Frettenham – Saint Swithin’s Church

This was the first of the weekend’s churches that Richard and I visited, Saint Swithin’s Church in the North Norfolk village of Frettenham. This is another village that I’ve been near on tens of occasions, but I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of it. This either means that I have a poor memory or the history of Norfolk has so many more pages for me to turn.

The current structure dates primarily to the fourteenth century, with fifteenth and sixteenth additions and then some Victorian rebuildings. There was though a church here before this, likely early Norman although this is an Anglo-Saxon settlement and so there might have been something from then. In 1906, the Bishop of Norwich to dedicate the new pulpit, but there had been a fair amount of other work doing including the reroofing and releading of the south aisle and the plastering of the walls, all under the supervision of the architect HJ Green. There was another fund started shortly afterwards to pay for repairs that were needed on the tower.

The porch, although the church was unfortunately locked.

There was a scratch dial visible on the porch.

The tower, likely from around 1460, which looks like quite an expensive structure from when the village was perhaps a little more prosperous.

An old door from the chancel and I mentioned at the time to Richard that this part of the church looked like it had been hacked about by the Victorians. That was true, since it has transpired that they entirely rebuilt it in 1869, a project undertaken by the Rector in memory of his deceased wife. It was at this time that they discovered some Roman activity on the site, although this wasn’t religious in nature, it was in the form of evidence of a Roman road under the aisle.

Stained glass from the end of the chancel and it looks particularly impressive. It is also recent, having been created by Paul Greener who was a 24 year old working on a project in the 1980s. It was around this time that they discovered that the medieval tiling from around 1400 on the floor was still present.

The war memorial which was unveiled in 1921 to commemorate the lives of the ten villagers who had died, with three more names added after the Second World War. The Imperial War Museum lists them as:

Bloom, P
Buck, C
Buck, T
Cannell, Cecil George
Cousins, A
Foster, W
Garrett, R
Money, L
Muskett, C
Norgate, W
Revett, A
Stoliday, F
Wymer, Sydney George

They’re gone for what they refer to a wildlife graveyard. This is ridiculous though as far as I’m concerned, there are people engaged and interested in the gravestones here who are entirely unable to see anything. There was a military gravestone that I wanted to look at, but that obviously wasn’t happening.

One tomb is visible in the foliage. But they likely had money, so their gravestone is allowed to be seen.

I’m not sure this is going to do much good for the gravestones and this is in an area which has plenty of space for wildlife, so I’m not entirely sure I understand the logic here. This is a relatively remote building, but there was little to engage us here, they’d locked the church, given no history about it and made the churchyard impenetrable. It risks looking like a church for the few (if any), not the many and it’s no great surprise that the Church of England has reported that they have been unable to get enough people together to hold services since Covid, but to be fair to them, this is a church that is a little distant geographically from the village that it once served. It’s also an active benefice, this must be one of their more challenging churches. There seems to be a fair amount of interest inside, so hopefully I’ll get to visit the interior in the future.