St Peter Hungate, Norwich, Norfolk
St Peter Hungate sits at the southern end of the historic Elmhill which curves away forth, and the churchyard looks over it.
As before, I had noticed St Peter many times, and when visiting the city for the beer festival, I would hope to find it open. I don't think I tried hard enough, but it was made for a day like this.
I had walked past it twice already that day, but was not going to be open before time, a sandwich board was outside tempting the passerby in.
It is a redundant church, and has been thus since the first world war. Simon Knott tells it used to be a unique museum, which has sadly now closed, but now is open three days a week as a museum to the Norwich stained glass industry.
A young lady sat on watch as visitors milled around, admonishing anyone who said they remembered this being a church or even worshiping here, they would have to have been over 100 years old that to make that claim.
---------------------------------------------
At the time of the 16th Century protestant Reformation, Norwich had 36 parish churches, and many of these buildings survive today. A handful are still in use for the congregational worship of the Church of England, for which they were never designed of course. Others have found uses as concert venues, artist workshops, day centres and offices. One houses the Norwich Probation Servce, another is even a Pregnancy Advisory Centre. Some stand empty, but far more are in use now than were ten years ago. It is the largest collection of urban medieval buildings in any one city north of the Alps.
Although St Peter Hungate is right in the heart of the urban area, its setting is idyllic; 16th and 17th century cottages flank the north and east sides, and then beautiful Elm Hill drops away below it. To the west is the magnificent chancel window of the Blackfriars church, while to the south are grand 19th century commercial buildings, full of Victorian confidence. Hungate itself no longer exists, but was formerly 'houndsgate', the street of dogs. In this conservation area the roads are cobbled, and it is an oasis of charm in the middle of East Anglia's biggest city. St Peter is that rare beast in Norwich: a cruciform church. It looks older than it actually is; the primitive capped tower is actually a tall 15th century one that was truncated in 1906 for safety reasons. In fact, the whole church was completely rebuilt during the middle thirty years of the 15th century. The chancel collapsed after the Reformation, and was rebuilt by the Laudians in the early 17th century. It is a blessing that they reused the 15th century windows, and in fact most of the window tracery in the church is still original.
In the 19th century, St Peter Hungate was one of the highest of Norwich's many Anglo-catholic churches; it was the first to use vestments, the first to use incense, the first to use candles on the altar. However, as with St Simon and St Jude at the other end of Elm Hill, St Peter has long been redundant, last being used as a church before the First World War. When, in the 1930s, the Norwich Society went on their pioneering crusade to save this area of the city, there was a renewal of interest in finding appropriate uses for the old churches, and in 1936 St Peter Hungate became a museum of church furnishings. The fixtures and fittings from other redundant churches were brought here for display, and the collection was augmented by items from the Norwich and Norfolk museums, as well as by other churches wanting to find a safe home for their treasures.
It was a superb museum, the only one of its kind in England. From a church explorer's point of view, it was a priceless resource; you could read about things, and then go and see them in real life, all in one place: rood screens, bench ends, reredoses, corbels, pyxes and pyx cloths, all at first hand. St Peter Hungate Museum of Church Art lasted until the late 1990s, when a reorganisation of the museum service in Norwich killed it off. All the exhibits were removed, and most went into storage under the Castle. For nearly ten years, the building was completely empty, and can be seen as it was in 2005 in these photographs.
St Peter Hungate, Norwich
angel At the time of the 16th Century protestant Reformation, Norwich had 36 parish churches, and many of these buildings survive today. A handful are still in use for the congregational worship of the Church of England, for which they were never designed of course. Others have found uses as concert venues, artist workshops, day centres and offices. One houses the Norwich Probation Servce, another is even a Pregnancy Advisory Centre. Some stand empty, but far more are in use now than were ten years ago. It is the largest collection of urban medieval buildings in any one city north of the Alps.
Although St Peter Hungate is right in the heart of the urban area, its setting is idyllic; 16th and 17th century cottages flank the north and east sides, and then beautiful Elm Hill drops away below it. To the west is the magnificent chancel window of the Blackfriars church, while to the south are grand 19th century commercial buildings, full of Victorian confidence. Hungate itself no longer exists, but was formerly 'houndsgate', the street of dogs. In this conservation area the roads are cobbled, and it is an oasis of charm in the middle of East Anglia's biggest city. St Peter is that rare beast in Norwich: a cruciform church. It looks older than it actually is; the primitive capped tower is actually a tall 15th century one that was truncated in 1906 for safety reasons. In fact, the whole church was completely rebuilt during the middle thirty years of the 15th century. The chancel collapsed after the Reformation, and was rebuilt by the Laudians in the early 17th century. It is a blessing that they reused the 15th century windows, and in fact most of the window tracery in the church is still original.
In the 19th century, St Peter Hungate was one of the highest of Norwich's many Anglo-catholic churches; it was the first to use vestments, the first to use incense, the first to use candles on the altar. However, as with St Simon and St Jude at the other end of Elm Hill, St Peter has long been redundant, last being used as a church before the First World War. When, in the 1930s, the Norwich Society went on their pioneering crusade to save this area of the city, there was a renewal of interest in finding appropriate uses for the old churches, and in 1936 St Peter Hungate became a museum of church furnishings. The fixtures and fittings from other redundant churches were brought here for display, and the collection was augmented by items from the Norwich and Norfolk museums, as well as by other churches wanting to find a safe home for their treasures.
It was a superb museum, the only one of its kind in England. From a church explorer's point of view, it was a priceless resource; you could read about things, and then go and see them in real life, all in one place: rood screens, bench ends, reredoses, corbels, pyxes and pyx cloths, all at first hand. St Peter Hungate Museum of Church Art lasted until the late 1990s, when a reorganisation of the museum service in Norwich killed it off. All the exhibits were removed, and most went into storage under the Castle. For nearly ten years, the building was completely empty, and can be seen as it was in 2005 in these photographs.
ewg empty view out of the south door
In 2006, a small group of people came together in an attempt to get Hungate open and in use again. Their plan was to use it as an interpretation centre for Norfolk's medieval heritage, with a particular emphasis on the medieval stained glass artists of the city of Norwich. St Peter Hungate is a good place to do this, as it has the best collection outside of the cathedral in the whole city. This glass, largely of the 15th century, is partly from St Peter Hungate originally, and partly a consequence of the medievalist enthusiasms of the 19th Century, when much was collected and brought here. It includes a sequence of the Order of Angels, other angels holding scrolls, the Evangelists, the Apostles, and much else besides. Here are some highlights.
There are squints into the transepts, and image niches in the east walls of both; the south transept, which was a chapel for the guild of St John the Baptist, was the burial place of Sir John Paston. High above, the corbels to the roof are finely gilded; they depict the four evangelists, St Matthew, St Mark, St Luke and St John, and the four Latin Doctors of the Church, St Augustine, St Ambrose, St Gregory and St Jerome. This is the only known example of these eight Saints as roofpost stops. There is a central boss of Christ in Judgement.
The fixtures and fittings of the new Hungate Centre are much less intrusive than those of the old museum, allowing a sense of space and light. Display cases down the sides of the nave explain and interpret the history of Norwich's stained glass industry, and between them are the lovely benches from Tottington, which I had last seen marooned within the fences of the Battle Training Area. There are temporary exhibitions which use the transepts and chancel, and regular activities for adults and children. The Centre is currently open three days a week, and you can read more about it on its website.
If you go out through the north door, you find yourself in the former graveyard, now a pleasant garden overlooking the rooftops of Elm Hill. The 15th century building immediately to the north, now a restaurant, was once a beguinage, a retreat house for nuns. The lawn is surrounded by lavender and rosemary, and it is all very well kept. All in all, this beautiful space, now once again in safe hands, is much to be celebrated.
Simon Knott, November 2005, revised and updated February 2011
www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichpeterhungate/norwichpete...
--------------------------------------------------
The tower is square, and built of black flints in 1431, by Thomas Ingham. Its unusual pyramid cap was put on in 1906, when the tower had become so unsafe that the battlemented belfry stage was demolished.
The south porch was added in 1497, by Nicholas Ingham, who is buried in it. It has angle buttresses and a niche for a statue over the door. Its ceiling has four bosses –one for each Evangelist.
The nave and transepts were totally rebuilt, as ‘a neat building of black flint’, by John and Margaret Paston in 1458, after they had acquired the advowson from St Mary’s College. A stone in a buttress near the north door records this – it shows a tree trunk without branches (= decay of the old church) with a new shoot (= the new building), together with the date of completion – 1460. The windows are uniformly Perpendicular, and allow much light into the building.
The chancel had been rebuilt in 1431 by Thomas Ingham and was rebuilt again in 1604 after it had collapsed: it is of rough rubble, plastered over, contrasting with the nave and transepts. Its windows are of an older pattern and have trefoil tracery in the heads. It is covered with peg-tiles, which date from the 1604 rebuilding.
Both the north and the south doors are original – of about 1460 – and have tracery which is similar to that in the windows.
The nave has wall - arcading, to frame each window. The nave roof is of low pitch, and angels with scrolls adorn it. There is a central boss, of Christ in Judgment.
The font is fifteenth-century, and its cover, with an open-work steeple, is dated 1605.
There are two squints which give a view from the nave into the transepts. In the south transept is a niche for a statue of St John the Baptist, and John Paston was buried in front of it. The headstops on the window in the south transept are supposed to represent him and his wife
In the north transept the doors to the rood-stair can be seen. The collapse of the chancel in 1604 demolished the rood-screen, and it was never replaced.
The east window is filled with pieces of mediæval glass. Blomefield, writing in 1741, says that much of the original glass survived in the chancel, but much was later lost through neglect. What remains has been assembled in this window.
There is one monument – on the west wall, to Matthew Goss, who died in 1779.
The church was one of the earliest to be affected by the Oxford Movement. The square pews were replaced by chairs, and the services took on a very ritualistic character, with candles, incense, and banners, and was ‘one of the most fashionable places of worship in Norwich’.
By the end of the century it was again in a bad way: in 1888, the tower was so dangerous an order was served on the churchwardens. In 1897, a large hole in the chancel roof was covered only by a tarpaulin.
Although restored in 1906, the church was in bad state again by 1931, and was threatened with demolition. The Norfolk Archæological Trust raised money to repair it, and it was used as a museum of church art from 1936 until 1995
The church contains beautiful stained glass. To see magnified pictures and information on all the stained glass in this and other churches across Norfolk visit www.norfolkstainedglass.co.uk
www.norwich-churches.org/St Peter Hungate/home.shtm
St Peter Hungate, Norwich, Norfolk
St Peter Hungate sits at the southern end of the historic Elmhill which curves away forth, and the churchyard looks over it.
As before, I had noticed St Peter many times, and when visiting the city for the beer festival, I would hope to find it open. I don't think I tried hard enough, but it was made for a day like this.
I had walked past it twice already that day, but was not going to be open before time, a sandwich board was outside tempting the passerby in.
It is a redundant church, and has been thus since the first world war. Simon Knott tells it used to be a unique museum, which has sadly now closed, but now is open three days a week as a museum to the Norwich stained glass industry.
A young lady sat on watch as visitors milled around, admonishing anyone who said they remembered this being a church or even worshiping here, they would have to have been over 100 years old that to make that claim.
---------------------------------------------
At the time of the 16th Century protestant Reformation, Norwich had 36 parish churches, and many of these buildings survive today. A handful are still in use for the congregational worship of the Church of England, for which they were never designed of course. Others have found uses as concert venues, artist workshops, day centres and offices. One houses the Norwich Probation Servce, another is even a Pregnancy Advisory Centre. Some stand empty, but far more are in use now than were ten years ago. It is the largest collection of urban medieval buildings in any one city north of the Alps.
Although St Peter Hungate is right in the heart of the urban area, its setting is idyllic; 16th and 17th century cottages flank the north and east sides, and then beautiful Elm Hill drops away below it. To the west is the magnificent chancel window of the Blackfriars church, while to the south are grand 19th century commercial buildings, full of Victorian confidence. Hungate itself no longer exists, but was formerly 'houndsgate', the street of dogs. In this conservation area the roads are cobbled, and it is an oasis of charm in the middle of East Anglia's biggest city. St Peter is that rare beast in Norwich: a cruciform church. It looks older than it actually is; the primitive capped tower is actually a tall 15th century one that was truncated in 1906 for safety reasons. In fact, the whole church was completely rebuilt during the middle thirty years of the 15th century. The chancel collapsed after the Reformation, and was rebuilt by the Laudians in the early 17th century. It is a blessing that they reused the 15th century windows, and in fact most of the window tracery in the church is still original.
In the 19th century, St Peter Hungate was one of the highest of Norwich's many Anglo-catholic churches; it was the first to use vestments, the first to use incense, the first to use candles on the altar. However, as with St Simon and St Jude at the other end of Elm Hill, St Peter has long been redundant, last being used as a church before the First World War. When, in the 1930s, the Norwich Society went on their pioneering crusade to save this area of the city, there was a renewal of interest in finding appropriate uses for the old churches, and in 1936 St Peter Hungate became a museum of church furnishings. The fixtures and fittings from other redundant churches were brought here for display, and the collection was augmented by items from the Norwich and Norfolk museums, as well as by other churches wanting to find a safe home for their treasures.
It was a superb museum, the only one of its kind in England. From a church explorer's point of view, it was a priceless resource; you could read about things, and then go and see them in real life, all in one place: rood screens, bench ends, reredoses, corbels, pyxes and pyx cloths, all at first hand. St Peter Hungate Museum of Church Art lasted until the late 1990s, when a reorganisation of the museum service in Norwich killed it off. All the exhibits were removed, and most went into storage under the Castle. For nearly ten years, the building was completely empty, and can be seen as it was in 2005 in these photographs.
St Peter Hungate, Norwich
angel At the time of the 16th Century protestant Reformation, Norwich had 36 parish churches, and many of these buildings survive today. A handful are still in use for the congregational worship of the Church of England, for which they were never designed of course. Others have found uses as concert venues, artist workshops, day centres and offices. One houses the Norwich Probation Servce, another is even a Pregnancy Advisory Centre. Some stand empty, but far more are in use now than were ten years ago. It is the largest collection of urban medieval buildings in any one city north of the Alps.
Although St Peter Hungate is right in the heart of the urban area, its setting is idyllic; 16th and 17th century cottages flank the north and east sides, and then beautiful Elm Hill drops away below it. To the west is the magnificent chancel window of the Blackfriars church, while to the south are grand 19th century commercial buildings, full of Victorian confidence. Hungate itself no longer exists, but was formerly 'houndsgate', the street of dogs. In this conservation area the roads are cobbled, and it is an oasis of charm in the middle of East Anglia's biggest city. St Peter is that rare beast in Norwich: a cruciform church. It looks older than it actually is; the primitive capped tower is actually a tall 15th century one that was truncated in 1906 for safety reasons. In fact, the whole church was completely rebuilt during the middle thirty years of the 15th century. The chancel collapsed after the Reformation, and was rebuilt by the Laudians in the early 17th century. It is a blessing that they reused the 15th century windows, and in fact most of the window tracery in the church is still original.
In the 19th century, St Peter Hungate was one of the highest of Norwich's many Anglo-catholic churches; it was the first to use vestments, the first to use incense, the first to use candles on the altar. However, as with St Simon and St Jude at the other end of Elm Hill, St Peter has long been redundant, last being used as a church before the First World War. When, in the 1930s, the Norwich Society went on their pioneering crusade to save this area of the city, there was a renewal of interest in finding appropriate uses for the old churches, and in 1936 St Peter Hungate became a museum of church furnishings. The fixtures and fittings from other redundant churches were brought here for display, and the collection was augmented by items from the Norwich and Norfolk museums, as well as by other churches wanting to find a safe home for their treasures.
It was a superb museum, the only one of its kind in England. From a church explorer's point of view, it was a priceless resource; you could read about things, and then go and see them in real life, all in one place: rood screens, bench ends, reredoses, corbels, pyxes and pyx cloths, all at first hand. St Peter Hungate Museum of Church Art lasted until the late 1990s, when a reorganisation of the museum service in Norwich killed it off. All the exhibits were removed, and most went into storage under the Castle. For nearly ten years, the building was completely empty, and can be seen as it was in 2005 in these photographs.
ewg empty view out of the south door
In 2006, a small group of people came together in an attempt to get Hungate open and in use again. Their plan was to use it as an interpretation centre for Norfolk's medieval heritage, with a particular emphasis on the medieval stained glass artists of the city of Norwich. St Peter Hungate is a good place to do this, as it has the best collection outside of the cathedral in the whole city. This glass, largely of the 15th century, is partly from St Peter Hungate originally, and partly a consequence of the medievalist enthusiasms of the 19th Century, when much was collected and brought here. It includes a sequence of the Order of Angels, other angels holding scrolls, the Evangelists, the Apostles, and much else besides. Here are some highlights.
There are squints into the transepts, and image niches in the east walls of both; the south transept, which was a chapel for the guild of St John the Baptist, was the burial place of Sir John Paston. High above, the corbels to the roof are finely gilded; they depict the four evangelists, St Matthew, St Mark, St Luke and St John, and the four Latin Doctors of the Church, St Augustine, St Ambrose, St Gregory and St Jerome. This is the only known example of these eight Saints as roofpost stops. There is a central boss of Christ in Judgement.
The fixtures and fittings of the new Hungate Centre are much less intrusive than those of the old museum, allowing a sense of space and light. Display cases down the sides of the nave explain and interpret the history of Norwich's stained glass industry, and between them are the lovely benches from Tottington, which I had last seen marooned within the fences of the Battle Training Area. There are temporary exhibitions which use the transepts and chancel, and regular activities for adults and children. The Centre is currently open three days a week, and you can read more about it on its website.
If you go out through the north door, you find yourself in the former graveyard, now a pleasant garden overlooking the rooftops of Elm Hill. The 15th century building immediately to the north, now a restaurant, was once a beguinage, a retreat house for nuns. The lawn is surrounded by lavender and rosemary, and it is all very well kept. All in all, this beautiful space, now once again in safe hands, is much to be celebrated.
Simon Knott, November 2005, revised and updated February 2011
www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichpeterhungate/norwichpete...
--------------------------------------------------
The tower is square, and built of black flints in 1431, by Thomas Ingham. Its unusual pyramid cap was put on in 1906, when the tower had become so unsafe that the battlemented belfry stage was demolished.
The south porch was added in 1497, by Nicholas Ingham, who is buried in it. It has angle buttresses and a niche for a statue over the door. Its ceiling has four bosses –one for each Evangelist.
The nave and transepts were totally rebuilt, as ‘a neat building of black flint’, by John and Margaret Paston in 1458, after they had acquired the advowson from St Mary’s College. A stone in a buttress near the north door records this – it shows a tree trunk without branches (= decay of the old church) with a new shoot (= the new building), together with the date of completion – 1460. The windows are uniformly Perpendicular, and allow much light into the building.
The chancel had been rebuilt in 1431 by Thomas Ingham and was rebuilt again in 1604 after it had collapsed: it is of rough rubble, plastered over, contrasting with the nave and transepts. Its windows are of an older pattern and have trefoil tracery in the heads. It is covered with peg-tiles, which date from the 1604 rebuilding.
Both the north and the south doors are original – of about 1460 – and have tracery which is similar to that in the windows.
The nave has wall - arcading, to frame each window. The nave roof is of low pitch, and angels with scrolls adorn it. There is a central boss, of Christ in Judgment.
The font is fifteenth-century, and its cover, with an open-work steeple, is dated 1605.
There are two squints which give a view from the nave into the transepts. In the south transept is a niche for a statue of St John the Baptist, and John Paston was buried in front of it. The headstops on the window in the south transept are supposed to represent him and his wife
In the north transept the doors to the rood-stair can be seen. The collapse of the chancel in 1604 demolished the rood-screen, and it was never replaced.
The east window is filled with pieces of mediæval glass. Blomefield, writing in 1741, says that much of the original glass survived in the chancel, but much was later lost through neglect. What remains has been assembled in this window.
There is one monument – on the west wall, to Matthew Goss, who died in 1779.
The church was one of the earliest to be affected by the Oxford Movement. The square pews were replaced by chairs, and the services took on a very ritualistic character, with candles, incense, and banners, and was ‘one of the most fashionable places of worship in Norwich’.
By the end of the century it was again in a bad way: in 1888, the tower was so dangerous an order was served on the churchwardens. In 1897, a large hole in the chancel roof was covered only by a tarpaulin.
Although restored in 1906, the church was in bad state again by 1931, and was threatened with demolition. The Norfolk Archæological Trust raised money to repair it, and it was used as a museum of church art from 1936 until 1995
The church contains beautiful stained glass. To see magnified pictures and information on all the stained glass in this and other churches across Norfolk visit www.norfolkstainedglass.co.uk
www.norwich-churches.org/St Peter Hungate/home.shtm