Churches

St Germanus, a church of many ages, from its 13th-century tower base, to
its Tudor clerestory (the windows in the nave, above the south aisle)

St Germanus, Wiggenhall St Germans

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

Lust - an embracing couple face hellfire together. Does the moneybag between them suggest medieval love for sale?

Stand on the raised embankment of the Great Ouse at Wiggenhall St German's, in the fenland south of King's Lynn, and you look down on the pretty little church of St Germanus.

If the direst predictions of global warming and rising sea levels come true, this is one of the first places disaster will strike. In fact it seems astonishing that the church has managed to survive here since at least the 13th century.

If flood ever comes, so that the building has to be abandoned, let us pray that at least the breathtaking carvings will be rescued. For they are not just a local delight, but a treasure of national, even international, significance.

East Anglia has a greater store of late-medieval carved bench-ends than anywhere else - and no East Anglian church has a finer collection than St Germans.

On the 15th-century elbow-rests are angels, beasts and religious scenes in profusion - you would not really want to rest your elbow on them.

A man in nightcap and gown peers furtively round a pillar; a monkey plays what appears to be an early type of recorder; a lion wears a crown; four boys, three tonsured like monks (but with their faces sadly hacked off) lift up their voices in song or prayer.

Set into the bench ends themselves are relief carvings of the apostles - Philip with a basket of loaves, Simon with his fish, Andrew with his saltire cross, Jude with a boat, John with a poisoned chalice, Peter with heaven's key, and all with exquisite expressions and individual hairstyles. Here too, damaged more by woodworm than iconoclasts, is a very skinny Christ emerging from the tomb.

Most distinctive and exciting, though, are the carvings depicting the Seven Deadly Sins.

Here an embracing couple descend together into the fiery mouth of Hell, depicted as the open jaws of what looks like a great fish. Together they represent Lust.

Avarice goes the same way, clutching his moneybags. Sullen-faced Gluttony goes down carrying a jug and a bowl. Anger wields a sword. Pride wears finer clothes than the devout of his day thought strictly necessary.

Of the two other sins - Envy and Sloth - one is missing and the other too mutilated to be identifiable. But this is still a rare and magnificent collection well worth making a trip to the fens for.

Pride - such fine clothes come before a fall	Worm-eaten but glorious, Christ rises from the tomb