chapel (with priest’s house) was built 1758-62 in St Swithin’s (later Ten Bell) Lane. This became too small and in 1824 a site was purchased on the north side of Willow Lane. Building did not commence until 1827, when on 10 August the foundation stone was laid for a chapel designed by John Patience, City Surveyor. At first sight, its classical facade suggests a Nonconformist chapel, not dissimilar to the nearby Friends’ Meeting House in Goat Lane, which Patience had just built. It was opened by Bishop Weld on 2 September 1829, and the old chapel was converted into a school. In 1859, the old chapel and house were demolished and a larger school built.

A new priest, William Rowe, redecorated the Willow Lane interior and the chapel was re-opened in 1834, a contemporary account noting that ‘the efforts of the gilder and grainer have not been restrained’. J.J. Scoles undertook repairs in 1846, resulting in a further redecoration in the ‘Byzantine style’ and stained glass by William Wailes. Yet another redecoration took place in 1880.

On his arrival at St John’s in November 1876, the Revd Dr (later Canon) Richard Duckett began to raise funds and search for a site for a larger church. Bishop Amherst of Northampton was concerned not to upset the Jesuit mission, and in February 1879 rejected Fr Duckett’s proposal to buy the former Norwich Gaol site, where the cathedral now stands, because of its proximity to Willow Lane. Shortly afterwards and on his own initiative, Fr Duckett bought a site on Duke Street near St George’s Bridge. The bishop approved, as it was some distance from the Jesuit mission.  

Meanwhile, the fifteenth Duke of Norfolk (1860-1917) thought he should build a church for the Catholics of Norwich, and in October 1878 had written to Bishop Amherst offering to build one in the Early English Gothic style. Scott understood the choice of style was part of a vow made on a trip to Lourdes, when the Duke promised to build a church if he was blessed with a son. A letter of 1892 from the Duke to the City Corporation suggested the style was chosen because the city had a Norman cathedral and many Perpendicular parish churches, but ‘no examples of the pure and noble Early English style’. The Duke’s close interest in the architectural detail was to remain a major factor in the design of the church.          

The public sale of the gaol site was launched in September 1879 and after Fr Duckett directly approached the Duke, it was purchased by December. Although widely approved by Norwich Catholics, the Jesuit Superior objected. Once appointed in April 1880, Bishop Arthur Riddell began negotiating with the Jesuits and finally gave his approval for the site in October 1880. The Jesuits then withdrew from the city in January 1881, and Willow Lane was handed over to the diocese after payment of appropriate compensation. It remained the main Catholic church in Norwich until the nave of the present church of St John the Baptist was opened in 1894, after which it became a school. The school closed in 1968 and the building remained empty until converted to office use. It is listed in Grade II (no.1051793).

George Gilbert Scott Junior, the elder son of Sir G.G. Scott, had been received into the Catholic Church by Cardinal Newman in 1880. He was appointed to Norwich in February 1881. Scott believed that the Cardinal had got him the job, which the Cardinal denied, saying that the Duke ‘has his own judgement in these matters’ (the Duke had chosen French High Gothic for his first major church, now the Cathedral of Our Lady and St Phillip Howard in Arundel by J.A. Hansom 1869-73, though it also has some Early English detailing).

Scott had not previously designed a church in the Early English style, although as a scholar of English medieval architecture and as his father’s assistant on numerous restorations, he had a thorough working knowledge of it. The building takes its plan, elevations and details and ideas from many buildings of the first half of the thirteenth century but the combination is not closely paralleled anywhere. Scott’s biographer, Dr Gavin Stamp, correctly identified Lincoln Cathedral as a principal source (for instance, for the elevation and vaults) although ironically that was one of the few English cathedrals where the Scott family was not involved.

Nevertheless, Lincoln does not have the large circular arcade piers that dominate at Norwich (and which have attracted some criticism). While commonly used in Romanesque great churches, these are rarely found in c.1200 England (although two examples at Steyning and New Shoreham are close to Arundel). They are more common in Normandy and around Paris (Lisieux, Gisors, Soissons). Perhaps they were the Duke’s idea, as Scott wrote in 1885 of the ‘effect of massive simplicity which your Grace desires’. Compound piers with ever more shafts were preferred in thirteenth century England, as they integrated an elevation better with rib vaults. There is no shortage of shafting in the Norwich aisles, including extensive use of the dark fossiliferous ‘marble’ from Frosterley in Durham. Wall passages, another consistent Early English feature (particularly at clerestorey level) are here absent, although implied, e.g. in the transept blind arcading.

Correspondence demonstrates the Duke’s personal involvement in even small details, and he is credited with the choice of three great lancets for the north transept façade as well as the stained glass. As virtually the sole source of funds, his financial circumstances had an occasional effect on both progress and design choices. The tragic death of first his wife (in 1887) and then his invalid son (in 1902) also spurred changes. The mental health and repeated illness of G.G. Scott and the necessary involvement of his brother John Oldrid Scott to complete the church after his death in 1897 entailed changes in the development of the project. However, the design essentially is G.G. Scott’s, with the central tower considered by Stamp ‘one of the finest achievements of late Victorian ecclesiastical architecture’.

Thomas Burton was appointed Clerk of Works early in 1881 and began to clear the gaol and prepare the ground, filling the many chalk mines before any building could start. A ceremony described by Fr Duckett as ‘cutting of the first sod’ took place on 24 June 1882. The final plan was taking time to emerge, with the Duke, Bishop Riddell and Canon Duckett all involved. The Duke’s insistence on correct orientation meant the east end would have to be built over a substantial crypt and close to the Earlham Road, so work began on the nave. Batch & Co. completed the foundations at a cost of £2,323 10s 9d by the end of 1882, but were not awarded the building contract, which went to Rattee & Kett of Cambridge. The nave was then to be of seven bays but it was extended to nine by the time a drawing was published in The Building News of April 1884. A stone with five crosses was laid on 17 July 1884 by Bishop Riddell (south pier in the west gallery) to commemorate the start of the building of the nave above ground. A further one bay extension was adopted early in 1888 to allow for a three-bay south nave chapel (the ‘Sunken Chapel’, now St Joseph’s Chapel), as a memorial to the Duke’s beloved Duchess, Flora. This meant there was insufficient room for the 1884 Durham nine altars-style east end, perhaps compensated for by the addition of eastern aisles and then chapels to the transepts.

Rattee & Kett had built seven nave bays by 1888, when J.O. Scott took temporary charge after his brother’s withdrawal to an asylum. The decision was then taken to continue without a contractor, but with craftsmen directly employed and managed by Burton with the aid of quantity surveyors, John S. Lee & Sons. G.G. Scott continued to design and to make occasional visits, but J.O. Scott took charge of the works until 28 February 1894 when G.G. Scott formally resigned. He wrote ‘It is very satisfactory to me to know that the Duke […] consented to place the work in my brother’s hands’. 

The nave was completed and opened on 29 August 1894, the Feast of the Beheading of St John the Baptist, with a temporary east wall across the western piers and a small low sanctuary created in the crossing enabling work to continue on the tower above. Canon Duckett was now living in Scott’s new house called the Rectory (rather than presbytery), that had cost £11,879. An east end much as we see it now had been conditionally approved by the Corporation on 9 July 1894. J.O. Scott had added chapels to the transepts, apparently with his brother’s approval. The north transept (Walsingham) chapel was donated by Gwendolen, Duchess of Norfolk in 1909, its design based on the transept chapels at Laon Cathedral. The details of the upper parts of the tower were then ‘as yet undecided’. The stone boundary wall with iron gates was also J.O. Scott’s idea (the gates were removed in the 1970s) and further changes were made to the large sacristy built between the rectory and south transept. The architectural details of the choir are from later in the thirteenth century than the nave, in particular the tierceron vault; Bishop Northwold’s choir at Ely Cathedral (1234-53) seems to be the inspiration. The tower vault has lierne ribs of fourteenth century type.

In 1906, Thomas Burton retired and was replaced as Clerk of Works by Thomas Doré. W. Samuel Weatherley is credited with much of the drawing work, although some drawings are signed by Temple Moore, G.G. Scott’s pupil from 1875-8. The architectural stone carving is of a consistently high standard and captures the character as well as the style of medieval work. It is attributed to James Ovens, a ‘local artist’, though there seems to be too much for just one person. Dunstan Powell designed the north transept door and the east end stained glass, his father John Powell having designed the nave glass, all made by Hardman & Co. of Birmingham.

On 8 December 1910, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the church was opened and dedicated to St John the Baptist by Bishop Keating. Sadly Canon Duckett had died in July, but he had seen the building virtually complete. Curiously, there was only a temporary high altar until 1957, when one designed in Hornton stone by Adrian Gilbert Scott (G.G. Scott’s younger son) was consecrated on 25 and 26 June by Bishop Leo Parker, assisted by Bishop Restieaux of Plymouth and Bishop Joseph Rudderham of Clifton. J.O. Scott had designed an altar and reredos in 1907 to be placed between the eastern crossing piers, but despite the support of the Duke, the bishop insisted it be placed at the east end.

In the 1930s, various furnishings by James and Lilian Dagless of Walsingham were introduced, such as the altar and reredos of the Walsingham Chapel, consecrated on 10 March 1938. The north transept and Walsingham Chapel windows were destroyed by air raids in 1942 and other windows damaged. All were reinstated by Hardmans, mainly to the original designs but with some new scenes, such as the opening of the Slipper Chapel by Cardinal Bourne in 1934 in the Walsingham Chapel. The former clerestorey windows of grisaille glass, inspired by twelfth century Cistercian designs, were moved down to the aisles.

In December 1969, Canon McBride set up an ‘experimental’ temporary altar under the tower on three steps, replacing the altar rails with the presidential chair, in accordance with the guidance from Vatican II.  He also made alterations to the chapel altars. In 1976 St John’s was made the cathedral church of the new Diocese of East Anglia, with Alan Clark installed as the first bishop on 2 June. Anthony Rossi built the Portland stone apron under the tower in 1976-7, re-sited a 1961 pulpit and rebuilt the 1957 altar, leaving the tabernacle at the east end. The altar was consecrated in April 1977.

In 1984, Scott’s baptistery became the cathedral shop, and in 1986 St Joseph’s Chapel was partitioned with wooden screens, heated and carpeted for use as a weekday chapel. Purcell Miller Tritton had proposed to glaze the arches of the western gallery in 1968, but in 1991 the area was carpeted and tables and chairs introduced for a café area. In 1991, the sanctuary floor was raised, the pulpit removed and the stalls thinned out. The east end of the sanctuary had been used as a weekday chapel, but in 2000 three paintings of East Anglian saints (Felix, Etheldreda and Edmund) were placed under the east window. The north door was repaired and dedicated as the Millennium Jubilee Door and given moulded glass doors (as also was the west door), designed by Russell Taylor.

On 4 August 2007, Bishop Michael Evans consecrated a new main altar of Ancaster stone supported on legs of Frosterley marble, given by the Knights of St Columba. This was designed by Russell Taylor, who then installed twelve blue and gold riddel posts supporting red curtains around a barely furnished sanctuary, so concentrating the eye on the altar. It left the chapel of East Anglian saints beneath the east window furnished with some of the sanctuary benches. The sanctuary received a green and gold carpet and new lectern in October 2009. Underfloor heating fed by a biomass boiler (beneath raised pew platforms) was installed in the nave and transepts in 2010.

By the time Bishop Alan Hopes was installed in 2014, the curtains had been removed.

In 2018, the eastern end of the sanctuary was re-floored with a low Classical stone screen supporting a crucifix and candlesticks standing forward of the east wall on the previous main altar platform. In front of it on a new platform of two steps was placed a stone cathedra with flanking stools, all designed by Russell Taylor and incorporating Frosterley marble.

A concrete-framed parish hall by Purcell Miller Tritton had replaced the old Guild Room to the north west of the cathedral in 1972. In 2003 an extension by Anthony Rossi was approved, to provide a café, WCs and meeting spaces. A foundation stone was blessed by Bishop Michael Evans on 24 June 2004 in the presence of the eighteenth Duke of Norfolk. By 2005 the coffee area under the west gallery had moved into it. In 2009 the Narthex, an adaptation and extension of the Rossi scheme, was begun by Russell Taylor. This included a shop (freeing the baptistery) and involved the formation of an opening in the arcaded wall of the south nave aisle. The Narthex was used for the first time in January 2010, in time for the centenary celebrations, and was blessed by Bishop Michael Evans on 22 May 2010 before being formally opened by the Duke of Norfolk. 

In 2016 a large decorative lead urn from the garden of the White House at Poringland (probably acquired by the artist Geoffrey Birkbeck) was presented by Bishop Alan Hopes and placed in the cathedral garden.

Description

The list description (below) is a basic description of the main architectural features, but could be expanded to include more on the history and furnishings, as described above. The following corrections/additions may be noted:

• The north transept chapel is not ‘octagonal’ but has a polygonal apse.
• The elaborate iron door hinges were designed by J.O. Scott and made by Edward Norkett.
• The rood beam supports a crucifix and statues by Peter Rendl of Oberammergau.

The list entry for Cathedral House omits the date (1891-3).

List descriptions

Cathedral

GV. I

Church, now cathedral. 1882 (foundation stone 1884) to 1910 by George Gilbert Scott (Jnr) and J. Oldrid Scott. Ashlar (Beer stone for nave: Ancaster weathered and Clipsham stone for tower and transepts) with lead roof. Cruciform plan with aisles and octagonal chapel off north transept. Early English style. Lancet windows in 9-bay nave, 4-bay chancel and 3-bay transepts, 5-light west window; 2-tier, 3-light east window. Flying buttresses and clerestory. Turrets at corners of nave and chancel. 2-stage crossing tower. Doors in 2-centred north porch and in north transept have elaborate iron strapwork.

Interior: Nave arcade of massive round piers; triforium and wall arcades with black (Frosterly) marble shafting; west gallery; stiff-leaf capitals and stone rib-vaulting throughout. Rood bar with crucifix. Glass by John Powell of Hardman & Powell and in the Chancel by Dunstan Powell. Cathedral House, Unthank Road (q.v.) adjoins to the south.

Listing NGR: TG 22335 08547

Cathedral House

Grade II  GV

Rectory. Late C19 by G.G. Scott. Ashlar with lead roof and 4 stone chimneys. L-plan in Early English Gothic revival style. 2 storeys and attic 6-window range. Entered through Early English door with iron strapwork in single-storey front range with crenellated parapet. Two 2-light lancets on ground floor of projecting left wing. Other flat-headed windows have shafted mullions with leaded lights. Attic Lancets. Single-storey range to right.

Listing NGR: TG 22318 08512

Boundary wall

GV II 

Boundary wall of Cathedral House and Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Late C19/early C20. Ashlar with moulded coping. 3 pairs of gate piers to Earlham Road (q.v.) and 3 pairs to Unthank Road (gates removed). Steps and flanking wall lead up to porch at north-west corner of nave. Boundary wall returns around the west end of the Cathedral with a short stretch of wall to the east.

Listing NGR: TG2234008582

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In 1904 a community of French Ursuline nuns opened a convent in Aldeburgh, and their chapel was open to Catholic residents of the town and its rural hinterland. The community departed in 1919 but a local priest named Fr Delaney arranged for the use of a room in the house of a friend as a temporary oratory. This was, in the words of The Tablet (19 June 1920), ‘the only Catholic oratory between Southwold, 20 miles north, Felixstowe, 20 miles south, and Ipswich, 26 miles inland’.

An anonymous donation of £1,000 and other donations soon allowed for the building of a permanent church, the foundation stone of which was laid by Bishop Cary-Elwes of Northampton in July 1924. The design was inspired by the round towered medieval churches of East Anglia, of which the architect Arthur Young made a special study. It was illustrated in The Tablet in August 1925. Sadly Young died before completion of the church, just days after completing his sketches for the reredos. The completed first portion of the new church (tower, porch and part of the nave) was opened by the Bishop of Northampton on the Feast of the Annunciation, 25 March 1925. After Mass at a lunch at the Brudenell Hotel:

‘His lordship the Bishop in his speech said it was a special joy to him to be present, as that was the first church he had opened as Bishop of the diocese. It was also a joy to him to announce that he was the bearer of the Holy Father’s blessing to the Catholics of Aldeburgh and the district. He felt he must congratulate the town upon the acquisition of such a beautiful church. All must feel great sorrow at the death of Mr. Young, the architect, but he must felicitate Mr. Reid, his partner, on the great success of the building; Mr. Redde, the builder; the workmen, the benefactors, and Father Davidson. Undoubtedly the building was a little gem. Father Davidson, responding, thanked his lordship for having made a special effort to be present and for his continuous encouragement and help through difficult times. He hoped that something really permanent had now been erected, the round tower and the dedication to Our Lady and St. Peter recalling the ancient churches of East Anglia, once so faithful to the old religion. He would like to thank first the Ursuline nuns who first made possible the establishment of a Catholic parish, the anonymous donor of £1,000, Mrs. Eyre for many gifts, the many benefactors, the Mayor for his presence, and the town for its good will. The expenditure incurred has amounted to £2,300, of which £500 has been borrowed. After the luncheon there was Benediction and Te Deum, when again the church was crowded to its utmost capacity’.

Part of the nave, the tower, and principal porch have now been erected, while provision is made for subsequent additions which include extension of the nave, erection of sanctuary, and the completion of two aisles forming side chapels. The architecture is fourteenth-century Gothic. Flint has been used in the facings of the walls, and Monks Park stone has been worked for the mullioned and traceried windows. A striking feature is the round tower, and its attractiveness is enhanced by its commanding position over the town steps. The roof of the church is covered in with antique red tiling, while the moulding of the porch ceiling is picked out in red. The beautiful reredos at the back of the altar, designed by the late Mr. Arthur Young shortly before his death, is at present unfinished. This reredos is intended ultimately for the Lady altar at the other end of the church when completed.’ (The Tablet, 4 April 1925)

In 1933, a rood was erected over the high altar ‘designed and painted by Mr James Dagless, the figures being carved at Oberammergau’ (The Tablet, 6 May 1933). With his sister Lilian, Dagless also provided furnishings about this time for the Slipper Chapel at Houghton St Giles, Walsingham and the Walsingham Chapel at St John the Baptist, Norwich (qqv).

Although the placing of the altar at the liturgical west end was intended as a temporary measure, a stone lavabo was set into the wall of the tower. Pre-war, a round tower and two completed bays of the nave sat beyond the porch. The rest is shown as a temporary structure with pebbledashed walls, a weatherboarded gable and metal casement windows. The appearance at this end is almost residential, and it is possible that part of the building was used temporarily as a presbytery. Two more nave bays were completed before 1939, but the side chapel aisles were never completed, or at least not in their intended form. Instead a brick-built Lady Chapel was constructed on the (liturgical) north side in c.1956 from designs by Wearing & Hastings. This was after the tower had been badly damaged in a wartime bombing raid and subsequently repaired in a reduced, apsidal form. At about the same time the church was reoriented, with the sanctuary moved to the other end and the reredos (originally intended for the Lady Chapel) placed behind the main altar. What was now the liturgical east wall was again faced in brick and weatherboard, retaining the somewhat improvised and temporary appearance.

Description

The church is orientated north-south, but this description assumes conventional liturgical orientation, i.e. is if the altar was to the east. 

A small Arts and Crafts Gothic church built in 1924-5 from designs by Arthur Young, completed in c.1956, when the tower was reduced and reformed following bomb damage and a Lady Chapel was added. The plan consists of an aisleless nave of six bays, a south porch, a west tower/apse (now the sacristy) and a north Lady Chapel. The building is faced in knapped flint with Bath stone dressings, apart from the east wall, which is faced in brick with stained weatherboard in the gable, and the north chapel, which is of brick with stone dressings. The main roofs are steeply pitched and tiled, the chapel roof is flat and felted. The windows are each of two lights, with four-centred arches under hoodmoulds. There are stepped buttresses between every second window on the south side. The porch occupies the southwestern bay of the nave; it is embattled, with diagonal buttresses at the corners and a central two-centred arch with boarded doors. In a niche over the arch is a 2018 carving of St Peter, in Kilkenny granite with gold leaf detail (photo). This is by Louise Tiplady, and replaces an earlier stone statue which had been eroded by the sea air.

In the porch a stone holy water stoup with ogee arch is set into the wall. The interior is a single volume, with an open timber roof with arched braces springing from stone corbels. Metal corona lights of Arts and Crafts character hang from the rafters. The walls are plastered and painted, the floor woodblock. The seating consists of modern chairs rather than benches. At the west end, what was originally the sanctuary is now the sacristy; it retains a stone carved Gothic lavabo with ogee arch in the apsidal wall. The tower arch is now boarded and curtained, with two cherub corbels and a clock. In the nave, the Stations of the Cross are tempera painted panels of the 1950s, in a quattrocento style influenced by Piero della Francesca (artist not identified). Behind the forward altar is Young’s Flemish-style reredos, coloured and gilded, with scenes of the Annunciation and the Assumption (it was originally intended for the Lady Chapel). Bettley states (p. 79) that the woodwork is by Messrs Robinson of Westminster. Above it, also fixed to the wall, is a painted rood by James Dagless (1933). On the north side of the nave the post-war Lady Chapel gives off the eastern bays, separated from the main body of the church by flat-topped openings with square piers. The chapel contains a simple columnar altar table with a crucifix and polychrome statues of St Peter and Our Lady of Walsingham above. At the other end are a modern octagonal font and a Della Robbia-style panel of the Virgin and Child.

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In 1885 Philip and Maria Shepheard established a chapel in a barn at Abbot’s Hall Farm, their home outside Aylsham, served by visiting priests. Philip’s elder sisters, Charlotte and Elizabeth, lived in Abbott’s House, White Hart Street and when Bishop Arthur Riddell of Northampton paid them a visit in 1898, they told him they wished to build a chapel in their garden. This oratory was blessed and opened on 8 April 1899, dedicated to the memory of their elder brother Samuel, who had died the previous August. The unique dedication (in England) to St John of the Cross is thought to derive from an engraving the sisters had inherited from their grandfather, which now hangs on the gallery in the church. 

The Aylsham mission was included in the new Cromer mission established in 1902; the Abbot’s Hall Farm Shepheards attended that new church. However, the sisters are said to have disliked the Lancashire accent of the priest, Fr Thomas Walmesley Carter, so arranged for priests from St John the Baptist in Norwich to say Mass in their chapel. On the death of Elizabeth in 1927, the house was left to the diocese (who let it) with an endowment for a resident priest. By 1911, Fr Carter had begun to celebrate Mass in the chapel established by Frank Load in North Walsham, and in 1930 responsibility for the Aylsham mission, with its endowment, was transferred to North Walsham. By 1935 the new church there was complete, built with much financial help from Frank Loads.

In 1940, the Cromer church was struggling and responsibility for Aylsham, again with the endowment for a priest, was transferred back to Cromer. As there was a presbytery there, the Aylsham house continued to be let. Aylsham grew in population after the war and in October 1960, the Bishop of Northampton applied for planning permission to extend the Shepheard’s chapel by building a church next to it. The house was sold and the boundaries of the present site established. On 13 August 1961 Bishop Leo Parker laid the foundation stone and the church designed by Wearing & Hastings was opened in time for Christmas. Frank Load’s legacy helped to pay for it and the parish returned to North Walsham.   

In 1992 a new altar was consecrated by Luigi Barbarito, Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to Great Britain. About this time (possibly in 1999) the narthex was added and a choir gallery built.

Description

The church lies roughly northwest to southeast to fit on its corner site, but liturgical points will be used in this report, i.e. the altar at the east.

The builder/designer of the 1899 Gothic chapel has not been established, but it is a simple red brick box with a red-tiled pitched roof on two simple collar trusses and a little sacristy at the northwest corner (now WCs). It is linked to the 1961 church by a door at the southwest corner. The interior is now furnished as a sacristy but the wooden altar beneath a large Y-tracery window at the east remains consecrated to St Theresa of Avila. There is a door to the north beside this altar (towards the sister’s house), a fireplace in the middle of the south wall and a raised floor at the west end, its step guarded by what appears to be a 1961 altar rail. As this liturgical west end actually faces compass east, this was surely the original sanctuary with its former sacristy to compass south. The switch was presumably made in 1961 when the link was added to the reoriented new church, although Bill Wilson records ‘1930s alteration, not severely’. A bench in the 1961 sanctuary, the tabernacle and possibly some other Gothic fittings (including the shelf to the 1990s kitchen hatch, perhaps the 1899 gradine) come from the chapel.

The 1961 church designed by Wearing & Hastings is similar to their church of St Helen, Hoveton (qv), built in 1959. It has a four-bay steel portal frame, with a pantiled roof, red brick walls and brown timber windows on brick cills. The end bays are recessed behind the eaves, with a window on the south and the link to the 1899 chapel on the north. The 1961 west front is rendered with a large round brick window with wooden tracery and coloured glass above the double entry doors and an attached cross rising above the roof apex. The east wall is of Fletton bricks (as is the east wall of the link) which suggests it was hoped to build an extension in the future (as intended at St Edmund, Halesworth and St Mary Magdalen, Ipswich, qqv, both by the same architects). The 1990s narthex is canted, possibly to allow for the ramp access, of red brick walls with a large flint panel on the north and a flat felt roof. There is a kitchen to the south and storage to the north.

Internally the portal frames are clad in cedar but unlike Hoveton, they rise to a high-level collar. The walls up to window cill level are bare brick with plaster above, and the roof is ceiled with plastered panels. A west choir gallery was built in the 1990s, with a dog-leg staircase to the north. The 1992 sanctuary was furnished by parishioners. The central red brick altar is by Adrian Craven, the east wall statues by Anton Wagner. The tabernacle is on a shelf to the south, the foundation stone within a wall on the north side. The 1961 font bowl is housed in a triangular wooden frame with concrete slab sides (in the sacristy).

The post Aylsham – St John of the Cross appeared first on Taking Stock.

Beccles Minster is aligned north-south, but for the purposes of this report, liturgical compass points will be used, i.e. the high altar at the east end. This alignment results in the many grave markers in the surrounding churchyards standing parallel to the church.

From the late seventeenth century, Catholic worship in this area was maintained particularly by the Tasburgh family at Flixton Hall, associated with the Benedictines at Douai. A chapel was built at Bungay in 1829, served by Benedictines from Downside Priory and it was Dom Ephrem Guy OSB, priest at Bungay from 1885, who encouraged Prior Moore to obtain permission from the Bishop of Northampton to establish a new mission at Beccles in 1886.

John Kenyon converted to Catholicism in 1870, and in January 1889 when visiting his uncle at nearby Gillingham Hall (which he inherited), he promised Dom Guy £500 and £100 p.a. to pay for a priest. Later that year Kenyon bought the Minster site, presented it to Downside and Dom Edmund Ford OSB of Bungay was appointed the first priest. A large red brick presbytery was then built, now the adjacent school. The intention was to create a small monastery, so the ‘presbytery’ was designed as a priory building for four or five monks. The first Mass was on 30 November 1889, in its dining room.

In June 1891, a ‘temporary church’ attached to the presbytery was opened, with Mass celebrated by the Prior of Downside; it is now the school hall linking the south of the Minster to the former presbytery. John Kenyon’s new chapel at Gillingham (q.v.) was opened in August 1898 by the Bishop of Northampton; it was designed by Frank Easto Banham, a Beccles architect who was then mayor of the town. Banham also designed the Minster, and the foundation stone was laid in 1899 at a service led by Canon Duckett (who was also promoting the new church of St John the Baptist in Norwich, now the cathedral).

On 4 September 1901 the nave was opened, with a Pontifical High Mass celebrated by Bishop Riddell of Northampton. The church was opened on 10 July 1908, although the intended northwest baptistery had not been built (the blocked entrance arch can be seen in the north nave aisle), nor had the projected ambulatory and Lady Chapel.

Bernard Kelly’s Historical Notes on English Catholic Missions (1907) states: ‘the congregation – said to be mostly converts – numbers about three hundred’ and describes the original stone and marble high altar as ‘especially noteworthy’. It stood on steps in the apse, with a throne behind for a crucifix (or monstrance during Benediction); the choir stalls were in the crossing. The six candlesticks from that high altar now surround the present altar.

After Dom Benet Innes arrived in 1953, the presbytery was converted to a primary school (opened in 1957) and a bungalow built to the northeast of the church to replace it. The church had new heating and the original gas lighting was converted to electricity. A tapering tub font was given by Mrs Gwen Taylor, in memory of her son, Squadron Leader John Stuart Taylor, killed in action aged 23 on 12 July 1943.

In a liturgical reordering of 1973 the altar was brought forward to a position under the tower. A freestanding iron tabernacle was placed behind it, made by the Wroxham blacksmith Eric Stevenson and draped with fabric in the liturgical colours, to imitate the tent-like tabernacles described in scripture. In 1979 a new pulpit was installed, from designs by architect Andrew Anderson. The process of post-Vatican II reordering was completed by Fr Simon Blakesley (parish priest from 1995 to 2003), with a new altar with platform and surrounding steps installed from designs local retired architect Chris Boyes, reflecting the design of the 1979 pulpit.

In about 1985 a fire in the presbytery required the replacement of the rood beam.

In 2021 ownership and administration of the Benedictine parishes of Beccles and Bungay passed to the Diocese of East Anglia.

Description

A large cruciform church in Norman Revival style, designed by local architect F.E. Banham, 1898-1908. It is faced with limestone (Ancaster and Bath) ashlar walls inside and out, over a brick core, with red tiled roofs and an asphalt tower roof. On plan it consists of a seven-bay aisled nave with southwest porch, projecting transepts and crossing tower with southeast round stair turret, north transept with eastern apsidal chapel, south transept with eastern rectangular sacristy and a one-bay aisled sanctuary with apse, all forming a so-called ‘Benedictine’ plan.

The design is based on Anglo-Norman architecture of the early twelfth century, with limited decoration (although the parapet corbels at least were probably intended to be carved). Internally, there is billet decoration as found in many Norman East Anglian churches, but the south porch and doorway are decorated with versions of mid-twelfth century features such as beakhead, as though of a later phase. The west front has a gabled porch over a triple order entry arch with scallop capitals, rising into two large round-headed west windows flanked by square stair turrets that have two tiers of blind arcading and hipped stone roofs. The roof gable has three blind ‘windows’ with deep recesses.

The nave clerestorey and aisles are divided into seven bays by pilaster buttresses, each bay with a round-arched window, those on the aisle walls with a surrounding arch of a single order. The aisle roof has a plain parapet on uncarved corbels, the main roof without a parapet, the corbels supporting the iron rainwater gutter. This elevation continues on the west walls of the transepts, but the transept and apse roofs are set lower than the nave.

The north transept end elevation is divided into three ranges of windows, the top within an unlikely arcade of alternating round and triangular arches, the gable with a small roundel in a large moulded frame including billet moulding. (The south transept could not be seen as it is wholly enclosed by the school playground. It has the same middle and upper windows, internally obscured by the organ, but the ground stage is covered by a sacristy). The crossing tower, based on the Norman tower at Bury St Edmunds, has pilaster buttresses clasping each corner with a central buttress to each side. There are two stages, the lower of blind arcading, the upper with two bell chamber openings each side (only one small bell inside). The round southeast stair turret rises above the plain parapet, supported on an arched corbel table.

The five-bay sanctuary apse is preceded by a single aisled bay, each just with an east window because the round east chapel of the north transept and the large rectangular south side sacristy abut these aisle bays. The apse itself is rather less Norman-looking, with only one lower window each side, small round-arched clerestorey windows and Gothic buttresses. The corbel table supporting the gutters is less pronounced than either the transepts with their wavy arched corbel tables or the south transept chapel with paired arched corbels.

Internally, the nave has a three-storey elevation in East Anglian style, with no sub-division to the reduced middle pseudo-gallery stage (like Waltham Abbey nave) and no alternation to the elevation. There is no clerestorey passage either, just a single window surrounded by a single order to each bay. The roofs of the gallery are stencilled, but there are no staircases to reach it. The nave roof was designed to be open to the rafters between the round transverse arches (as at Jumièges in Normandy, perhaps) but has a plastered barrel ceiling. This has elaborate stencilling around each arch and a continuous inscription taken from the Rule of St Benedict at wall plate level.

The east nave bay has an elaborately gilded and stencilled ceilure powdered with golden crowned IHS symbols honouring the rood. The stencilling of the adjacent gallery roof timbers changes and the area over the chancel arch is also richly painted imitating fabric. The narrow processional aisles have groin-vaulted bays divided by a double order transverse arch rising from corbels. These have more elaborate scallop capitals than the main arcades, which randomly use three types of capital design. The south nave aisle wall includes a large wall arch for a statue of St Benedict and a doorway to the 1891 ‘temporary’ church.

The crossing piers are designed for stalls to run through the crossing, as the shafts on the inward-facing sides are corbelled. As in medieval examples, the north and south crossing round arches are narrower than those to east and west. The capitals are all multi-scalloped and the arch mouldings have billet hoodmoulds. Above the arches there are two wide blind round arches with heavy mouldings to each face and the ceiling above them is panelled and richly stencilled in mainly red and white.

The transepts are differently arranged, as a large organ gallery fills much of the south transept and the north transept has an eastern apsed Lady Chapel. The south transept also gives access to the sacristy on its south and east sides, with a door to the tower staircase. This was originally designed for the northeast corner of the tower, reaching the ground off the east side of the north transept. The staircase initially leads to the organ gallery, but then awkwardly protrudes from the angle behind the southeast crossing pier. The organ gallery fills the southern half of the south transept and obscures the end windows, which are similarly arranged to those on the north. The wide doors to the sacristy are closed and access is via the small door off the St Joseph Chapel.

The north transept has the east apsidal Lady Chapel, the vault painted dark blue and peppered with gold stars. The entrance arch has similar mid-twelfth century decoration (like Greek key) and its inner order rise from corbels. It is much larger than the arch to the north sanctuary ‘aisle’, the chapel of the Sacred Heart, which continues the width of the nave north aisle (though it is aligned slightly further north). The wall shaft below the transverse arch set mid-way across the transept therefore cannot reach the ground and has had to be awkwardly corbelled off the haunch of the Lady Chapel arch. Once again, the barrel ceiling is stencilled at wall plate level and around the transverse arches. Arcading runs continuously at mid-wall height around the transept, with a few small windows on the west and north faces. Three windows sit above and below in the end wall, each with a single order arched frame decorated with zig-zag.

The north transept is almost as decorated as the sanctuary, which has stilted round arches at ground level, the first on each side east of the crossing piers open to the side chapels, the next two enclose a small round window; the remaining three are blank, but were designed to frame the high altar. The original stencilling has been painted out. A continuous blind arcade runs at mid-height and there is a clerestorey window to each bay, apparently behind a wall passage. The cul-de-four above is painted red, with stencilled IHS and Marian symbols.

Although the altar is under the tower, the original iron altar rail remains on the chancel step between the eastern crossing piers and a similar rail exists across the Lady Chapel. The latter has also retained its original painted wooden altar and reredos enclosing a possibly sixteenth century Italian painting of the Virgin and Child. Both the sanctuary chapels retain their statues on plinths below stained glass windows, but have no other furnishings. The most intriguing furnishing is the iron tabernacle with its fabric cover, looking a little flimsy against the solid stone altar and pulpit, but nevertheless of artistic value.

Most windows are glazed in opaque white glass with coloured frames creating shapes, very much in the twelfth century Cistercian style. There are a few stained glass windows, some by Shrigley & Hunt: that of the Resurrected Christ over the northeast aisle door commemorates the church architect, F.E. Banham. The large framed plaster Stations of the Cross are of good quality. The 1899 foundation stone can be seen to the west side of the southwest door, and flanking the west door are brasses commemorating Frederick and Catherine Smith and Stephen Henry, benefactors. A stone statue of Mary, Queen of Heaven and the Christ Child stands on a multi-marble shafted plinth to the west of the southwest crossing pier.

Entry amended by AHP, January 2023

*Update*

The church was listed Grade II* in January 2023. See list entry at https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1478482?section=official-list-entry

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Blakeney was part of the Revd H. W. Gray’s huge Fakenham parish, and after World War I he was determined to build new missions in small towns such as Blakeney, which had large summer populations. In 1927 an advertisement appeared in The Tablet announcing that a ‘valuable site’ in a ‘unique position’ had been obtained for the erection of a church dedicated to St Joseph. The precise location has not established, but in any event fundraising efforts were not sufficient. The present church, dedicated to St Peter, was built in 1962 on the site of a carpenter’s workshop. Designed by Wearing & Hastings, it is smaller and has a more rustic character than their other churches, possibly reflecting the building it replaced. Its interior has been much enhanced with stained glass by parishioners Paul and Jane Quail, added from c.1990, as well as ceramics by local artists.

Description

The church actually stands north-south by the compass, but liturgical points will be used in this account, i.e. the altar at the east.

A rectangular church with flat-roofed east and west adjuncts. The internal walls appear to be made of solid flint rubble below the wall-top windows, but the exterior face is clearly a flint skin on a brick core. The sacristy at the east and the west narthex with WC are of red brick laid in stretcher bond, the latter with a flint facing on the north side of the central double planked door. The north door is now the usual entrance, leading past a WC to a narthex also used for serving coffee after Mass. The church has a pitched pantiled roof, while the flat roofs of the narthex and sacristy are felted. Both gables are covered with large irregular horizontal planks of dark timber and the metal gable cross typical of Wearing & Hastings churches is here at the east end, probably because there is a large west window. The dark stained timber windows run continuously at eaves level on the south (road) side of the church, but there are three square windows in brick frames with reeded glass on the north. The large west window fills the gable above the narthex roof and is divided into five equal lights by wood mullions. It is protected externally by green rigid netting.

The interior has an agricultural character, with unplastered rubble walls of flint and random red bricks, two large scissor trusses and much dark timber in the roof. There is also a dark stained timber plank ‘cornice’, to which the original lighting was fixed. The stained glass, especially the west window softens the light. It is by the husband and wife artists Paul (d.2010) and Jane Quail, parishioners who lived in Holt; some are memorial windows. The door to the left of the altar leads to the sacristy, the door to the right to the former confessional, now used for storage. The altar continues the rusticity and the link to the carpenter’s workshop as its plank top is supported on four lengths of tree trunk. There are two different types of bench, most of one type reportedly coming from a Nonconformist chapel, the ends retaining marks where the seat numbers and umbrella/stick restraints were fixed.

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A wooden church was built at Brandon in 1923, served from Thetford. It was replaced by the present church in 1976, a design-and-build construction by Derek W. Hammond (Construction) Ltd of Brandon, costing about £25,000 and opened that year by Bishop Alan Clark, the newly-appointed first Bishop of East Anglia.  

The building is a functional design, longitudinal on plan, faced in pale grey brick and with a pantile roof. The windows consist of grouped triple lancets. A wooden cross on the exterior is put together from material from the previous church. The interior has not been inspected, but a photograph on the Suffolk Churches website shows bare brick walls, a flat ceiling and simple modern furnishings. A small pipe organ was brought from the Catholic church at Oundle.  

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In 1849 an early Georgian property at East Bergholt (Old House) was purchased by English Benedictine nuns. They had fled Brussels at the time of the French Revolution and established themselves at Winchester. They opened a convent and school at East Bergholt in 1857, George Goldie providing designs for additions to the house and (in 1858-9) a chapel, in the Italian Romanesque style.

Holy Family church at Brantham was built in 1919, and was served from East Bergholt. The identity of the architect has not been established, but its roof structure has similarities with that of the convent chapel, and it is possible that either Goldie’s son Edward or his grandson Joseph, who continued the practice, were involved.

The nuns were evacuated from Old Hall in 1940 and after the war the house was established as a Franciscan house of studies. The friars served Holy Family (and, from 1959, St Mark’s at Ipswich, qv) until 1993; they were based in Ipswich from 1973, after Old Hall was sold. It became a commune, and the chapel fell into disuse (it has since been renovated). Some stained glass from East Bergholt by Margaret Rope went to the church at Kesgrave (qv). In 1993-7 Holy Family was extended and new furnishings provided, through a legacy from Elizabeth Hills (1908-1990). The church continues to be served from St Mark’s, Ipswich.   

Description

A small lancet Gothic design of 1919, red brick under a slate roof. On plan it consists of a west porch, nave, and short canted sanctuary. The original sacristy on the south side now serves as a link to a modern sacristy and kitchen/meeting room, built in the 1990s in matching design and materials.

The gabled entrance porch has a terracotta hoodmould over the pointed entrance and terracotta kneelers and copings. It is flanked on either side by painted timber two-light windows with Y tracery and glazing bars. These and a pair of smaller windows in the gable also have terracotta hoodmoulds. At the sides the four bays of the nave are marked by attached buttresses, and the windows are similarly detailed but have plainer brick arches.

Inside, the nave is wide and aisleless, with an open timber queen post roof. The walls are plastered and the floor boarded. At the east end, an anse de panier arch separates the short canted apse from the nave. The sanctuary furnishings are of timber, introduced (along with the oak benches in the nave) in the 1990s. In the apse are two stained glass windows by Gabrielle Preedy, 1997. The Stations of the Cross came from the chapel at East Bergholt, as may have also the copy of Raphael’s Madonna del Granduca, in a fine gilt frame and hanging over the west door.

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Buckden Palace was one of the residences of the Bishops of Lincoln from the late twelfth century until 1838. Much of the palace has been demolished. The principal survivals are the outer gateway, the inner gatehouse, some stretches of walling and a massive three-storey tower, all of red brick and dating from the fifteenth century. In 1870 the property was acquired by Arthur Marshall, owner of the Huntingdon Brewery and the son of James Marshall, one of the founders of the London drapers Marshall & Snelgrove. The younger Marshall intended to convert the buildings into a private residence, but instead built a new house on the site, to the designs of the architect Robert Edis. After the First World War, both palace and house came into the possession of Dr R. H. Edleston, an antiquary who carried out some excavations and also began to reconstruct the destroyed chapel of the palace. He died before this work was completed and his sister gave the palace to the Diocese of Northampton, which in 1956 passed it to the Claretian Missionaries for use as a junior seminary.

The Claretians took possession in 1957 and embarked on restoration work, which included the roofing and flooring of the great tower. In 1958-9 a new chapel, designed by Burles & Newton and dedicated to St Hugh of Lincoln, was built to the west of the site of the original chapel, linked on either side to the great tower and to the Victorian house. The seminary closed in 1965, and in 1974 Buckden Palace became the St Claret Centre for conferences and spiritual retreats. Further extensive restoration of the historic buildings was carried out in the 1990s.

Description

The church is in a simple modern style typical of the 1950s. It is longitudinal on plan and constructed with a steel portal frame, clad in two-inch red brick laid in stretcher bond and colour-matched to the adjoining fifteenth century tower. The shallow-pitched roof is covered in a corrugated material. Below and flanking the gabled main front is a shallow-arched cloister, linking the church with the great tower and Victorian villa and forming an open lobby to the church. Above the cloister is a single large widow with triangular head and flint panels above and below. Brickwork on either side is subtly diapered, echoing the adjacent Tudor tower. The main front returns for one bay and then steps down to the church, which is four bays long with modern square windows at clerestorey level, except in the easternmost bay, which has three tiers of square windows lighting the sanctuary. To the east of the main church and attached to it is the lower brick-built Lady Chapel, which occupies part of the site of the former chapel of the palace, and dates partly from the 1950s and partly from the seventeenth century. It has a three-light window on the south side and another in a projecting eastern bay. Beyond the Lady Chapel is a stone structure, lower again, with a curious pediment at the eastern extremity and modern rectangular window openings in the side walls. This structure was built up after 1921 by Mr Edleston, using salvaged old masonry. It is now the Claret Chapel.

The interior of the church is fairly utilitarian in character, with end walls of red brick and side walls of barefaced white brick, divided into bays by the upstands of the portal frame trusses, which are cased in red brick. The roof is ceiled between the trusses. The floor is of parquet. Across the west end is a shallow gallery with a simple modern handrail. There is no structural division between the nave and sanctuary, but the eastern bay is raised two steps above the level of the nave and has a simple modern forward altar and other modern sanctuary furniture. The windows in the side walls are clear glazed, apart from the single windows on either side of the sanctuary, which have glass by Paul Quail depicting St Hugh and St Anthony Claret, installed in 1986. The large window in the head of the west wall has stained glass panels depicting the Life of the Virgin, originally at The Immaculate Heart of Mary, Hayes, Middlesex, another Claretian parish (the church of 1961 is also by Burles, Newton & Partners).

The Lady Chapel is a simple space with plain plastered walls and a ceiling with moulded timber beams. It contains more windows by Paul Quail, commemorating Katherine of Aragon’s time at Buckden Palace and illustrating the mysteries of the Rosary. The Claret Chapel has bare stone walls, a low boarded ceiling, a carpeted floor and modern loose furnishings. The east window has stained glass by Paul Quail on the theme of The Resurrection, and the small side windows have abstract coloured glass.

Buckden Palace is a scheduled Ancient Monument (no.1006855)

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The church is aligned northeast-southwest by the compass, but liturgical points will be used in this report, i.e. assuming an altar at the east.

In 1657, the Tasburgh family at Flixton (southwest of Bungay) hosted Dom William Walgrave of the English Benedictine Congregation at Douai while he ministered to Catholics in the area. That link survives today as the Benedictines of Downside Abbey continue to supply the parish priest.

Post-Reformation Bungay had two Church of England medieval parish churches, Holy Trinity and St Mary (the latter now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust). St Mary was the church of the former priory of the Holy Cross of Benedictine nuns, probably dissolved in 1536; by December 1537, the Duke of Norfolk, descendant of the founder, had possession of the priory site. The twelfth Duke rented part of it to the growing Catholic congregation and by 1823 a chapel had been built in the lancet style, opening on 18 June that year. A priest’s house was built in 1829 on its northwest corner, funded from the proceeds of a French-English dictionary compiled by the mission priest, Dom Peter Wilson. The former priory flint and brick wall separates the new chapel from St Mary’s Street and a brick and flint wall to the north forms the boundary between the chapel and St Mary’s churchyard. In 1873 a school was built in to the southwest from designs by Bacon & Bell, extended in 1899 by F. E. Banham and again in the late twentieth century.

On his arrival in 1885, Dom Ephrem Guy considered the chapel too small but it was only when Frederic Smith, a Bungay solicitor and school friend of Dom Ephrem at Downside, came into his inheritance in 1888 that plans could be made. Initially, Dom Ephrem approached Edmund Kirby, architect of Liverpool (where he had previously been), but Bernard Smith, a London architect with Bungay connections (but no relation to Frederic) was engaged to add a new chancel. The foundation stone was laid in August 1888 and on 9 January 1889, the new chancel was formally opened by the Bishop of Northampton, Arthur Riddell. In April 1890 work began on replacing the 1823 chapel by encasing it with a new nave by Bernard Smith, funded by Frederic Smith. The boys’ sacristy and boiler house were added to the northeast and the ‘exterior of the existing chancel was made to correspond’ (according to the 1899 account). It is noticeable that the chancel tracery has fewer mouldings than that of the nave and is without external buttresses. The new nave was to be longer than it is, but existing graves prevented another bay; some headstones are incorporated in the internal walls of the porch. The old chapel was demolished after Easter 1891.

In 1894 a new presbytery was built to the southeast of the chancel from designs prepared by Bernard Smith in 1891, and the 1829 priest’s house was demolished, to be replaced by the octagonal baptistery, blessed in May 1901. Frederic Smith spent more than £14,000 on these buildings, with more given for vestments and furnishings before his death on 18 September 1903. The church was consecrated in 1910.

In the early 1970s a square marble forward altar was introduced but the reredos and its altar were left in place. The fine iron altar rails by Hardman and Co. were removed in 1992 (but they remain on site in store). The present wooden altar is of 1998, when the sanctuary was reordered and raised in height (the marble altar was taken to St John’s Cathedral c.2000). The pulpit was dismantled and parts used for the present ambo.

In 2021 ownership and administration of the Benedictine parishes of Bungay and Beccles passed to the Diocese of East Anglia.

Description

The list description (below) remains accurate but would benefit from the following clarifications and additional detail:

• The stone dressings are of Bath stone and the plain tiles are Broseley tiles.
• The 1889 priest’s sacristy runs across the whole east end. The boys’ sacristy and boiler house on the north are part of the 1891 nave campaign.
• The tall west porch with an organ chamber above is set back from the nave with two small windows in the north and south walls. The square-framed west door is flanked by statues of St Gregory and St Augustine and set within a pointed arch rising over three elaborate ogee arched niches filled with scenes from the life of St Edmund, all carved by James Ovens of Norwich. In the crocketed gable flanked by crocketed pinnacles is a large sexfoil roundel with an enthroned St Edmund.
• The octagonal northwest baptistery has a green copper conical roof rising to an elaborate finial.
• The east window contains portraits of Frederic Smith’s parents as donor figures in the bottom corners.
• The south chancel windows are by Swain Bourne and the north chancel windows by W. B. Simpson & Sons.
• The chancel roof is not panelled but arch braced, with angels and a traceried frieze at wall plate level.
• The nave stained glass is by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake.
• The chancel arch is flanked by statues of the Sacred Heart (north) and St Joseph (south) under big niche canopies.
• The nave roof has beams and plaster infill in a chequer pattern.
• The fine woodblock floor is by Roger Lowe of Farnworth, Bolton.
• The founder’s memorial on the south nave wall is an accomplished essay in Roman thirteenth century style, with inlaid mosaic and marble.
• The baptistery has a lierne star vault with foliate bosses (not a fan vault) and has rich decoration to the blind arcading. The font is of alabaster with marble columns.

List descriptions

Church

GV II*

Roman Catholic Church. 1889-1901. By Bernard Smith for the English Benedictine Congregation. Patron Frederic Smith. Red brick with stone dressings and plain tile roof. Decorated and Perpendicular styles. Chancel, with sacristy etc, nave, north aisle Lady Chapel and octagonal baptistery. EXTERIOR. Chancel a 3-window range of 2-light windows and nave a 4-window range of 3-light windows with buttresses between. West end projects forward by 1 window but blank front has elaborate carved frontispiece around the west door by Ovens of Norwich depicting Saints Gregory and Augustine and scenes from life of St Edmund. Baptistery has flying buttresses, narrow windows, corbelled battlemented parapet and tall octagonal metal roof. INTERIOR. Chancel has stained glass east window by Hardman and Co and wood panelling and a very fine and elaborate reredos of panels of angels in Caen stone, all by AB Wall of Cheltenham. Stained glass in side windows probably also by Hardman. Chancel roof is panelled and has mahogany angels. Nave has complete set of stained glass by Lavers, Westlake and Barnard and carved panelling to the walls including high relief Stations of the Cross by Daymond and Boulton of Cheltenham. Statues in niches on nave east wall also by Boulton. Panelled nave roof. Complete set of pews run uninterrupted across width of nave. A 2-bay arcade of clustered shaft pier and responds leads to north aisle Lady Chapel with similar glass and stone reredos in high relief of the Assumption of the Virgin by Boulton. West end of nave has gallery partly over entrance vestibule and contains organ by Norman and Beard of Norwich. The elaborate baptistery leads off the Lady Chapel through iron gates and has blind arcading with marble columns, patterned stained glass and fan vaulted roof. Octagonal font in various marbles, mainly alabaster, and richly carved font cover.

HISTORY. A chapel was built on this site in 1823 near to the parish church and to the remains of the pre-reformation Benedictine nunnery. A presbytery was added in 1829 next to the street. In 1888 Frederic Smith, a local solicitor, offered a new chancel and sacristy in memory of his parents and this was completed in 1889. He then offered the nave which was built round the old chapel and was restricted in its size by the existing presbytery and surrounding graveyard. The old chapel was then demolished and the new church opened in 1891. The decision was then taken to rebuild the presbytery (qv) to the SE of the church and linked to it and this was completed in 1894. The baptistery was added to the north west corner of the church 1899-1901. The cost of chancel, nave and presbytery was about £14,000, the whole amount paid by the patron. The church displays both inside and out high quality and rich decoration, and with the presbytery, the Church of St Mary (including the ruins of the Benedictine Convent) (qv) forms a very significant group in the centre of Bungay.

Bibliography: Mission and Church of St Edmund, King and Martyr, Bungay. By a Monk of St Gregory’s Abbey, Downside [Dom Francis Flemming], 1899.

Listing NGR: TM3369589680

Presbytery

GV II

Roman Catholic presbytery. 1894. By Bernard Smith. For the English Benedictine Congregation. Patron Frederic Smith. Red brick with stone dressings. Plain tile roof with ornamental brick stacks with shafts and cornices. Crow stepped gables. Tudor Revival style. 2 storeys and attic. Gable projecting on right. 4-window range in all at first floor of paired and 4-light sashes in stone mullioned surrounds. 2- and 3-light mullioned and transom windows to ground floor have leaded lights. Entrance under stone arch to right side of projecting gable. Side has similar paired and triple sashes and a projecting gable. INTERIOR only partly inspected but features a corridor leading directly across the whole ground floor from entrance to sacristy of church (qv), to which the presbytery is linked. Together with the church, the Church of St Mary (including the remains of the Benedictine Convent) (qv), and walls in both churchyards (qv) the presbytery forms a very significant group in the centre of Bungay. Listing NGR: TM3372389677

Wall on southwest side of St Edmund’s churchyard

II

Probably mediaeval, about 8 ft high and up to 3 ft thick, uncut flint.
Listing NGR: TM3367889668

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It is likely that a pair of cottages for domestic staff occupied this site until 1911, when it is thought the present double gabled building was erected. It became a spectacle factory in World War II and then a car and boat showroom. Catholics in Burnham had to travel to Kings Lynn for Mass or, as new churches were built, Fakenham, Wells or Walsingham. The diocesan Travelling Mission also occasionally came to Burnham Market.

In 1958 Canon Gerard Hulme, priest at the shrine and parish priest in Walsingham, bought the showroom to establish a Mass centre. He chose to dedicate it to St Henry of Bavaria, partly because that saint had a reputation for caring for new churches, but mainly ‘to look after the Mass centre until Henry Walpole is canonised and fit to take his place among his own Norfolk people’. The first Mass was celebrated by Mgr Anthony Reynolds on 24 May 1958 and thereafter priests came from Walsingham, in whose parish Burnham lay. By May 1961, the office area in the right hand building had been converted to living accommodation and Fr Kane moved in. After 1965, the plate glass front window was replaced by the present church entry and the large window over the altar bricked up. Further improvements were made in readiness for the canonisation of Henry Walpole on 5 October 1970, and Bishop Alan Clark consecrated and re-dedicated the church on 20 December 1970. The parish was created in May 1976 and the Revd Hugh Richmond SDS took up residence.

The first altar was a mahogany side table, replaced by an ‘ornate altar from Manchester’ given by Bishop Parker, but the present altar (with communion rails and other sanctuary fittings) was made locally in memory of George Phillips, a parishioner who died soon after the consecration. The church bell came from a ship and brass fittings, including candlesticks, were donated by USAF personnel from RAF Sculthorpe.

Description

The church is orientated northwest to southeast (the altar at the southeast) but for the purposes of this account, liturgical points will be used, i.e. the altar at the east.

A double-gabled, single-storey, brick building with pantiled roofs and an open timber bellcote above the entrance. The sacristy is in a flat-roofed area between the two gables at the rear and there is a conservatory across the two rear gables leading to a small garden.

The church is lit by three high-level horizontal windows on the north, six vertical slit windows between brick piers at the west and a pair of square casements to the south of the sanctuary. The lower parts of the simple roof tie-beam trusses are visible, but the ceiling runs across a (presumed) mid-height collar beam. Apart from the glazed main double door at the west, there is a door at the southwest corner leading into the adjacent presbytery (and its street door) and another door at the southeast corner leading to the sacristy and former reconciliation room. The parquet floor runs throughout the church and the altar stands on one step.

The altar, altar rail and other sanctuary fittings are post-1970, the Stations of the Cross (given by Fr McCormick, the last Travelling Missionary) are small prints mounted on the slope of the ceiling and the various statues are locally made. There is a copy of the seventeenth century print portrait of St Henry Walpole and some relics of him and other saints in wall frames. The mosaic cross is by Mrs Viola Schwedel and the bronze memorial to Stephen Balfour was presented by his sister Mrs Shepperd.

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