St Andrew, Hingham
This is a big church. The vast, blockish tower is a landmark for miles around, and the church itself is more than fifty metres long. In almost any other county, St Andrew would be the biggest. But this is Norfolk, and Hingham church must take its place in the ranks behind a dozen or so that are bigger.
In East Anglia, it is not unusual to find a huge church which was all built in one campaign. Perhaps the most famous are Salle, Lavenham and Southwold. This is true here too, but Hingham is different in that it dates from a century earlier than those other great churches. It is possible to date the building quite precisely. We know that the bulk of it was in place before the death of the Rector Remigius de Hethersett in 1359; but there are elements of the emerging Perpendicular style among the otherwise Decorated features, telling us that it was probably after the Black Death had dispatched more than half the Norfolk population in the late 1340s. We can reasonably assume that most of what we see here, then, dates from a single decade, the 1350s.
The most famous person commemorated at Hingham is not from the village at all. In a reconstructed alcove in the north aisle there is a bust of Abraham Lincoln. The Lincolns left Hingham in the middle of the 17th century, a good 200 years before he became president, but his origins are remembered here.
The cache is in a VERY busy area so stealth will definitely be required.
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