Norwich’s Mediaeval Churches
TGEORGE Written by Dr Nicholas Groves
The mediæval churches of Norwich are a unique collection. With thirty-one surviving buildings, Norwich has more than any city north of the Alps. But they are more than just buildings: until well into the 19th century they were the centres of life of their parishes, secular as well as religious, and this life is part of their fabric.
Each has something to offer, whether it is one of the nine still open for worship or one of the eighteen vested in the Norwich Historic Churches Trust (most of which have alternative uses) or one of the three vested in the Churches Conservation Trust. In this series I will look at the main points of one or two churches each month, and I hope you will want to visit them afterwards. Some are less easy to get into than others, and I shall try to indicate what the access arrangements are.
T
his month I want to look at St George Tombland. Founded after the Cathedral, its churchyard intrudes into the old Saxon marketplace.
As the Normans had demolished the old Saxon civic church of St Michael Tombland (sited more-or-less where the public lavatories now are), it is hard to see why St George was built at all! As it stands now, the building is mostly 15th century: chancel and parts of the nave may be 13th, but the various porches and aisles, and the tower, were all added between about 1430 and 1490. This allows us to see how many of these buildings were added to piecemeal as the various bits were needed (other parishes, as we shall see, undertook major rebuilds, and their churches are all of a piece).
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Photo taken by Evelyn Simak Fine City Magazine 2011
The order is: north porch: 1445; north aisle: a little after; south aisle: 1490; south porch: ?1500. Note also the 16th century clerestory: the brick is not a cheap
substitute for stone but a high-status material (Hampton Court is built of it). The bosses in the south porch are, despite their current state, of high quality and may have been carved by the masons working on the cathedral bosses.
Inside you see an interior last refurnished in the 1880s: a Victorian idea of what a mediæval church ought to have looked like. The north aisle was cleared of its fixed seating in 2009, when the kitchen and lavatory block was inserted, and more seats were removed from the back of the nave at the same time, which increases the sense of space.
This was a very well-to-do parish in the 17th and 18th centuries, and this is reflected in the quality of the monuments on the walls and in the floor. Principal among them is Mary Gardiner’s, of 1748: you will find her up by the altar, on the north wall. This monument we know was carved by Peter Scheemaker – the same man who carved Shakespeare’s
monument in Westminster Abbey. Stephen Gardiner obviously thought very highly of his late wife! They gave a set of silver gilt communion plates to the church (usually on display in the Cathedral). The other one, easy to miss as it is tucked away beside the organ, is the Anguish monument, of 1617. This shows Thomas Anguish and his wife and children – those holding skulls or, in the case of babies, propped up on one,
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