This church has served the tiny coastal village of Burnham Deepdale since, it is believed, the 11th century. However, although originally thought to be Saxon in origin, the round tower shows a mixture of influences and is now thought likely to have been built after 1066 using the traditional techniques which survived the Norman invasion.
The Round Tower has a triangular headed doorway on the first stage above the tower arch inside the church that shows this mixture of influences. A special feature is that the base of the tower is 6 inches thicker up to a height of 10 feet. The coursing of the flints does not have the appearance of Saxon work. A unique feature of East Anglia, there are 175 round towers still surviving from an original 1000. St Mary's is one of a group of three in the adjacent parishes of Titchwell, Burnham Norton and Burnham Deepdale. They were either part of the church or built as an addition. The tower houses a bell to summon the parishioners to church. The bell in St. Mary's was made in the 14th century by M. Derby of King's Lynn.
It has, in the past, been considered that square towers were too difficult to build with the available materials of flint and conglomerate, but that has proved false and it is more likely that the building of a round tower had a cultural significance.
An outstanding feature in the church is The Norman Font which stands just inside the door on the south side of the nave. In 1797 it was broken while being moved from the north aisle and was taken to Fincham Rectory for repair. It stayed there in the garden of the Rectory for forty years before it was finally restored and placed in its present position. The Norman font is made of Barnack stone from Rutland and is of special interest because twelve of its carvings shows a calendar of work for the farming year.
St Mary underwent three massive restorations, rebuildings really; one at the end of the 18th century, one in the middle of the 19th and one towards the end. It is perhaps surprising that it was robbed of so little of its character, much of St Mary's ambience comes from its most famous possession, one of the greatest medieval art objects in Norfolk, the 'Labours of the Months' font.
It is a large, square stone block, the bowl quite deep, with a wide lip carved with foliage and a lion. The body of the font is carved on three sides, each with four panels, making a total of twelve in all. The blank fourth side of the font shows that it probably stood against a wall originally.
The panels each represent a month of the year, and show an activity necessary or particular to that month. They run clockwise around the three sides, which means that you have to read them from right to left, which is intuitively wrong but easy enough once you get the hang of it.
The sequence starts on the north side, with the first four months of the year, and continues onto the east and then south sides. Each panel, except for the twelfth, features a single figure, who may well be the same person in each panel.
Starting at the right hand end of the north side, then, the panels are as follows.
North side:
I: January. Drinking from a horn.
II: February. Sitting in a chair.
III: March. Digging with a long-handled spade.
IV: April. Pruning a vine.
East side:
V: May. Waving a banner in a Rogationtide festival
VI: June. Weeding out thistles with two implements.
VII: July. Mowing hay with a scythe.
VIII: August. Binding a sheaf of corn.
South side:
IX: September. Corn-threshing.
X: October. Filling a wine barrel.
XI: November. A man killing his pig.
XII: December. Four men sitting at a table, feasting.