St Mary
East Walton, Norfolk
Small rural village church with a great deal of history and interesting archaeological features including a round tower which is of preConquest date (1066).
The parish church, dating back to the Saxon/Norman era, is situated at the western end of the village. It is thought that the population centre moved eastwards over the intervening years to take advantage of drier ground. Pentney village had a church at least from before the Domesday book of 1086. The original church was probably made of timber with a thatched roof and was replaced by a stone building in the 12th century.
This church was a very simple building, much shorter than seen now, and probably with an apse at the eastern end.
Then in successive improvements the building was extended eastwards to create a chancel; the tower was added as a free-standing structure and finally the tower was linked to the original to form an area now used as a vestry.
There are several interesting features including three Consecration Crosses, the piscina, the Victorian east-end stained-glass window, original Norman windows and above all the elaborate interlaced Norman arcading to the nave walls of the original stone church. This is a sophisticated form of masonry requiring very skilled masons and not normally to be found in an ordinary parish church. It is probable that this was the work of masons employed at the nearby Cluniac Priory of Castle Acre and created at the expense of the nearby Augustinian Abbey at Pentney. It is possible that the parish church served the community of Canons whilst the monastic buildings and a priory church were under construction.
In 1978, while digging a grave, evidence of the Anglo-Saxon population was brought to light by the discovery of a hoard of silver brooches, about 5cm in diameter, found on the north edge of the churchyard, presumably hidden at a time of strife but never recovered. They are decorated with a complex interlace of the 9th century type. Some of the money awarded to the grave digger was donated to the church and this money was used in the main to re-slate the north face of the Victorian combined chancel/nave roof. Currently the brooches are displayed in the British Museum.