Churches

St Peter and St Paul, East Harling

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

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WHEN one considers the history of the English church - the Reformation of the 16th century, the puritan purges of the 17th - it seems little short of a miracle that any stained glass should remain from the Catholic days before Henry VIII.

We might expect a few fragments of medieval glass here and there, and indeed it is exciting enough when we find them. Norfolk is lucky enough to have two grand churches with magnificent east windows still full of mostly original 15 th -century glass.

One, St Peter Mancroft in Norwich city centre, is well known. The other, St Peter and St Paul in East Harling , is just as fine and deserves better fame.

What takes the breath away is not just the sheer amount of surviving glass in the one window - though that is remarkable enough - but the quality of the artwork in each frame.

In all, there are 20 separate scenes. Two are collections of fragments; two are portraits of the 15 th -century gents who paid for the window - successive husbands of lady of the manor Anne Harling.

The rest, which can be read from left to right like a comic book, are biblical scenes. Essentially, they are rosary sequences - the joyful and sorrowful mysteries of the Virgin - but with a couple of additions.

Here are the Annunciation, Visitation and Nativity; Christ's presentation in the temple, and the wedding at Canaa; the betrayal at Gethsemane , the Crucifixion, Pieta, Resurrection and Ascension; the descent of the Holy Spirit to Mary, and the Assumption of the Virgin into heaven.

It is all simply glorious, quite apart from its religious, artistic and historical significance.

There are other things of great interest too in this large and lovely church.

There is a good carved rood screen, and a few nice bench carvings. One is a wild man, clumsily repaired around the groin in a way that makes you wonder what shape he might once have been.

Several splendid monuments glorify various members of the Harling and Lovell families from the 14th to the 17th centuries. Young visitors might enjoy seeking out their basket and unicorn symbols, which are plentiful.

And there is a fragment of medieval wall painting in which can be discerned several faces, including a splendid devil.

The whole church, essentially 15th-century and topped with a distinctive spire, looks very fine in its setting above the street at the western end of the village.