Norfolk weekend: the thirteenth church

We saw it on Sunday 10 September, the day after our walk for the Norfolk Churches Trust (16 miles, 12 churches) and so although I couldn't put it on the list and claim charity for the sight, it still gets underlined in pencil in my Pevsner guide to North-East Norfolk and Norwich. And it's unique, to be sure - more of a Stourhead-style classical temple, hidden in the trees of the Gunton Estate close to the Wyatt-embellished house.

The Church of St Andrew is the work of Robert Adam, no less, in gault brick, dating from 1769. The four-column portico gives it the classical look.

Inside, lovingly preserved and restored by the Churches Conservation Trust, the plasterwork is very fine, offset by the hatchments and coat of arms of George I, though apparently the roof is a replica of one that collapsed in the 1970s, or so says the ever-lively Simon Knott on his Norfolk churches website, and the organ means that services are still occasionally held here.

A light went on: were we to move to Southrepps, which is on the cards for the future, we could hold winter concerts here, depending on permission. Certainly the summer festival should think of casting its eye over here - though would the audience find it, and where would they park?

I liked the marbling in front of the altar,

the post-Grinling-Gibbonsesque woodwork

and the wall monument, to which lady I can't make out from my photo, and found nothing online about it.

Walking around outside is a delightful experience, even on a gloomy day which was so much less tractable in its weather than the church-walking experience of sun, showers and rainbows; in fact it felt like the first day of autumn, with the leaves falling discreetly.

Of the rectangular shape outside, there are four niches and four upper windows on north and south sides

while the east end has three blank rectangular panels, on the central one of which is inscribed the date 1665.

And below is the back of a gravestone for  Michael Robert Parkin (1931-2014), who spent his last years at Gunton Hall. A mover and shaker in the London art wold for three decades, he seems to have been a parp-parper in his fast cars and a born storyteller, like Grahame's Toad of Toad Hall, whose family motto - 'always toad' - is adopted as a jolly epitaph here.

Contemporary art leaves its very surprising imprint on what looks outside like a plain flint-faced country pub in the grounds - it was from here that we made our way across the park to try and find the church.

As Jay Rayner explains in his lively and positive review of the dining experience at The Gunton Arms,

the art on the walls and around the building – there is a piece by the sculptor Anthony Caro in the garden – is worth more than the building itself. At least it wears all this lightly, or as lightly as you can wear a couple of tonnes of red-painted steel by Caro. It is just a pub. With a Saatchi's worth of art...And so to the explanation: the pub is owned by art dealer Ivor Braka [who has a home in the park's folly]. He's a friend of the chef Mark Hix, long known for his involvement in the British art world. When Braka bought the pub he approached Hix for advice on what to do with it.

We were lucky to get a table, though it meant arriving around noon. That at least meant that very few people had arrived - there were only a few folk in the bar, which is clearly used by locals and not just trendies zipping up from London for the weekend,

and no-one in the nookery, where I admired the Tom of Finlands

and what I'm assuming is a work by the late Howard Hodgkin - happy to be corrected if anyone knows otherwise. This is probably the artwork I'd take away with me.

Some furious Bufton from Bungay has given the place one star on Trip Advisor for (and I quote without tidying up) its 'revolting images of vomiting - defecating ladies and that is just the dining rooms. Elsewhere there are images of spread legged femails and porographic fornication. Photographs of masturbating ladies hang in the gents toilet. It is all too much - we shall not return'. Paula Rego is responsible for the 'vomiting - defecating ladies', very stylishly drawn, and 'spread legged femails' are down to Tracey Emin - we were dining in 'her' room and that one, perhaps, was a little off-putting, though at least I wasn't facing it.

In fact the two of us with our backs to the wall got an amusing cyclorama of a herd of deer galloping past one way, and coming back another - it all felt quite surreal.

The food, though, was delicious. And I felt I could break my semi-vegetarian rules, post-Okja, to taste the venison. Later the place filled up with interesting folk and their dogs (welcome, and very quiet). So despite the gloom it was a fun afternoon, and a quietish contrast to the rigours and pleasures of the previous day.

As for the walk, we've handed our takings over to Jill to give to Mary Heather of All Saints Burnham Thorpe and should be able to announce the figure (well into the thousands, thank you very much) quite soon.

Very hilly, Sheringham

As opposed, of course, to 'very flat, Norfolk' - which, in the north-east, it is definitely not. The Holt/Cromer ridge, sloping down from wooded tops to fertile pasture and cliffs, was a plaything for local boy Humphrey Repton, 'humanising, as well as animating, beautiful scenery' with his landscaping, declaring it 'my most favourite work' - and that from a distinguished list of 200.

Our Sheringham Rundweg, taking in woods, cliffs, town, the beach where we swam and a fine country church, began at the National Trust car park. The classic view of the park and house was not to come until towards the end. We began by walking through central woodland with very tall trees - conifers, Spanish chestnuts, oaks and beeches, even the odd monkey puzzle tree.

Soon we were fringing the wood, with isolated clumps of trees in a clearer landscape

and then the coast,

looking towards Weybourne Windmill and the north sea.

Couples were sitting on benches waiting for the steam train to pass and complete a classic view, but since we pressed on, turning from east to south where you can just make out the wind turbines out at sea

past a traditional way of forest management,

some virgin beech leaves on a branch shooting out from a knotty clump

and down towards the sea past poppy-fringed fields,

we only saw the train looking back.

Then it was out on to the cliffs which make such a marked contrast on this part of the coast to the saltmarshes and dunes of the north-west. Swallows were shrieking and swooping in abundance

while the view back reveals a steady climb (the top photo shows where to, the highest point on the coast)

and I even saw a solitary puffball mushroom near the cliff edge.

Sheringham prides itself on clean beaches - what will happen when (if, inshallah) we leave the EU?

We walked back along the lower sea front to find a spot sheltered by a windbreaker from which Cally and I could launch out for the obligatory swim, the beach proper occupied only by black-headed gulls.

I liked the vibe of Sheringham, the attention to detail in the muralising of its sea walls

and on this cafe front - we'll let Ellie off her non-punctuation for the piquancy of the graphics. I had no idea that Einstein, fleeing Hitler in 1933, found shelter in Roughton on Cromer Heath.

There's even an excellent coffee shop for us townies, serving its own roast, and of course the best fish and chips (competition between three chippies within close vicinity is strong). The next stretch meant walking along a road for about a mile until we reached Old Sheringham, very discreet, with its church nicely set below the park ridge.

I may be pre-empting a future Norfolk churches walk - next one due, in two Saturdays' time, should take us further east along the coast if the weather's fine - but it's time for some bench ends. All Saints is big, light and airy, 'full of interesting things,' as Betjeman notes. Clearly I should have paid more attention to the rood screen, but I was seduced by details like this mermaid, close by the table near the door.

Further east, off the central aisle, are a cat with a kitten in its mouth,

a swaddled figure (whether baby or corpse is debated) beneath an unusual face

and various mythical beasts like this dragon.

The memorial to Abbot Upcher (died 1819), who commissioned Repton to landscape the estate, is by Bacon Junior and Samuel Manning. Thus Pevsner: 'Hanging monument of considerable size. White marble. A disconsolate woman lies over a broken column and a dead branch'.

Upcher, encourged by Repton to let the local people gather wood on the estate in part of an attempt to strike 'a happy medium between Licentious Equality and Oppressive Tyranny' (big deal, we shrug now, but it no doubt was then),  also provided the handsome reservoir outside, dedicated prematurely to the 'year of peace' 1814,

and with a handsome flint-walled basin behind the facade

A short walk up a lane leads you back to National Trust land, the boldest sweep of Sheringham Park.

More puffballs here as we climbed the hill

and then a fine view, as Repton intended, from the Temple as featured in his Red Book but not actually completed in his lifetime (the present replica dates from 1975).

Sheringham Hall, now in private hands, faces inland. As the National Trust guide puts it, presumably paraphrasing before quoting Repton, 'a sea view might be pleasant in the Bay of Naples, but not in the harsh climate of the north Norfolk coast: "Can it ever rain in Paradise?" '

And then, into the woods again.

Back at base, the nice man in the National Trust shop helped me to identify two species which had intrigued us on Jill's new pond in Lower Southrepps: the iridescent thing spinning rapidly in circles was a whirligig beetle, and though I was familiar with this creature, good to have its exact, if obvious, title: red-eyed damselfly.

Not finished with north Norfolk yet - and we'll be back there for the big annual walk, which will merit a couple more churches to be featured here by way of canvassing for sponsorship.