St Michael, Bunwell sits slightly away from its village, separated from it by a ten metre section of the Norwich to Attleborough road. Metal railings keep the street from the graveyard, which stretches widely to north and east. St Michael is part of the friendly and welcoming Pilgrim Group of parishes.
Very much a grand 15th century building, the lack of aisles and a clerestory is compensated for by massive Perpendicular windows in the wide walls. These contain what are among the widest naves and chancels in Norfolk, and the whole piece is concluded in a glorious five light east window of about 1450. If St Michael was suddenly lifted and dropped into the middle of Norwich or Cambridge it would look very much at home.
The sense of space is immediate as you enter through the south porch. Curiously, the benches were obviously designed for an aisled church; there are four sets of ranges, one long and one short on each side of the nave. The font, with its shields set in quatrefoils, is obviously contemporary with the rebuilding of the church. The royal arms are one of the best Queen Anne sets in the county.
If the architecture here generally reflects the mid-15th century, it is the late 19th and early 20th century that have given the interior its character, because Bunwell, particularly in the years preceding the First World War, was in the vanguard of the triumphalist High Church Anglo-Catholic movement. The great east window, unveiled at Easter 1914, reflects something of the mindset of that time, a nation poised casually on the edge of its greatest trauma. Saints in glory, knights in shining armour, flames and incense and the shimmering peacock feathers of Angel wings congregate about the enthroned Christ. For a moment, you get a hint of, and perhaps even sympathy for, the sheer confidence and zeal of a Church that could conspire with other institutions to send teenage boys off to die horribly.
This information was gleaned from the Norfolk Churches web site. Visit the web site for more detail on this and other churches in Norfolk.
If anybody would like to expand to this series please do, I would just ask that you could let Sadexploration know first so he can keep track of the Church numbers and names to avoid duplication
Please ensure when replacing the cache that the magnet is securely attached to metal
*** FTF - gimmealook - 11/3/2012 ***