The Dubai of Medieval England!

Norfolk was England's most affluent county in medieval times. I've heard it referred to as the Dubai of the Middle Ages, and that is not much of an exaggeration as it was a place of extraordinary financial boom and growth. It benefited from lots of fertile land and a brisk trade in the export of commodities that were vital to all aspects of the medieval economy, such as salt and wool and cloth. One part of this rural county was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of its wealth. It is a tract of land that is caught between two major river estuaries, the River Neen and the River Great Ouse, both of which flow into the Wash and then into the North Sea. The area is known as the Norfolk Marshland. Much of the land here has been reclaimed from the sea, which is why it is so fertile, and it sits behind what are believed to be Roman sea defences, the Roman bank or wall, which in the Middle Ages kept the sea water at bay, well, most of the time. This whole area could be really treacherous for travellers, and it was during an attempt to cross the marsh and the estuary of the River Neen that King John famously lost his baggage train in 1216. The marshland is close to and has ready access to the port of Lynn, now called Kings Lynn but in the Middle Ages called Bishops Lynn, through which its salt and its wool could be exported to the rest of England or to the continent. Now the wealth of an area in medieval England is easily assessed by looking at its church buildings, and the Norfolk Marshland has an extraordinary array of large and fine churches, some of which are almost of cathedral proportions. These marshland buildings are far greater than modern necessity requires, and in truth they were far greater than the medieval population required too. Medieval people did not construct churches simply to be practical and utilitarian meeting houses. These buildings were constructed to the greater glory of God. The size of a church building was an expression of the economic and social confidence of a community, of their communal pride and their faith, and the wealthier an area or village was in the Middle Ages, the larger, grander and more splendid the church would usually be. The church at West Walton is among the grandest and most atmospheric in this area. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, this church was entirely constructed in the 13th century, with the work beginning in the 1240s, only a few decades after King John had passed this way. The affluence of West Walton was entirely due to salt, to fish and to wool, with sheep grazed on the broad pastures around the village. The name of the place, Walton, Wall Town, refers to the settlement's proximity to the Wall, the Roman bank that kept the sea at bay. The Benedictine community attached to Ely Cathedral had a manor here, as did the Cluniac Priory of Lewes in Sussex. Both monastic houses shared the right to present a rector, a parish priest, to serve West Walton. For some reason, rather than agreeing on a single candidate, this right was divided into what is termed two mediates, with two rectors being appointed simultaneously until the 19th century. I wonder how this job share worked out. The 13th century, when St Mary's was constructed, was a period in which nothing ugly could be made. The prevalent architectural style was what is often referred to as Early English Gothic, which is the initial phase of the medieval Gothic style when pointed arches first replaced the earlier round Romanesque or Norman ones. This was a style that was borrowed from the French initially, but the English masons very quickly made it their own. It is an architectural style, as we will see as we explore this church, that has rather an elegance and a purity to it. One of the unusual features of this church, which you must now have spotted as I fly my drone over it, is that it has a bell tower that stands separate from the rest of the church building, and it really is quite a whopper of a tower too. Why this tower stands separately, rather than being attached to the church, is open to conjecture. It is not the only church in this part of Norfolk to have such an isolated separate tower. It was very likely a practical engineering decision. The marshy ground making a tower on this scale attached to a church building a much more riskier prospect. The fall of such a tower would cause considerable damage to a church's structure, potentially. The openings at the base of the tower suggest that from the very outset it was intended to be freestanding and not to have a church attached to it. It is an extraordinarily confident bit of architecture, probably completed around 1250. At 110 foot tall, it is among the tallest church towers in the county. Now Norfolk has no decent building stone, and this tower is built of stone that was quarried at Barnack, near Peterborough, over 30 miles away, and it would have been brought here on a barge along the River Neen. The tower is of three stages, with each stage decorated with panels of blank arcading, a repeating pattern of arches with many shafts. It is very visually pleasing. Decorative sculpture barely interrupts this repeating architectural minimalism. There is but a single row of the ubiquitous early English dog-tooth decoration set around the mouldings of the enormous bell openings at the top of the tower. In terms of its architectural style and the configuration of its decoration, it has a lot in common with the West Tower of Ely Cathedral. Now we've already seen that the monks of Ely owned a manor here in West Walton, and they presented the rector, and it isn't much of a leap of the imagination to assume that masons and the monks of Ely had a hand in this great work. The whole structure does knock your socks off, and it must have had the same visual impact on the medieval people of Norfolk's Marshland as the towering skyscrapers of Dubai do today. Now the tower provides a sort of gateway to the churchyard, and we approach the main church building from the south. You are faced by a grand south porch, with an entrance that is flanked by tall pillars and pinnacles, once again panelled like the tower and decorated with the same dog-tooth decoration. The inner doorway is heavily moulded with the arches springing from clusters of pillars that are topped with capitals that are decorated with luscious sprays of stylised leaves, which is about as far as masonry decoration really developed in the 13th century. Due to the rather formal character of these leaves, this style of decoration is known as stiff leaf. Now you stoop, or at least I do, to get through the tiny wicked door that is set into the centre of the late medieval timber main door, and then you step into a gloriously light, bright and spacious nave. The space, once again, primarily from the 1240s. There are wide north and south aisles, which were apparently widened in the 15th century, probably to accommodate side altars and processions, and these are divided from the central nave by two identical arcades of the 1240s, each of six bays. The early English work here, as with the tower, is of the very highest quality. The pillars look almost like trees and leaf, as they're topped, once again, by formal stylised foliage, the so-called stiff leaf. Now these arcades are the most conspicuous example of display in this church, for as well as the luscious carved foliage, around each Barnack stone pillar are four shafts, and these are made from Purbeck marble, which comes all the way from Dorset on the south coast of England, and would have been brought to West Walton by sea. And you only see the use of Purbeck marble in the highest status church buildings. The use of this marble is the equivalent, in modern terms, of importing Italian marble to clad the walls and floors of apartment blocks in Dubai. Now, once again, the influence of Ely Cathedral can be seen in these arcades. The stiff leaf capitals and the use of Barnack stone and Purbeck marble in combination is strikingly similar to the construction and design of the arcades at the Presbytery, the east end of Ely Cathedral, which was completed in 1252. If the monks of Ely and their masons didn't have a hand in the work here at West Walton, I'd be very surprised indeed. Above the arches that spring from these elegant pillars, the walls rise further into what is termed a clerestory. It is not pronounced clerestory, as I sometimes hear it said. It does just what it says on the tin. It is a story and a structure which provides clear light to space below. Here at West Walton, the clerestory is designed as a decorative feature in the church. It is adorned with a continuous run of early English arcading, with windows punctuating some panels, and the rest of them left blank. The blank panels, as you can see, are decorated with original 13th century wall paintings, rectangular panels with an array of motifs and devices, and then around them red earth lines to emulate masonry joints on the surface of the plaster. These are a truly lovely survival. And below these wall paintings and the spandrels between the arches of the arcades, a second set of wall paintings were added in the 17th century, roundels with motifs depicting the twelve tribes of Israel. I said the aisles were reconstructed in the 15th century, and in the same period the 13th century roof was replaced with the present stout and splendid structure. It must date to around 1450 or thereabouts. Constructed of oak, it is a tie beam roof with large beams tying the two sides of the construction together. Between these tied beams are false hammer beams in the form of carved angels, each of whom holds an instrument of Christ's passion. Although the lovely aged and silvery oak is a joy for us to behold, we don't see the roof as it would have appeared originally. People in the Middle Ages didn't leave timber bare. It would have been brightly coloured and would therefore have been a glorious foil to the white painted walls of the earlier masonry below. So from the nave and into the chancel, which is in contrast a rather dark space, but it too is a product of the 13th century, blocked arcades in the north and south wall, which are identical to those in the nave, show that the chancel once gave way to chancel aisles which have at some stage been demolished. This is really the only jarring aspect of this lovely building. There must have been a guiding light who directed the construction of this magnificent church in the middle of the 13th century. Now at the east end of the north aisle is a 13th century monument, an effigy, that may give an answer to who that might have been. The effigy is that of a priest, which can be seen by his vestments, he is dressed in the vestments worn for mass, and by the shaven crown of his head, the clerical tonsure. Like the shafts that adorn the nave pillars here at West Walton, the effigy is made of Purbeck marble from Dorset, and it would have been an expensive commission. The priest lies under the remains of a very elaborate canopy, and he evidently had two animals at his feet, which are sadly badly damaged. Without question, the effigy is contemporary with the construction of the church, dating from the 1250s. It is very battered and is believed to have been outside for some time, or being rediscovered in the 1850s, but despite its poor condition, the quality of the carving is evident. This was the tomb of an important man. It is difficult not to conclude that whoever this priest was, he had something to do with the construction of the church, and his monument is known locally as the Founder's Tomb, even though we don't know who he is. By now you will not be surprised to hear that there is an connection for this effigy. It was likely produced by the Masons of Ely Cathedral, and it bears a striking resemblance to the tomb of Bishop William of Kilkenny at Ely. He died in 1254. Taken together, the visual evidence does appear to suggest that both the monks and the Masons of Ely had a large part in the construction of this glorious church at West Walton. Of course, with lands here, the monks were benefiting directly from all the wealth that was flowing into the Dubai of medieval England. This wealth would have paid in part for the construction of the great cathedral in Ely, and it was perhaps only just that they contributed to the construction of a parish church for the tenants who supported them. Thanks for watching. If you enjoy this channel, you're bound to enjoy my magazine, The Antiquary. Published every month, it is a labour of love for me, and in it I explore some of the more obscure aspects of our shared history, all beautifully illustrated in full colour. It chips across the world, is offered in print and digital format, and readers give it five stars on Google. 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