St Swithin Wickham

 

 St Swithin Wickham was the next church on my list to visit and was only a few miles away from my last one at Woodland St Mary. Finding the church was another matter because I could not see it behind the foliage by the road it was along. After driving past I realised it was through some large double gates up a drive. My first thoughts were it was  part of Wickham House next door. The other thing I noticed was there is no churchyard so no photo of one this week. History is from Wikipeda

"The Church of England parish church of St Swithin has an Anglo-Saxon tower, built probably in the 11th century. It seems to have been built originally as a free-standing defensive tower. Later a nave and small chancel were added to form a chapel of ease for Wickham, which in the Middle Ages was a hamlet of Welford. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 the Benedictine Abingdon Abbey seems to have held the parish church at Welford and its chapel at Wickham. During the reign of Henry I, between 1100 and 1135, St. Swithin's had to provide 40 pounds (18 kg) of candle-wax per year for the altar at Abingdon Abbey. In 1396 St. Swithin's paid 50 shillings per year to the Abbey in lieu of 100 pounds (45 kg) of candle-wax.

A Jacobean pulpit was installed in Saint Swithin's in 1629 and a north aisle was added in 1827. The church tower has only one bell. It was cast in 1617 and bears the initials "R P". In 1845 the nave, chancel and north aisle were all demolished. Between 1845 and 1849 a new church was built with a nave, chancel and both north and south aisles in a Decorated Gothic style, and a Norman Revival style bell-chamber was added to the top of the tower. All were designed by the Gothic Revival architect Benjamin Ferrey, who included carved "Norfolk angels" supporting the nave roof and eight papier maché elephants' heads appearing to support the aisle roof. The pipe organ built in 1851 was by Henry Bevington. The church is a Grade II* listed building."

 The church was inside an entrance I had first thought a private drive but ended up here in front of the church, next door was was Wickham House. The Saxon tower a feature of the church

The monkey faced water spout and an interesting addition

Looking back from near the porch which was when I discovered there was no churchyard to look around nor would I be walking around the outside of the church

The porch with gates shut, luck they were open and so was the door inside

The door awaited

 

The roof of the porch hits of things to come

 

Here we look down the nave of the church

Took this with my phone, the Norfolk Angels can be seen above

Looking through the chancel arch towards the altar

The altar from by the rails

Wider view of the east end and altar

In closer showing the east window

Looking back to the west end of the church

Wider view with the chancel arch showing

The Jacobean pulpit and eagle lectern 

The nave and south aisle

Altar cross and east window

Closer view of the altar cross showing some of the detail of the east window

These are the other windows of stained glass in the church

This is the west end with the font center

 

Closer view of the font with cover

Over at the back of the south aisle you can see this font which is far older that the one presently used

 

Makes me wonder if it was carved from part of a column 

 

On the south wall beside the old font is the Roll of Honour

 

 This looks back along what is the south aisle

if you wander around the church you can see a lot of heads watching

Angels above more heads below

 

 I spotted the Norfolk Angels

 

In fact you could not miss them

That looked down on the congregation 

This is the north aisle now used as part of the church

 

When I looked up I was surprised to see Elephants looking down

The elephants are not the sort of thing you see looking down on you in any church and turns out were bought at the Paris exhibition in 1862 by the vicar who was going to display them at the rectroy but could find no where, he put them in the church for every one to enjoy. The are made of papier mache 

 

 

There is a lot of graffiti covering the south west wall of the north aisle

No doubt carved by successive choir boys 

 

more thinks of interest to see in the church

I will leave you with this last look at the church

Till Next time I wish you a wonderful weekend