Heritage Church St Margaret’s, Hales
Enter the churchyard of this Norfolk wonder and leave the modern world behind, says Lin Bensley
AMILE or so from Hales stands St Margaret’s in sedate seclusion; keeping its own company amid a patchwork of fields and plantations. Surviving earthworks suggest earlier settlements once clustered around the church were abandoned, which may explain why so much of the original 12th-century architecture escaped alteration. Among the 124 surviving round tower churches in Norfolk, Hales is one of the finest. Pevsner was moved to describe it as “a perfect Norman country church”.
Simon Jenkins found the location as impressive as the building. “To sit in its overgrown churchyard surrounded by nothing but meadows and birdsong is to vanish from the modern world . . . Hales’s thatch has been renewed, its walls restored and its antiquity left undisturbed. Not much has happened round here since the Black Death.”
Entering the churchyard upon a misty autumnal morning is akin to stepping back in time. The summer migrants have long departed; the hedges are laced with elderberries and old man’s beard, and a watchful barn owl perches atop a headstone as if a self-appointed guardian of the dead.
The eye is immediately captured by the beauty of this unpretentious but imposing building; from the
weathered mortar work of the tower to the rectangular nave and rounded Norman apse with its blind arcading, pierced by Early English windows, all perfectly augmented by the flat stone buttresses that support the chancel.
In Historical Rambles in East Anglia, local historian Emma Thornhill recalls her delight in visiting the church during the 1920s when she discovered seven compass-drawn scratch dials upon the south wall. These are thought to indicate the service times, and offer a tangible link to the mindset of churchgoers from a bygone age. If their precise meaning is still a matter of conjecture in some circles, I for one, rather like to think they were the work of bell-ringers charged with summoning the faithful.
Thornhill also recorded that a porch over the north door had been demolished within living memory to deter vagrants from seeking shelter there during bad weather. The porch at Hales, one might hazard, would have been preferable to the cold comfort they would have received at the nearby Heckingham workhouse, notorious for its harsh regime.
Porch or no porch, the exquisite carvings that frame the north and south doors led author and historian Chris Barringer to proclaim, “It is hard to avoid the feeling that the craftsman-designer allowed his fertile imagination free rein when working on this masterpiece 900 years ago.”
Acclaimed artist Gerard Stamp holds a very similar opinion. His arresting watercolours combine his artistic inclinations with those of a superb draughtsman.
“I first encountered Hales church through the wonderful etchings of John Sell Cotman, a childhood hero. I have since visited and painted the church many times; it really is the most perfect little Norman church, both sublime and deeply melancholic. It’s astonishing to think that the two spectacular doorways were made from stone shipped from Caen and carved in Norwich’s busy mason’s yards, at the same time the city’s great cathedral was being constructed.”
As a leading light of the Norwich School of painters, Cotman also believed nothing could compare with the incised detail of the doorways and his early 19th-century etchings are a testament as much to his own genius as that of the journeyman mason who sculptured the stone.
The frieze of six orders which encircle the north door feature rosettes, zigzags, chevrons and bobbins embellished with decorative bands. Thornhill, who thought the double cone (bobbin) pattern peculiar to East Anglia, often conducted tours around the local churches with Hales seemingly a notable favourite. It has also inspired artists like Stamp to return time and again.
“What I try to paint is the atmosphere, the light, the feeling of a place. I am often attracted by the melancholy, the timelessness, the tranquillity of a simple country church or the solemn ruins of a once great abbey. These are hardly new or ‘original’ subjects for an artist’s attention but that is no reason not to interpret them anew, with fresh eyes.”
His studies have heightened his awareness of the relationship between himself and those hallowed buildings. “The idea that a structure made out of brick and stone can somehow impart ‘approval’ or ‘condemnation’ may be to the modern cynic at best unduly romantic and at worst utterly ridiculous. But it is this anthropomorphism, and being able to touch the ‘passing waves of humanity’, which give spirit to these places and draws me to them.”
Regular services at Hales ceased in 1967, and the parish was united in 1973 with Heckingham – another hidden treasure almost identical in design to Hales church, which suggests the same master mason worked on both. Hales was placed under the stewardship of the Churches Conservation Trust, which sensitively continues to preserve this Anglican house of worship for future generations.
On one of the few sunny days of last March, I was fortunate to meet a member of the CCT who was conducting a routine inspection of the
church, both inside and out.
She explained her duties, and her evident enthusiasm proved infectious. She was particularly proud of the work recently undertaken to re-thatch the roof, and it is heartening to know that the care and attention organisations like the CCT lavish upon our redundant churches also serves to sustain our rural crafts.
The visitor, upon setting foot over the threshold, will find the somewhat stark interior nevertheless offers reassuring sanctuary; a refuge as much for reflection as remembrance, and for those wishing to pursue their spiritual odyssey.
The whitewashed walls strengthen the rays of September light and enhance its peaceful ambience, where shadows venture to soften the defaced fragments of the rood screen – an enduring memorial to 16th-century vandalism. The visitor’s book attests to a regular stream of devotees, tourists, and church crawlers, with overzealous reformers thankfully conspicuous by their absence.
Dating from the late 15th century, the font is a relatively modern addition; four fearless-looking lions support winged angels beneath a deep octagonal bowl alternately faced with Tudor roses and further angels bearing shields. The font is capped by a Jacobean cover, the underside of which displays a silhouette of the rector of the day.
A western gallery spans the nave behind the font; an uncommon survivor in Norfolk churches, these came into fashion in the latter part of the 17th century to accommodate singers and musicians following Cromwell’s Puritan movement which saw the removal or destruction of all church organs.
The gallery offers an alternative perspective from which to view the medieval wall paintings, including those of angels blowing trumpets upon the spandrels of the chancel arch; the remnants of a doom painting. The faint outline of St Christopher carrying the Christ child across the river can be discerned by the south door, and another 14th-century image in the splayed window by the pulpit depicts the figure of St James the Great with his staff and wallet, and it has been suggested that pilgrims may once have worshipped here en route to the holy shrine at Walsingham. Above the figures of the two martyrs, the traces of a foliated border can be seen running round parts of the chancel.
No article on Hales church would be complete without mentioning the Canadian-born historian and archaeologist, Helen Sutermeister, who is buried here together with her husband, archivist Ian Dunn, in the shade of the two yew trees that border the gateway. The pair had settled in the nearby village of Loddon when Helen began her dedicated analysis of the Norwich Enrolled Deeds relating to the acquisition of property by the Black Friars in Norwich during the 1300s. A founding member of the Norwich Survey within the Centre of East Anglian Studies, Helen’s research was cut tragically short by her death from lung cancer in 1979 aged thirty-six.
As Gerard Stamp says, “Hales is one of the most wonderful churches in Norfolk,” and few would have cause to disagree. Having visited Hales countless times over the decades, I like many others, have developed an emotional attachment to the church and recall in my youth climbing rickety-rackety worm-eaten ladders that led up to the belfry and ultimately the top of the tower. Now, more content to keep my feet on the ground, I often ponder what stories the very fabric of this church would tell if stones could only speak . . .
View more of Gerard’s work by visiting gerardstamp.com