Tharston – St. Mary’s Church

There is something rather peaceful about the church of St. Mary’s at Tharston, seemingly in the remote Norfolk countryside. It’s in reality sandwiched by the London to Norwich rail mainline and the Norwich to Ipswich main road, but even given this all was quiet.

It’s all quite idyllic, although the metropolis of Long Stratton is starting to overspill into the Tharston suburbs, so I wonder how long these fields will remain free from housing.

The tower and church feel well proportioned, coming together like a fine stout and a chicken pie. These aren’t incidentally words that I’ve carefully crafted whilst writing, my mind wandered earlier on when I was at the church. The Harvey Mausoleum is located in the churchyard, but more on that in another post. The churchyard is also raised up from the road, partly due to the number of burials which have taken place here over the centuries, but the site is also deliberately built on a hill (not a very big hill, but a hill nonetheless).

The four stage tower, completed in the early sixteenth century, not long before the Reformation.

The chancel end of the church.

The church’s scratch dial, for telling the time of services.

The chancel, which is primarily from the beginning of the fourteenth century has been lowered and one of the windows filled in. The late Paul Cattermole, who I met a few times, wrote a history of this church and he suggested that this took place in 1723, when finances were not necessarily at their greatest.

The filled in window. Cattermole also notes that damage was done to the church during the English Civil War, and in Tharston’s case this wasn’t down to the officials who often visited churches to smash stained glass and whitewash over colourful imagery. That was because Tharston had been lumbered up with a Mr T Trunch who took over during the English Commonwealth, and he destroyed numerous items in the church himself, which included removing the medieval altar slab.

Putting the date on things does help later generations understand what happened when…..

A trig mark at the base of the church tower.

The doorway, with the church being locked unfortunately. There is though a list of keyholders that visitors can contact to gain access when normality returns to the country. The porch dates to the sixteenth century, although it was renovated and restored in the middle of the nineteenth century, as were numerous others parts of the building.