St Clements Colegate

Now, I don't know if it is sacreligious to say that one has a pet church -- however, I am so VERY excited to have a pet church project!

At Norwich Heritage Open Days last September, I gave my email to a nice man to say that I would be happy to help with any Norwich Historic Church Trust projects that they might have (that would, of course, coincide with my actually being in town). And I expected to hear nothing...

Until I got a surprise email early in January asking if I would be interested in an unusual project dealing with St. Clements Colegate, which had been vandalised at the end of 2007. But of course I would be! But my return email got no reply, so I was disappointed.

Until I got the same email again last week, indicating that my reply had not been received in the first place! So, another keen reply was dispatched immediamente, and I got a phone call later that night to meet on Sunday afternoon (today) and find out more.

So, E and I trotted on down this afternoon, and met the Methodist minister, who has been the caretaker for the past 30 years, and the nice man from the NHCT, thinking that they wanted me to dust some pews, or sweep, or pick up the rubbish from the heathens who throw their pizza boxes into the church yard on a Saturday night.

St. Clements is at the opposite end of Colegate from St. Miles, about a 3 minute walk from my door. I pass this church rather frequently (probably 10 times in the past month) and have noticed that it has looked a little worse for the wear lately. As I found out, this is because it is no longer opened every day for a refuge and place for prayer. Some horrid person went in during the day on St. Clement's Day, set fire to the organ and the altar, and stole some pieces from the altar, leading the minister to decide that his time as caretaker was done and that he could no longer carry the burden of keeping it open.

Most of the churches in Norwich were decomissioned in the 1960s and 1970s, and sadly all but St. Clements were gutted of all ecclesiastical furnishings. They are now primarily just empty shells which are open when the Trust, or other groups, can organise for them to be open (as at the Heritage Open Days). Some have been converted for other uses -- such as St. Miles out my front window, which is a science discovery centre; St. Gregory Pottergate, which is now a boho artsy garage sale location of a weekend; St. Mary Coslany, the round tower church outside my back window, which is a publishing storage facility; and St. Swithins Church, now the Norwich Arts Centre. Including these four churches, there are 11 churches within less than a 3-minute walk from my house, and only one still functions as a place of Christian worship: St. George Colegate.

After an interesting discussion (and brief history of the church by the minister, who has written The Church Over the Water, which is a must-read for me soon. The 'over the water' part refers to the part of the city where I live, which is over the river Wensum from the centre; it was formerly one of the four boroughs of the city.), lo and behold, I was asked if I would be willing to be one of the key holders, come down and open the church up for tourists to drop in on a sort of regular basis, and generally help care for it! I am soooooo excited, and have plans to go and buy 47 gallons of lemon oil as soon as possible (as the pews and Victorian panelling are all looking a little dry). It was bitterly cold in there today, but my guess is that once my OCD behaviour kicks in, there will be no icy extremities :)

The oldest marked tomb in the church dates from 1514, and E and I got a lesson in Latin. I have been told that I will impress visitors if am able to rattle off meanings of Latin inscriptions :)