If Walls Could Speak...

Dave Tonge, storyteller, telling medieval tales at the site.

When you enter any medieval church site, you are in a special place. Here are some of my thoughts about this:

• The church acted as a focal point and meeting place for the community for so many hundreds of years. A parish church has witnessed all of the bitter-sweetness of life. 
• It has been a marker against which wider events took place.
• In those still places, we stand in the footprints of others; physically, in that same place where their hearts raced and their tears fell. Pettiness, day-dreams, discomfort, hope... all of these and more have been felt here before we pass through. A ruin has stories to tell (see photo, above). 
• A sense of this time and connection makes me aware that we are not only time-travellers in the present; we are, simultaneously, and instantly, part of the story too. 
• In those still places, I am moved, imaginatively, to reach out for those past presences. We should, in my opinion,  all be humble in the face of this.
• A medieval church is a space where I am open to possibilities. Here, my imagination is challenged and stretched. I begin to feel for the nature of things and our place within it.   
• The movement of seasons and the natural life which passes through are part of the story too.
• I am full of wonder and inspired to creativity...

Colin

Ruins and Records

St Mary & St Walstan church, Bawburgh. Bowthorpe church would once have had a similar round tower.

What is an historic record?
An historic record is where someone from the past has written down information about people or places. In a church this might be something about important events - birth (baptism); marriage; death (funeral) -, or perhaps records (‘accounts’) of money which has been spent on the building.

What is a parish?
Every church had its own parish. A parish is the local area beyond the building from where people who use the church live. However, a living parish is really about the networks of people and their relationships, centred on their church.

Detective work…
We visited the Norfolk Record Office in order to find out information about St Michael’s & All Angels church. However, sometimes, when we’re trying to find out about the past, we hit a ‘dead end’, as the records of the earlier history of a place do not survive.

This is the case with the records for the church of St Michael at Bowthorpe. Basically, because this church was allowed to fall into disuse in the later Sixteenth century (1500s) no parish records survive for this church.

After the church fell out of use, local people from Bowthorpe would go to the church of St Mary’s in nearby Earlham. This church is still in use, and its parish records survive from the early 1600s onwards. There are records of baptisms, marriages and deaths. Unfortunately, the person whose job it was to record these events, did not write down who was travelling to Earlham from Bowthorpe in the earlier records.

Bowthorpe people…


St Mary's church, Earlham

However, by the early Nineteenth century (1800s), they did record these details. For instance, the following baptisms are recorded:
“1820 March 18th Mary daughter of Jonathan & Mary Hall, Bowthorpe, Shepherd

1822 Nov’r Jonathan Son of Jonathan & Mary Ann Hall, Bowthorpe, Shepherd”

Sadly, the records of those buried tell us that the father of these two children, died soon within a month of the birth of his son:

“Jonathan Hall Bowthorpe 1822 Dec’r 5th [Age] 31”

A Special Site...
Although the records allow us a glimpse of the past, this kind of evidence cannot capture the feelings and emotions of, say, the Hall family as they buried Jonathan in the winter of 1822.

This reminds us that the ruins of the church at Bowthorpe are a special site; a place where people have felt the joy of birth (baptism) and marriage – as well as the heartbreak of the loss of loved ones.

A ruin is full of memories. It wouldn’t be here if there hadn’t once been life. There has been life here:
-> Imagine some of the people who might have once stood here
-> Imagine what went on in this place