(Pilgrimage Diary 2/3) What would you be, you wide East Anglian sky?

Thus says poet laureate John Betjeman in his iconic 1974 documentary A Passion for Churches: “What would you be, you wide East Anglian sky, without church towers to recognise you by?” On the second and longest stretch of our pilgrimage, from the farmer’s backyard near Sedge Fen to the Catholic Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham at the Slipper Chapel, one mile off Walsingham and the Anglican Shrine, those East Anglian churches formed the links in the chain of our route. Every few miles, St James, Peter, Paul or Mary invited us into their empty home, took the heavy backpacks off our backs and embraced us in a piety of ages past. 

In those churches, medieval saints glance at stern Elizabethan ten commandment boards, lists of vicars adorn whitewashed walls, and humans compete with other creatures in an eternal race to the top of medieval pew ends. The smell is damp but homely, the organ small but comely, the floor ancient and dusty. In some, it was as if Cromwell had been just yesterday, leaving a communion table of the simplest kind. In others, Comper had created a golden-pink Victorian heavenly Jerusalem to rival the shrines of Rome and the Levant. And in others still, the parishioners had cherished the old ways a bit more than others, leaving behind valuable medieval rood screens, inscribed stone altars, and elaborate pulpits and font covers. 

The town we were heading to on our next day walking, Hockwold-cum-Wilton, was to have a unique church of the latter kind. But the way from Sedge Fen to Hockwold was no less exciting, albeit in a rather less positive way. That morning the heat wave had hit us, and temperatures soared into the 30s Celsius even before midday. Undeterred, we said our morning prayers and criss-crossed through a few fields. Having studied the route for the day beforehand, I knew that most of the second half of our journey was to be through the Lakenheath Fen Natural Reserve – a stretch of wild washland, home to a great variety of birds and rodents. This was where we could use our water filter and stock up on water from the river, or, at least, that’s what I thought. 

The approach to the reserve consisted of long, narrow grass paths flanked by dense shrubs and the occasional bramble sporting delicious ripening blackberries. Meanwhile, our water supplies were running lower and lower and our anticipation for meeting the river in the reserve was higher and higher. However, enter the reserve, and the path was about ten metres away from the river. Not ten metres of plain, level grass, but ten metres of wetland and reed beds. Have you ever wanted something so badly, something that seemed so close, but in the end was out of your reach? That’s what it felt like to walk a 2.5 mile path just off an inaccessible river, parched. The sight of three other people about half way stirred almost messianic emotions – they could know where we could access water! And so they did – the visitor centre was about 1.5 miles away. And it sold lemonade and ice creams. The knowledge of imminent lemonade and ice cream uncovered stores of energy we didn’t know we had, and we steadily marched on. The natural beauty of the reserve was truly outstanding, but nothing could beat the relief of consuming five bottles of lemonade upon reaching the visitor centre.

 

Lakenheath Fen Nature Reserve

At the centre we said our prayers and Zeb called the vicar of Hockwold, requesting permission to pitch our tent on the grounds of its non-redundant church. She was all too pleased to accommodate, and even would come out to meet us. It was a short walk to Hockwold, which greeted us with its redundant church – St Peter’s. From the outside, sitting in a walled, overgrown churchyard, the late-medieval building looked stunning. The offset tower, combined with the nave, south aisle, and porch, formed a satisfyingly layered composition. Peeking through the windows one could see traces of medieval floral patterns on the walls, and the excellent Norfolk Churches website reports the presence of early 16th-century roof angels. Liturgies had become a rare occasion at St Peter’s, and a hole in its wall, near the quire, had become the home of a bees’ nest: “How lovely is Your dwelling place…Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young – a place near Your altar, Lord Almighty.” The masterfully crafted honeycomb covering the nest also echoed medieval Eucharistic symbolism – as honey is the creation of many bees, so is the Church the product of its many members. 

St Peter's, Hockwold-cum-Wilton

The bees' nest visible near the top of the buttress

The vicar met us at the other Hockwold church, St James’s. She was kind enough to unlock it for us and show us the well preserved medieval rood screen, sporting green men and God knows what else captured the medieval imagination, alongside some equally well preserved medieval pews with the characteristic figures at their ends. The quire walls featured a beautifully carved piscina and an Easter Sepulchre – used in the old Sarum Rite on Good Friday. The Sarum Rite, the ancient rite of the English Church, was something the vicar was eagerly restoring elements of, with which Zeb ‘vibed’ very strongly and subsequently beset her with questions. After a hearty meal at the local pub and a few scowls in my direction as I spoke Dutch on the phone to my grandparents (here Brexit really meant Brexit), we had a restful nights’ sleep in the shadow of the church tower. 

St James's, Hockwold-cum-Wilton

Bricked up hagioscope, which allowed lepers to observe the liturgy in the quire from the outside

The next morning we woke up with a clear sky above our heads – the weather was looking promising. Once we set off, however, we realised that the air was very humid, and we were sweating profusely five minutes into the journey. Not great, but we had no choice but to walk on, but the line between penance and hell had become rather blurred indeed. Our first waypoint was Weeting, the first town in Norfolk we passed and the convergence point for two ancient pilgrim ways to Walsingham – from Ely and Bury St Edmunds. The heyday of Norfolk’s wealth was the late Middle Ages, when it thrived on wool production. Nowadays, however, Norfolk is not particularly wealthy and, with all due respect, it shows in Weeting – a suburban town with lots of bungalow-style houses and a Budgens for a shop. It does sport a quaint church dedicated to St Mary, with a round tower, and very nearby the substantial flint remains of Weeting Castle, a twelfth-century moated manor house. 

One could tell the air was humid by the glow of the asphalt

The Weeting welcome sign commemorates the town's history of pilgrimage

St Mary's, Weeting

Weeting Castle

Upon exiting Weeting the first sight to greet us was a pig farm – lots of small grey sheds placed in rows in a yellow field. It reminded Zeb of Auschwitz, and we reminisced about the plight of animals in modern society, who endure treatments we would not incur on our own, human species. And to remember that these pigs were probably living in some of the best farming conditions in the world, a world apart from the intensive farms! Anyway, after this slight dip we walked into the glorious Thetford Forest, manmade after the First World War, which proved to be one of the most beautiful regions we passed through on our pilgrimage. Massive, tall pine trees lined the grass or gravel paths, occasionally interrupted by fields and rare medieval warren lodges. Right bang in the middle of the forest we passed a medieval wayside cross, now just a stump, which at the time would have stood on a hill in otherwise flat heaths, guiding medieval pilgrims to Walsingham and no doubt the site of many a medieval prayer – a tradition we continued by saying the rosary at its foot. Having rested, we continued our way through the forest to Mundford, where we treated ourselves to a night’s stay at the local hotel – never had I appreciated a shower and a bed more!  

Thetford Forest

Medieval wayside cross in Thetford Forest

The cross is surrounded by dense vegetation

The Crown Hotel in Mundford, where we stayed the night

10am the next day, Friday August 7th – 30 degrees Celsius. Today was to be the hottest day of our pilgrimage. It would appear that Norfolk people love small talk about the weather, because for a good three days before this one, people would ask how we would cope on Friday, and we would laugh the question off while being innerly mortified at the prospect. The Friday was going to be the day we would definitely find ourselves on the hell side of the penance-hell divide. But Friday came, and it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. Yes, it was hot, 34 degrees hot, but it was a dry heat. I have spent a good few summers of my childhood with my grandparents in southern Ukraine – dry heat was weather I was relatively used to. Zeb, however, suffered. But he was ok. Just about. The day’s route was a picturesque one, crossing the fresh water river Wissey several times, past the delightful little churches at Ickburgh and Bodney, and through another bit of Thetford Forest. Before we left for the journey, we went past Mundford’s St Leonard’s church, which we knew had a sumptuous Comper interior. Sadly, the church was locked, and there was no vicar. 

St Leonard's, Mundford

St Leonard's substantial (yet empty!) vicarage

The River Wissey

Victorian almshouses in Ickburgh

St Peter's, Ickburgh

While walking through Thetford Forest, we brushed past the Stanford military Training Area. Threatening rows of barbed wire separated the forest into seemingly identical sides, but on the right hand side one had the added risk of being caught in crossfire. When the Training Area was being established during the Second World War, four villages were evacuated, which subsequently decayed or were demolished. However, the Ministry of Defence took the effort, and keeps taking the effort to preserve the four village churches, one of which, at West Tofts, was masterfully remodelled by Pugin at the time. 

Bodney, marking the half-way point of the day’s route, had exactly one house and one church. It also had a crossing of the River Wissey, so we stopped and used our water filter to fill up our bottles with the crispest, cleanest, and freshest cold water. The church was very cute indeed, and since it was unlocked, we spent some time exploring the simple interior. Unlike in many other churches, at Bodney you could climb up the steep winding steps to the rood screen, which here no longer existed, but did give Zeb a nice photo-op. Being an organist in my free time, I could obviously not explore a church without playing its organ – as you played the low 16’ pipes you could almost hear the dust being forced out of the pipe. Both the north and south wall featured statues of the Virgin, echoing the dedication of the church. The dedication, as well as its simple shape, reminded me of the Slipper Chapel one mile off Walsingham. St Mary’s Bodney could very well have been a wayside chapel for medieval pilgrims to the shrine of Our Lady. 

The second half of the day’s journey lay through what seemed to be MoD territory, even if the map indicated it was not. We took the gamble, however, and walked through it, past grim practice ruins hidden between the trees. In MoD territory you can reasonably expect to be attacked by practising soldiers, but not by cows – but we managed to get attacked by a herd of cows. As we were walking through a field, the herd very threateningly and quickly displaced itself in front of us, gazing at us with the stare of an unamused crowd at a bad comedy act. In a moment of panic we ran back, but the cows didn’t follow us. Exiting the field wasn’t an option, so we took the strategic decision to walk around the herd in the widest arch the field would allow. This was successful and we were spared the wrath of the MoD cows. After a few more fields we arrived at Great Cressingham, which sports a cute pub on whose grounds we received permission to pitch our tent. Of course, we thought, we had to repay their kindness, and made the hard decision to order a G&T each as the sun was setting – a successful day. 

The threatening MoD cows

The pub at Great Cressingham

The pub had a lovely interior that would go well with Scotch

The next day, after walking a significant distance along the Peddars Way, a route across Norfolk which follows a Roman road, and passing the gorgeous churches at South Pickenham and Houghton-on-the-Hill, we reached Swaffham, where we were hospitably received by Zeb’s mom, who lives a small distance away. Swaffham marks the last stretch of the pilgrim route, so the next morning we were excited to crack on and make it to Walsingham in the coming three days. But first things first, since it was a Sunday, we went to a service at Swaffham’s stunning St Peter and St Paul. The service was as I expected a country Common Worship service to be – quite simple and broad-church, not quite the north London opulence I was used to. Inadvertently I found myself inspecting the (rather exquisite) medieval hammer beam roof of the church, which features 192 angels (!), and the lovely carved figures of the ‘Pedlar of Swaffham’ on the pew ends. The obligatory post-church lunch and tea followed, and at about mid-day we set of on our next ten-mile stretch. 

St Michael's, Great Cressingham, with a stunning perpendicular east window

All Saints, South Pickenham

Medieval frescoes at All Saints

All Saints is sadly neglected and struggles with bat infestation - hence the covers

The organ at All Saints was originally designed by Pugin for the church at West Tofts, and relocated to South Pickenham once West Tofts became part of the Stanford military Training Area

It sports beautiful victorian panels depicting the Nativity and Adoration

St Mary's, Houghton-on-the-Hill

St Mary's has been lovingly restored by enthusiasts, who discovered its highly unique late-Saxon frescoes

An artist's impression of the frescoes' original appearance

Colourful houses in North Pickenham

Another wayside cross, on the section of the Peddars Way leading to Swaffam

St Peter and St Paul, Swaffham

The Pedlar of Swaffham

Some fine Swaffham real estate

However, we didn’t get as far. The vicar of the village we were supposed to pitch at for the night was not picking up the phone. About halfway the day’s journey, at Castle Acre, we were told that if we were to find a pitching spot for the night, we should go knock on the vicar’s door in South Acre, the village just preceding Castle Acre. All the signs that this could fail were there – if the South Acre vicar had no space to pitch a tent, we were doomed to another frantic search for a random suitable camping spot. We caught the vicar just saying his monthly evensong at the South Acre church (speaking of luck), and, evidently being impressed by our intuitive knowledge of the evensong responses, offered us to pitch our tent in the yard of his house. He also invited us for some wine in the garden, which flowed out into dinner (deliciously prepared by his partner), which flowed out into more wine, which led to good conversation, subsequently meriting more wine and some after-dinner spirits. The cherry on top was being invited to sleep over in the guest room of the house – fully equipped with comfortable shower and a stylish 19th century oak furniture. It was one of the most fun and probably least pious parts of our pilgrimage, but then who knows what Jesus did after he had changed the water into wine in the late hours of the wedding at Cana? 

The approach to South Acre and Castle Acre

St George's, South Acre

St George's medieval pews, victorian gas lamps and idiosyncratic font cover

Zeb admiring one of the victorian pew ends

Marvellous seventeenth-century tomb in the north aisle at St George's

The South Acre vicar's sumptuous house

The garden of said house

Recharged after a comfortable sleep, good food and a shower, albeit with a slight hangover, we made our way onto the next stretch of our journey. But first we explored what Castle Acre had to offer. On its outskirts is the magnificent Castle Acre Priory – a former Cluniac Priory (a Benedictine monastery under the direct authority of the abbot of Cluny, the great Benedictine house in eastern France) founded in 1089. Like all other monastic houses in England it fell victim to the political whims of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, and was dissolved in 1537, but its ruins are in an unusually good way, including a largely complete church west front and prior’s lodgings. As even in rural Norfolk a booking system had been introduced to keep visitor numbers down, we sadly didn’t manage to explore the priory up close. The next item on the list of things to see in Castle Acre was St James’s Church, which would be another typical Norfolk flint church (even if of the wealthy variety) were it not for the medieval communion rail and pulpit surviving from the rood screen, and the exquisite medieval cascading font cover. Considering how fresh the paint looked on the pulpit and communion rail panels, how vibrant its colours were, regardless of the rather obvious effort of victorian restorers, the pious saints, masters and cardinals probably spent a good deal of time under another layer of paint, applied to safeguard St James’s congregation from papist excesses and the uncouth idea that religion could be beautiful. Next on the Castle Acre itinerary was Castle Acre Castle, a motte-and-bailey structure built by William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, in the 1070s, of which also a picturesque ruin remains. 

 

Farm buildings between South Acre and Castle Acre

Castle Acre Priory, and St James's tower on the horizon

Ruins of what was presumably a priory gatehouse

Stunning houses surround St James's

St James's, Castle Acre

Castle Acre High Street

Castle Acre Bailey Gate

Castle Acre Castle

The castle mound affords great views over the countryside

Castle Acre being the medieval heritage hotspot it is, by the time we left it was already late afternoon. At a steady pace we walked through the rolling fields, past a mill, past lonesome and romantic farmhouses, taking a break at East Lexham’s St Andrew's with its bulky Saxon tower, to St Peter’s at Weasenham, where we pitched our tent for the night. There was no vicar to get hold of, but thankfully the church was left open for visitors, so we had access to water! 

St Andrew's, East Lexham

St Peter's, Weasenham

On the next day humidity levels were high once again, and we broke out into sweat barely half an hour into the journey. It was remarkably easy to reach the vicar of our next destination, and he kindly offered for us to sleep inside (!) one of his churches along our route. Our phone call evidently excited him, because he also resolved to meet us along our way at another church in his benefice. As we made our way to that church, we passed by St Andrew’s, Wellingham, which, like St James’s, Castle Acre, hides within its ordinary Norfolk exterior some extraordinary survivals of medieval painting on the remains of its rood screen. These seemed to have been less restored by victorian enthusiasts, and what stands out is that many of the figures have had their eyes scraped away by the reformers. Some speculation brings me to hypotheses that eyes or vision could have been important in sixteenth century notions of personhood or sainthood, that eyes or vision could have been important in the communication between saints (and even Christ) and mortals, or that eyes could have been an important focal point in devotional images and that by scraping them away the image’s devotional function would have been stymied. I’m sure there is scholarship about this. 

St Andrew's, Wellingham

The vicar met us at St Martin’s, South Raynham. He showed us inside and with great pride told us how he had just secured considerable funding and was about to restore the building – including procuring lectern hangings made of scrap fabric from Watts and Co. We were invited into the vicarage for tea and ice cream, and were offered to be driven to St Mary’s, East Rudham, where we could stay the night. I agreed quicker than I would have liked – we had come so far by foot, and now I was agreeing to being driven a part of the route. In my defence, however, the stuffiness of the day made walking with huge backpacks an unimaginable chore, but I couldn’t help feeling nagged by a sense that I was giving up. The vicar called me scrupulous, led us to the car, and I reflected that pilgrimage is of course not just about walking. It is about being open to the various Godly graces the experience brings, in whatever form they come. I had never slept over in a church before, so this was an exciting first – there definitely is something special about waking up to the morning sun flooding through the medieval window tracery. The vicar very kindly agreed to come back in the morning to say Mass for us, before we would take on the last day’s walking to Walsingham. And so, at the main altar, at 8am, Latin Mass was said between four people as the light streamed in through the quire window and lit up the statue of Our Lady – the destination of our journey and yet ever present along the way. After a hearty pub breakfast we set off, passing through more villages large and small, crossing the river Wensum, clearing up the dirty floor at the eclectic church of St Nicholas at Shereford, meeting the sheep guarding the church at East Barsham, walking through the rolling hills around Houghton St Giles, and setting up camp in a field right next to the Slipper Chapel, the Catholic Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. After nine days of walking we had finally reached the first of the two shrines of Our Lady, and the Holy Mile, the last mile into Walsingham, awaited us on the next day. 

St Mary's, East Rudham

Lovely cottage adjacent to the church

Medieval depiction of the Trinity on the boss of the vault in the church porch

Preparing for Mass

St Nicholas', Shereford - a mix of Saxon, Norman, early Gothic and perpendicular Gothic

St Nicholas' Norman doorway

Shereford's ancient copy of the Book of Common Prayer

Passing through Sculthorpe

Interesting placement of the priest's door at All Saints, Sculthorpe

Sculthorpe's Dutch-inspired real estate

Rolling hills, a sign that one is nearing Houghton St Giles and the Slipper Chapel

East Barsham's church wardens

East Barsham Manor, from where Henry VIII would make his pilgrimages to Walsingham

Our arrival at the Slipper Chapel, after nine days of walking, marks the end of the second instalment of this Pilgrimage Diary. In the first instalment I had written that the aims with which we undertook the pilgrimage were a deepening of faith, prayer for the discernment of God's will in our lives, and prayer for those who gave us intentions and for those we met along the way. To be very honest, after a few days walking during a heatwave, deepening one's faith and discerning God's will becomes rather difficult. Yes, we did keep Morning and Evening Prayer, sometimes even Compline, but the mind was quickly preoccupied with questions along the lines of 'when and where can we take a break?', 'is there a pub in the next village?', 'does this churchyard have a tap with running water?', 'where will we sleep tonight and will we get there before nightfall?'. Among those constant thoughts praying for the intentions of others was a lot easier. Every vicar or laity who helped or sheltered us, every person whom we met along the way and shared a part of their story with us (and two guys on pilgrimage do tend to elicit some life stories), would find their way into the intercessions of our daily Morning and Evening Prayer. Those people, their joys and their yokes, we eventually took with us into the Catholic and Anglican shrines of Our Lady, which take their provenance in the great medieval shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, established in 1061 by Richeldis de Faverches, so that "all who come here will find help in their need." Perhaps the purpose of our pilgrimage lay exactly with the people we met and the stories they shared - we brought them before God in our prayers, said into that wide East Anglian sky, and their acquaintance helped us deepen our faith and discern God's will for our lives.