Churches

The round tower at Burnham Norton is believed to date from around 1090

St Margaret, Burnham Norton

First appeared in Let's Talk! Norfolk, November 2005

The painted pulpit was already more than 300 years old when Horatio Nelson was born in nearby Burnham Thorpe

St Gregory writing the early Catholic liturgy. His papal tiara has been scratched away by reformers, but otherwise the painting is excellent condition

A COUPLE of pubs bear his name, and one of them is in a small way almost a museum to England's greatest naval hero; but overall the villages of Burnham near the north Norfolk coast celebrate their most famous son, Horatio Nelson, in a very quiet, low-key way.

In this bicentenary year of Nelson's death, and his greatest victory, at Trafalgar, there has been a steady stream of visitors to the church at Burnham Thorpe, where Edmund Nelson was rector and his son Horatio was born.

It is a pleasant enough church, but thoroughly unremarkable, apart from a small display of Nelson memorabilia and a bust of the great admiral (erected a century after Trafalgar).

But there are wonderful things to be found in Burnham, in two of the other churches where Edmund Nelson, and later Horatio's brothers Suckling and William, also presided.

Burnham Overy is worth visiting, if only because the building itself is so extraordinary. Its nave and chancel are like unmatched parts of a semi-detached, almost totally separated by the strange stub of the central tower.

In the nave is a restored wall-painting of St Christopher and a nice 18 th -century Decalogue board (the Ten Commandments). In the sloping churchyard are some splendidly gruesome gravestones from the same century.

There are more fine stones dating from Admiral Nelson's lifetime at Burnham Norton. They stand by a typically Norfolk round-towered church on a rise with a view of the windmill at Burnham Overy Staithe and the rolling waves of Holkham Bay beyond.

It is inside this loveliest of the Burnham churches, though, that you will encounter the real "wow" factor. For between the lectern and the nicely carved 15 th -century roodscreen is one of the finest and rarest medieval survivals in the country.

Medieval oyster thief: perhaps John Goldalle meant to atone for his deeds by paying for the Burnham Norton pulpit

The great period of preaching in churches is generally reckoned to have come after the Reformation and, indeed, most pulpits date from the 17th century or later. One type of pulpit popular in Jacobean times was the wooden "wineglass" variety, perched on a delicate stem.

Here at Burnham Norton is a perfect example of the wineglass form, made in 1450 - more than 150 years before the Jacobean period.

It has six sides, four of them painted most beautifully with images of the Four Latin Doctors - saints Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome, who were very popular subjects in Norfolk at that time. The other two sides bear portraits of a local couple, John and Katharine Goldalle, the pulpit's donors.

Obviously, they wanted their fellow churchgoers to pay attention to the teachings of the four great theologians - and also to say a prayer or two for themselves.

John Goldalle might have felt he needed those prayers. Four years before his gift of the pulpit he was prosecuted for stealing oysters from the nearby salt marshes.