All Saints, Old Buckenham, Norfolk

I Location

Site Location
Old Buckenham
National Grid Reference
TM 067 914
County
traditional: Norfolk
now: Norfolk
Diocese
medieval: East Anglia
now: Norwich
Dedication
medieval: not confirmed
now (or name of monument): All Saints
Type of building/monument
Parish church

II General Description

All Saints comprises a chancel, nave, N aisle and polygonal W tower. The W tower and chancel date from the 14thc. and were restored in the mid-19thc. Both nave and chancel are thatched. All that survives of the Romanesque building, apart from the reused doorway, is the W wall of the nave. Romanesque sculpture is found on the N doorway.

III Exterior Features

1. Doorways

N doorway.

N doorway.

N doorway.

N doorway.

N doorway, R side, detail.

N doorway, R side, detail.

N doorway, arch.

N doorway, arch.

N doorway, arch, detail.

N doorway, arch, detail.

(i) N aisle, nave

Reset, round-headed, of two orders. Of creamy limestone, shot with streaks of brown.

First order

No bases, plain jambs, hollow-chamfered with a quirk or groove on the upright. The arch is plain.

Second order

Damaged bulbous bases with a torus support nook shafts. Cushion capitals with necking, and with an incised line outlining each shield. The arch has an angle roll, followed on the face by a row of pierced balls, a row of cable moulding, and then a narrow fillet.

Dimensions

h. of opening 2.37m
w. of opening 0.95m

VII History

Buckenham, chief manor of the Hundred of Shropham, belonged to the king. Before the Norman Conquest, it was held by Earl Ralph. At one time a significant settlement fortified by earthworks of early but uncertain date, Old Buckenham was presumably already in decline when William Albini II gave the site and materials of its Norman castle to the community of Augustinian canons he had founded there in 1146, for the construction of their priory. William had other castles nearby, notably at New Buckenham, the new town which he himself planted in the 1140s- 50s.

VIII Comment/Opinions

The Romanesque doorway in the N wall stands in a building which has a 14thc. N nave arcade. The doorway must therefore have been dismantled and reassembled in the new aisle wall during the Gothic refurbishment of the church. The N side of the Gothic church was the most elaborately decorated and was presumably especially important. The decision to reuse the old Romanesque door suggests that it was highly prized for its design or antiquity. At the time of the visit, the doorway had a coat of grey limewash.

IX Bibliography

  • N. Pevsner and B. Wilson, The Buildings of England: Norfolk: North-West and South, Harmondsworth, 1962, revised 1999, 2:577-8.
  • Victoria History of the Counties of England: Norfolk, London, 1906, 2:376.
  • D. Dymond, The Norfolk Landscape, Bury St Edmunds, 1990, 147-8.
  • T. Williamson, The Origins of Norfolk, Manchester, 1993, 180.
  • H. J. Dukinfield Astley, Memorials of Old Norfolk, London, 1908, 198.