Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=8226.
Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.
The medieval church was rebuilt in neo-Norman style by G. E. Street in 1857 incorporating two doorways, the only Romanesque sculpture in the building.
At the time of the Domesday survey of 1086, Roydon (near King’s Lynn), in the Hundred of Freebridge, was held by the Bishop of Bayeux.
The two doorways, with their closely comparable dimensions, were probably prefabricated off-site.
The N doorway (1984) appears to have been completely coated with grey limewash, (now flaking) which makes it difficult to ascertain the extent of any restoration. The capitals and imposts are badly weathered and seem to have lost most of their detail. One of the voussoirs of the outer order, on the left, has been replaced in carstone. A carstone mortar seems to have been used to build up a damaged rod of the chevron ornament on the outer order, on the right-hand side.
On the S doorway, the voussoirs at the top of both arch orders have been replaced. Both capitals are badly worn. Unlike the N doorway, the S doorway has not been limewashed, presumably because it has been protected by its porch. Pevsner states that the ‘N doorway at least has been completely rebuilt’. In fact this is true of the S door also, given that both would have been dismantled before being reassembled in the new 19thc. nave walls.
The radial billet ornament, also known as double-disc, cheese-moulding or scallops, is a localised type, found also at Chedgrave, Heckingham, Hellington, South Lopham, Mundham, Thurlton, Thurton and Thwaite.
H. J. Dukinfield Astley, Memorials of Old Norfolk, London, 1908, 189, 196.
P. Brown, ed., Domesday Book: Norfolk, 2 vols, London and Chichester 1984.
N. Pevsner and B. Wilson, The Buildings of England: Norfolk: North-West and South, Harmondsworth, 1962, revised 1999, 2:620.