Church Micro 9193...Blunham St Edmund
This cache has been placed to bring you to the church of St Edmund or St James, Blunham.
The cache is not at the published coordinates, nor is it inside the church grounds.
Blunham church is dedicated jointly to St.Edmund and St.James. The tower is Norman of about 1100, but much of the exterior work seems to be dated to 1583 (as per an inscription on the tower itself) and is an important piece of post-reformation architecture. The church also has two Norman windows and a late Norman west doorway. The chancel is 13th century, as is evidenced by the piscina and sedilia but the chancel windows are about a century later. The rest of the church is later - mostly Perpendicular in style (i.e. dated after about 1350), including the north and south chapels to the chancel; one of these was used by a brotherhood whose priest may have lived over the south porch, where traces of a room can be seen. The chancel roof has a collection of bosses showing angels, heads, an animal, a kneeling priest and griffins. The church also contains an alabaster sculpture of the Virgin Mary from the 14th century, though sadly, the head is missing. The poet John Donne was rector here between 1621 and 1626 and gave the church a chalice in the latter year. The church contains a number of monuments including a standing alabaster monument to Susanna, Countess of Kent who died in 1620. The mausoleum in the graveyard was built in 1805 for the Thornton family of Mogerhanger who have a number of memorials in the chancel.
In the nineteenth century a number of restorations were undertaken including the spire in 1807 by William Revitt and the gallery in 1813. The largest restoration, however, was in 1862 when the gallery was removed, as was the nave ceiling, the roof restored and new pews installed in the chancel and nave; the floor was also tiled and the north porch rebuilt. Stained glass by Ward & Hughes was installed in the east window in 1864. The belfry was repaired and altered in 1903 and a wooden reredos installed in 1904. The tower was restored by Arthur R.G.Fanning in 1910-1912 and a Clayton & Bell stained glass window fitted in the chancel in 1911 in memory of former rector Charles Henry Farmer.
To find the cache you need to go to the porch of th4 church - because I liked it.
Inside the porch, above the entrance there are A gargoyles
The ceiling has B horizontal beams going across the width of the porch (include those at either end even though they are only about half visible)
There are C lights hanging down from these beams
The cache can be found at N52 08. B (B+C) C W000 18. B C (A+A+C)
Checksum of all the digits = 58
Good Luck!
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