The medieval dedication of this church was to the Holy Cross, but the priory was dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, one of Mary's five feast days, and today the church follows the Priory's example and is simply 'St Mary'. The church was the Priory church - or, more accurately, the nave of the Priory church, for being a Benedictine foundation this was the part that the parish used, which is why it has a font, and why it survived when all around the other Priory buildings fell into ruin.
History of the Church
Th first Saxon church of St Mary was likely to have been a small wooden building. At Wymodham the Norman Abbey Church was constructed on the site of the earlier parish church, this was probably the case at Bingham. Work started on the priory in the early 1090s. The large scale and the grandeur of the stone buildings would have amazed the villagers, with few if any of them ever having seen anything like it. Buildings were the greatest prestige symbol of the time. In Norwich work was also only just beginning on the Cathedral. At Bingham work started at the east end of the monastic church of St Mary and progressed westward. The parish church of the holy Cross was the western part of the building. It was not a high priority for the priors as it took over 150 years to complete, and work was finished in 1244. The prior appointed a vicar to take the services and minister to the needs of the parishioners. It is still the parish church and has been in constant use for over 900 years.
The monastic and parish church met at the pulpitum wall, the west wall of the present church. The blocked doorways in the wall on either side of the altar once led into the monks’ church. In 1539, when the priory was closed and the monks part of the church pulled down, the wall was extended up from below the window to the roof, to make the building weather proof. At the same time te rich decoration and images inside the parish church were beginning to be removed and whitewashed.
The Cult of Sir John Schorne
There is evidence of a cult venerating the healing powers of John Schone at Bingham. In the 1508 will of Richard Easingwold of Islip he requested that his body was to be buried “before the holy ymage of master John Schorn” in the church at Bingham. His follows sought help with gout and the ague. The connection with gout probably related to his fame for trapping the devil in a boot. He is shown on rood screens at Gateley, Suffield and Cawston in Norfolk.
Binhams Village Guilds
The medieval village of Binham was wealthy enough to support ten guilds and a guild hall. They were dedicated to St Mary, Corpus Christi, St john the Baptist, St Alban, St Thomas, All Saints, the five joys of the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Trinity. There were also two groups of dancers that paid to keep lights burning to St Mary and on a shrine at Westgate in the village. Each of the guilds would have had their own altar to their saint in the parish church, and would have held processions and feasts on their saint’s day. They were a combination of a charity, bank, trade union, health insurance and social club.
A Pilgrim to the church in 1500 would have entered a richly decorated and colourful world full of images, gilded altars, shrines and wall paintings and stained glass, with the frequent sound of chanting coming from the monks’ side of the church. The baptismal font carved with the seven sacraments and the baptism of Christ was also brightly coloured. Some traces of the paint remain. This type of font is only found in East Anglia.
You need to visit the listed coordinates where you will find an information board. Answer the questions below and substitute the letters for the numbers:
Number of cars in the car park = A
The small black and white image in the bottom left hand side of the board shows the priory in in which century? = BC
In what year was the West Window bricked up = DEFG
The cache can be found at:
N52 55.DAC E000 56.(C-F)G(A-B)
The cache is a small camouflaged tube. You will need to bring your own writing implement.
Whilst here why not take the time to do the Earthcache (GC5ZCRF) based at the Priory (if you have not already done it)
Please play the game and sign the log otherwise I may delete your entry.
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For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by sadexploration please read the Place your own Church Micro page before you contact him at churchmicro.co.uk
See also the Church Micro Statistics and Home pages for further information about the series.
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