Norfolk Churches Walk 2023: Norwich preludial

The others seem more surprised at me than I myself, on Saturday six plus weeks after my big op: in heat that peaked at 32 degrees, we covered the churches of Norwich central north on Saturday, and collected 24 including the Cathedral. Which I know well, but never more intimately than on Friday afternoon, when our lovely hosts Kate and Fairless (pictured above in the cloisters) accompanied us to a 'festal' Evensong. Before I go further, because you might just flick down the pictures, let me tell you here that for a change, I'm raising money for Maggie's this time, because of the support they've given me over the past year. 2022, Loddon to Surlingham, was for the Norfolk Churches Trust as usual, but I'm taking a little holiday from asking friends for the same old cause, excellent though it is. You can give as little or as much as you like to Maggie's - UPDATE: Gift Aid gets them far more if you go to 'donate' on the main website here -  via bank transfer using these details

Maggie's Centres

Bank: Bank of Scotland

Branch: 38 St Andrews Square, Edinburgh, EH2 2YR

Account: 06049705

Sort Code: 80-11-00

And add XLDN so that it goes to the West London centre I love so much. Drop me an email so I can keep track of totalling.

Norwich Cathedral, of course, I know well. The glorious edifice's added spire is visible from the garden of K and F, but more of the building is clearer a little further along the road. Friday was hazy; we were luckier with the blue skies on the day of the walk.

Then - and this is one of the two most atmospheric approaches, the other being through the Water Gate at Pull's Ferry a bit further along the Wensum, a much better way of getting in to town from the station than the rather dreary road that leads directly upwards and bends round - we crossed the medieval Bishop Bridge into Bishopsgate . We passed the Great Hospital, where the religious part of St Helen's would be our starting-point next morning, and round the East End, past the grave of Edith Cavell, 

and into the cloisters, where I wanted to be reacquainted with the handsomest of Green Men.

The cloisters were begun in 1297 with the wing featured up top and including this particular Green Man, and finished c. 1430 with the north wing. pictured below; the Black Death interrupted the stonemasons' work.

The special beauty of the interior proper is its unbroken beauty from east to west, even if that has two different periods matched throughout: the massive Norman outline, inaugurated by Herbert de Losinga in 1096, at the lower levels, with several patterned pillars the equal of those in the nave of Durham Cathedral, while the vaults of nave and chancel date from the late 15th and early 16th centuries, after the wooden roof burned. These are very much its glory, though the bosses here need a good zoom lens or binoculars to see in detail.

We made straight for the back row of choir stalls shortly before 5.30 evensong began, and the sets are among the finest in England (as I hadn't previously realised). Obviously I didn't snap during the service, but went back to capture something of the carved bench ends on both south and north sides. One day I'll have time to tip up the seats to see all the misericords, but one of the most inventive was showing, so that will have to do for now.

The choir had just begun the new year, and there were quite a few unsurpliced novices among the trebles, looking a bit dazed, as well they might be in their first week. The music was ambitious: Sumsion's Responses; James MacMillan's Short Service, simple with a bit of signature token Celtic twiddle thrown in for the trebles at 'He hath filled the hungry with good things', and an extended 'Amen' in the second Gloria; Britten's vivid treatment of the Hymn to the Virgin, composed while he was a pupil at not-so-far-away Gresham's School. This being The Day of the BVM (as well, incidentally, as the anniversary of the Queen's death and de facto Charles's accession, plus our friend Fr Andrew Hammond's 60th birthday - we celebrated it last night at the Garrick Club), we all processed to the Bauchon Chapel for a blessing and some fine Tudor polyphony in the form of Parsons' Ave Maria. 

Afterwards we were allowed to linger (sometimes the officials usher you out straight away). A cat seemed perfectly at home in the chancel

and this was a good way to see the Norman-Tudor achievement throughout. As Peter Sager writes in his magnificent East Anglia, 'nowhere else in England has the Norman outline been so perfectly maintained, and rarely is there such an harmonious link with the Gothic. On the Norman crossing tower

is a Gothic spire;

above the Norman nave is a Gothic vault - different architectural styles inspired by the same spirit.

'The Late Gothic fans of the vault spread out like palm leaves from the Norman columns. Here too timber was replaced by stone [the timber spire was destroyed by a hurrican in 1362]; the vaults of the nave in the middle of the 15th century, the choir c.1480

the transepts afer 1509'. The building was virtually empty, but awaiting the arrival of Norwich School pupils and their parents for a prizegiving ceremony.

There was pleasant evening time to kill before we went to celebrate Fairless's 70th birthday at Bishop's Dining Room - simple fare, but every aspect of the experience good - so we walked down to the Adam and Eve, 'probably Norwich's oldest pub', which would be perfect and rural if it weren't for the city car park opposite.

And it has to be better in every way than the disastrously named Lollards [sic] Pit over Bishop Bridge (1342, nearly demolished in the 1920s, can you believe), which seems to glory in the burning of heretics. In the 16th and 17th centuries the unfortunates were incinerated in a chalk pit on this side of the Wensum.

We figuratively roasted on our walk the next day, but amen to the cool of each and every church which welcomed us. I'll write it all up when I have more time.

Rosslyn's floral forest

Made a spontaneous decision to go and see Shadwell Opera's production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Rosslyn Chapel on our first night in Scotland. Not quite what I expected, but still the students put their hearts into it: review over on The Arts Desk. Was upbraided for not choosing the mainstream festival option of The Sixteen and distinguished soloists in Purcell at the Usher Hall; yet I thought the humbler enterprise merited our support, especially as nice Elly Brindle from the Cambridge group had written and they seemed so well organised. I didn't regret it.

Above all we had a chance to see this singular and mysterious creation without having to share it with hordes of Dan Brown admirers (apparently the grail trail of The Da Vinci Code leads here, though the author never came and readers might be disappointed not to find the odd detail in situ). The place is shrouded in mystery and legend; yet its origins are quite concrete: no saint's sanctuary but the only executed part - a choir and retro (Lady) chapel - of a Catholic family church built by William Sinclair, First Earl of Caithness, from 1456 (Rome granted the charter ten years earlier).


The detailed carving, which supposedly took over 40 years to complete, is breathtaking and outlandish. I have one big question, though: do we know how much was added in the major Victorian restoration? Would that account for maize appearing on an arch some decades before Columbus reached America? Not to mention the proto-Masonic symbols such as the roped fallen angel (all photographs here courtesy of Wikimedia, as you're not allowed to snap inside, and though I could easily have done so after the show, I honoured that injunction).


At any rate much of the carving is like nothing I've seen from that period, and of course what looked from where we were sitting like an ambulatory, where the orchestra was placed behind the small stage platform, provided the stone forest necessary for the Dream. There are 100 green men, carved in various stages of their life-development including this rather alarming wee chappie:


and a bizarre sequence of 213 patterned cubes projecting from arches in the retro-chapel (you can see some of them at the top of the Apprentice Arch in the picture reproduced below). Their geometric designs have recently - if inconclusively - been interpreted as a musical score. Wiki tells me that they 'resemble geometric patterns seen in the study of cymatics. The patterns are formed by placing powder upon a flat surface and vibrating the surface at different frequencies. By matching these Chladni patterns with musical notes corresponding to the same frequencies, the father-and-son team of Thomas and Stuart Mitchell produced a tune which Stuart calls the Rosslyn Motet.' Must hear that - there's a download available, though at a cost.

The jewel, though, is the so-called Apprentice Column, which 18th century legend has it was created by said apprentice in master's absence, whereupon on his return master struck apprentice dead in horror at his superior work. Si non e vero...


All the grail and secrecy stuff seems to have been a later accumulation, though I'm fascinated by the idea of a sealed vault which is supposed to be as high-ceilinged as the chapel itself. Waiting for our lift to Broughton after the show, J spoke to the night watchman, who comes on the bus every evening from Hawick. He'd heard strange whisperings in his ear, and a stone was thrown one night. Wanted to make our flesh creep or quite sincere? Well, I didn't find it spooky. But it was wondrous strange.