There are two churches in the same churchyard in Great Melton, the other is the now ruined St. Mary’s, visible in the above photo.

And this is All Saints’ church, which is still in use and there may have been a religious building here since the eighth century, although the earliest part of the current church is from the eleventh century. The churches were both independent until the eighteenth century, but then it was decided to merge the two and just use St. Mary’s. A decision was later made that St. Mary’s was too small, so they decided to fix up the by now roofless and slightly fallen down All Saints’ Church. And to do that, they knocked all of St. Mary’s down other than the tower, then reused much of the building material at All Saints’.

This is the quite understated entrance to the joint churchyard.

The church originally had a round tower, but was replaced by this in the mid-fifteenth century. There’s some good news as well about the church’s future, as it has now been removed from the Heritage at Risk Register as numerous organisations came to together to fund some much-needed repairs.

I’m not quite sure what they’re doing here, the metal mars the beauty a little, but it’s still a graceful church and that structure looks temporary. The nave is the oldest part of the church, dating to the eleventh century, whilst the chancel is later, dating to the fifteenth century.

That looks like Roman brick to me on this now closed up doorway. Incidentally, this church had no roof for over 170 years until the nineteenth century repairs, but the walls still remained standing, a testament to the early builders.

And a niche, although this looks out of place and has perhaps been moved or maybe was a window at one point.

We were fortunate enough to be able to look inside the church as well, more on that in another post.

St. Mary’s and All Saints’ share a churchyard in the village of Great Melton, similar to the situation in South Walsham.

This is where the nave of St. Mary’s once stood (I’m standing in front of the tower to take the photo), with All Saints’ visible on the left. The churches were both independent until the eighteenth century, but then it was decided to merge the two and just use St. Mary’s. A decision was later made that St. Mary’s was too small, so they decided to fix up the by now roofless and slightly fallen down All Saints’ Church.

The church remained in use until 1883, it’s a shame in my view that the Victorians decided to take down most of the building, although I understand that some of the stone was used in the rebuild of All Saints’. It was reported in the Thetford & Watton Times in 1883 that the locals did want to keep both, but given the lack of finances they wanted to preserve what they considered to be the more historic of the two churches, and that was All Saints which had Saxon origins.

A trig mark at the base of the tower.

Looking up at the tower, which is in pretty good shape. Well, bar the big holes in it. I understand that English Heritage have provided some money to secure it, which I think relates to the brickwork at the top as opposed to the bit of wood propping the walls up at the front of the photo.

Rather beautiful….

The tithe map, with St. Mary’s being the lower of the two churches.

The enclosures map.