Oxburgh Hall and Parish Church

As promised in my post on Castle Acre I'm taking you back to the end of June and our visit to Norfolk one last time, to Oxburgh Hall.  Once again it was a warm afternoon - goodness where did those warm afternoons go?  I could have done with a few more of them through July and was hoping August might be better but from here it looks worse.  I do like to have a sunny, warm summer to build me up to face autumn and winter but, at the moment, it looks like autumn has arrived early.   

Anyway back to memories of June.

Oxburgh Hall is a wonderful 15th century moated manor house completed in 1482 by the Bedingfeld family.

The manor house is a very photogenic building surrounded as it is by its moat which when we visited was glistening in the sunshine with bright blue damselflies buzzing over the water's surface.

It was very hard to get a photo of that bridge over the moat without anyone walking across it but I managed a very quick shot.

I loved the window above

The inner courtyard, here you will find the cafe, shop and facilities.

In contrast to its medieval exterior the inside of Oxburgh shows how each generation of the Bedingfeld family has changed it.

In a glass panelled, light restricted room are  embroidered wall hangings made by two famous ladies, Mary, Queen of Scots and Bess of Hardwick.  Below are a pair of scissors said to have been used by Mary, Queen of Scots.  It was hard to photograph them and I see I've caught reflections of the room behind and other visitors in the glass.

The King's bedroom

From the 'Tudor' style bedroom you can access the priest's hole - too enclosed a space for me and also the roof where there were wonderful views of the roof tops and chimneys as well as the knot garden.

In 1487 Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York visited the Hall and the two bedrooms reflect this visit although are probably not the rooms they actually used whilst there.

I didn't take many photos inside as all the rooms were very crowded.

There are some lovely gardens, woodland walks and also a family chapel (my photos of the interior were rubbish so I can't show you inside) but I was more interested in the Parish Church which stands close to the Hall and is accessible from its grounds.

You will notice the different spelling of Oxborough the church and road signs are spelt in a more modern way than the Hall which is spelt Oxburgh, which I assume is an older way of spelling the name.   I also notice that the name of the owners is spelt in two ways in various places some using Bedingfeld and some Bedingfield.

The church, dedicated to St John is a fascinating building.  Not least because it lost its spire - twice.

The church originally had a stone spire rebuilt in 1877 after it had been struck by lightening.  The replacement lasted until 28th April 1948 when it it collapsed  across the nave destroying that too. Luckily no one was hurt.   An eye witness said that she was standing in her garden across the way and heard 'cracking noises' and then the tower opened and the spire went down into it.  Someone else working in a field nearby saw the spire disappear from view.

The war memorial is dedicated to five of the Oxburgh (sic) men who died in the first World War.  I bought a fascinating booklet in the church containing all the research done on the five men and their families.

They were brothers George and Charles English, brothers Arthur and Harold Mobbs and Richard Manning.

Next to the church and adjoining the chancel is the Bedingfeld Chapel added to the church in 1500 in memory of Sir Edmund Bedingfeld Knight and Marshal of Calais who died in Calais in 1496.  His wife Margaret is also buried here.

It is amazing that these rare terracotta tombs survived the collapse of the spire and tower.

There are also monuments to later Bedingfelds in the chapel.

The present Parish church is now in what was the chancel of the old church.