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St Michael, Great Moulton, Norfolk

Location
Great Moulton, Norwich, UK (52°28′7″N, 1°11′27″E)
Great Moulton
ST 335 542
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Norfolk
now Norfolk
  • Jill A Franklin
  • Jill A Franklin

1984

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=148.

Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.

Feature Sets
Description

Great Moulton is a vilage in Norfolk, located about 10 miles SSW of Norwich. The church of St Michael was rebuilt in 1887 but the Romanesque tower arch and imposts survive, as does the coursed flint masonry of the chancel and nave, bearing traces of round-headed windows. The fragment of a decorated colonnette is the only Romanesque sculpture observed at the site. It may have come from a window, as with the similar example in situ at St Mary Magdalene, just outside the centre of Cambridge.

History

Moulton St Michael, in the hundred of Depwade, was a sizeable settlement in Domesday Book in 1086. It had a recorded population of over 72 households at that time, and is listed under five owners: Count Alan of Brittany, Roger Bigot, Mauger, William and Aski the priest, all had holdings there in 1086.

Features

Loose Sculpture

Comments/Opinions

By the time this sculpture site was recorded for CRSBI in 1984, this colonnette fragment was inside the church in the SE corner of the chancel, although all editions of Pevsner state that it was then to be found outside the S porch (Norfolk 1962/1977: p 261; Norfolk 2, 2000: p 369).

This location is sometimes also given as Moulton St Michael in the literature.

A similar colonnette fragment with a mid-shaft roundel was recorded (in 1984) in the region at Great Dunham, stored inside St Andrew's Church. A further five were standing in the lawn outside the Old Rectory at that time. An example of this type of colonnette can be seen in situ in Cambridge on the the exterior of the chancel chapel of St Mary Magdalene where it occurs as a nook shaft on the S window.

[A footnote: this was the last site to be made available online written by the late Jill Franklin, long-term CRSBI fieldworker and trustee].

Bibliography

N. Pevsner and B. Wilson, The Buildings of England, Norfolk: North-West and South (Harmondsworth, 1962), 2nd edn (1999, rev. 2000), 2: 368-9.