Swaffham is the most elegant of Norfolk's smaller towns, and, architecturally at least, its parish church is one of the great East Anglian small town churches, to be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Dereham and Bury St Mary. It sits close to the western edge of its graveyard, a passageway leading through from the west doorway to the market place, a pleasingly organic juxtaposition.
The glory of St Peter and St Paul is the tower, which went up early in the 16th Century on the eve of the Protestant Reformation. Another twenty years or so and it would not have been built.Like that at Cawston, it is made of rugged Barnack stone, and is fabulously decorated with symbols, most notably the large wheels containing the crossed keys of St Peter and the crossed swords of St Paul, which appear around the base course. There are blank shields between them, and the whole base course must surely have once been painted.
The beautiful lead and wood fleche on top of the tower is 19th Century, but replaced a similar earlier structure. There are aisles and clerestories to north and south, as well as a large transept chapel on the south side. The graveyard stretches away to the east, with no shortage of 18th and 19th century gravemarkers of considerable quality in terms of both stone and inscription, a suggestion of quite how wealthy this town has been over the last few hundred years. On the occasion of my visit, the graveyard was a busy place in a different sense, because on a Saturday morning they serve tea and cakes inside the church, and so the west end of the graveyard was also full of the cars of the ladies on duty. It is worth pointing out that parking in Swaffham on a Saturday morning can be difficult, because of the popularity of the market. It is easier to park in the afternoon, but I am afraid that this church is only open in the morning on a Saturday.
You enter the church through the fabulous west doorway, surely one of the grandest entrances to any Norfolk church, and the sheer bulk of the building spreads out before you. This is a church which seems larger inside than out. The space is topped off by a breathtaking late medieval angel roof, which is said to be chestnut (although I have heard of several medieval chestnut roofs in East Anglia which, on proper investigation, turned out to be oak after all).
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