Norfolk Pilgrim

No chance of going anywhere today! I  am socially isolating in advance of a small op' scheduled for tomorrow! So here I go - pilgrimaging on the internet! Sauntering ( Sainte terre ing )! I had planned to go to Hautbois Church, drawn there by a host of wild daffodils and a church dedicated to Jesus' mum. I was there at a similar time last year  - see Annunciation Pilgrimage .  But I wanted, more than anything, to pick up where I left off last Sunday, with that Roman brick in the wall of my mother church, St. John's; and to reflect on earlier generations of Mother Church. I am imagining the generations like so many Russian dolls one inside the other! We owe the life we live to them!  Norfolk has no Roman or Post Roman church buildings, no great Constantinian brick built churches as in Trier and only the hint of their existence in the place names of villages.  Norfolk has two Eccles , a name derived from the British word eclesia meaning church . Suffolk has one Ro...

Last Sunday's pilgrimage  had left me with a nasty taste in my mouth.  Could the fate of St. Michael's Sco Ruston be the writing on the wall for other rural churches?  For my local church, St. John's in  Coltishall? Today's pilgrimage brought me to St. John's and a particular length of wall. The oldest part of my parish church, dating from 11th Century.  Just to the east of the North Porch there areseveral pieces of  re-used Roman brick and tile built into the fabric.  It is possible, but by no means certain, there was a wooden building on the site that predated this wall, but we can be certain the brick was made before the end of Roman occupation. No later than the 4th Century. Among the haphazard assortment of broken pieces there is small section of complete bricks laid in a herring-bone arrangement. These complete bricks are a standard  15" square by 1 1/2"  Bricks like these were used to build the cathedral church in the Emperor Constatin...

  From Lockdown to Locked Out Today's destination church was St. Michael's Sco Ruston of what's left of it.  Ruined in the 1980's  An ivy clad dangerous ruin.  Thoughts turn to the future of the Cof E in the country. Is this the future for many rural churches?  The answer to the question is clearly yes, unless someone takes responsibility for preserving these buildings that are the treasure chests of  their community. But need that be a problem for the future ministry of our national church? My answer is a definite, No! Give or take a bit of local difficulty with invading Mercians and Vikings the Church in East Anglia used central places for their mission. Often adopting the existing central places. See -  Ritual Landscape in Pagan and Early Christian England    . It was only in the 11th century that there was an explosion of church building and a division of once large parishes. Centering the Church's Mission on central places should work we...