A simple micro to find in a nice area near the church where Snooze and Paul were married in 1979!
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St Margaret, Old Catton, Norwich. Source - The Norfolk Churches Site.
The centre of Norwich sprawls into its suburbs like a ripe fruit which has burst open, but carries with it very little of the character of the heart of the city, which is, after all, one of the most important city centres of its size in Europe as far as historical architecture goes. The medieval walls defined the city until well into the 19th Century, but unlike Ipswich, which expanded rapidly onto largely uninhabited heathland, Norwich expanded to engulf villages which in some cases had grown up fairly close to its walls.
Generally, suburban Norwich is more interesting to the south and west than to the north and east. But there are exceptions, and here to the north of the city centre is one of them. The old village of Catton has been taken into the urban area, and the 19th Century suburb of New Catton has grown up beside it, but the old village is still discernible amongst the modern estates, and the two main village streets still have a rural feel, despite (or perhaps because of) the way that the old village high street now becomes the airport perimeter backroad as it leaves Norwich to the north. At right angles to this, not far from the main road out of Norwich, is the church lane, and St Margaret sits in its pretty graveyard lifting its entirely rural round tower above the suburbs, a saving remnant.
Seen from the south, the huge north transept and aisle are hidden, and in fact St Margaret is an excellent example of the way in which a rustic, ancient building was reinvented in the 19th century to serve the needs of an expanding industrial city. There are some fine 18th Century headstones to the south of the church, and a massively overblown memorial of the following century to the north-east. The short nave and south aisle are hunched attractively against the round tower with its elegant octagonal bell turret. There is a clerestory of just three windows. The south porch has a good sundial, and a modern statue of St Margaret sits in the niche between the parvise windows.
The south side of St Margaret gives the impression that this is a tall, narrow church, and it was therefore slightly disorientating to step into a space with a very different character. The south door leads under the low west gallery, and an enormous north aisle spread out before me, an arcade separating it from the former north transept. It is as if a larger, newer, squarer church had been grafted on to the side of the old one.
The rich, intimate character of St Margaret is partly a result of this wood and the glass, but also of an exceptionally good collection of memorials. As ever when we are within ten miles or so of Norwich, we are reminded that until the 18th Century Norwich was still the second most important city in England; the memorials that survive demonstrate the wealth and significance of some of its citizens. Old Catton's church is similar in this respect to the much larger medieval parish church at Sprowston, a mile or so off. The most important of the memorials here Is Richard Westmacott's 1820 memorial to a former mayor of Norwich, Jeremiah Ives, but more spectacular is that of a century earlier to the Green family, signed by the Norwich mason Robert Page. There are several other good wall tablets of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries.