"Norwich still has more working Anglican churches in its city centre than many people realise, and St Andrew is one of the best known, especially to anyone who drives through the middle of Norwich. Along with St Peter Mancroft and St Stephen it is one of the biggest, its north side grand and majestic opposite Blackfriars hall. The other three sides are hemmed in by shops, and the great tower a landmark appearing between other buildings as you wander around the pedestrianised heart of the city. In fact, the north side was also hemmed in until the 20th century, when the buildings were removed to widen the road for trams.
St Andrew is not as late as St Stephen, but it was built almost entirely in one campaign from the 1470s to the first decade of the 16th century, making it contemporary with the great church at Southwold in Suffolk, with which it has some similarities. The tower came first, and then the great unbroken line of nave and chancel; there is no chancel arch.
There is a porch set into the most westerly bay of the north aisle, but the main entrance is through a grand south porch, hidden from the street. The west doorway is now blocked off by a room built beneath the tower. Although the church is built of stone, there is very little of it in the construction, because the aisles, the clerestory and the chancel are virtually walls of glass. The way that the arcades fade into the east end, and a high window rises above them, may recall Shelton; and indeed the team that worked at Shelton are generally credited with finishing the church here.
Norwich has been guilty in the past of keeping many of its medieval churches locked, and St Andrew has not always been easy of access. This seems a shame; Ipswich, a much less fine place but perhaps a friendlier one, has managed to keep all its working town centre churches open daily, or at least accessible. And St Andrew is certainly well worth seeing inside. And also, it would be an act of Christian hospitality in itself for shoppers to be able to step out of the busy crowds into its cool, light interior. For, unlike St Stephen, this is a church that is full of light.
As with many of the Norwich city churches, St Andrew has been overwhemingly Victorianised, and the interior is very much a 19th century idealised vision of what the late middle ages might have been like. Unlike St Stephen, it has been done rather well, and might best be described as sumptuous. I wonder who the architect was? It may have been Diocesan architect Richard Phipson, who made a bit of a hash of St Stephen, but he was on good form at St Peter Mancroft and was glorious at St Mary le Tower in Ipswich.
Whoever it was, they left one of the most ornate 19th century fonts in Norfolk, and far off to the east a reredos to match. In between, the church unrolls before you; as at St Stephen there are massive 18th and 19th century memorials set between the windows of the arcades, but they are rather less oppressive here, perhaps because the church is bigger and there is more light.
Set up in windows towards the west of the south aisle are some fine, large medieval panels, one of which comes from a Dance of Death; it shows Death dancing with a Bishop, and you can see an image of it at the start of this piece. Another is a composite of bits of angels; some of them are musicians, and one of them is holding a scroll saying salve nos. Another medieval survival is a scattering of brasses, one a pair of figures in the sanctuary to Robert Gardiner and his wife. He was mayor of Norwich on several occasions during the building of St Andrew, and died soon after its completion. His wife is particularly elegant - both figures are flatteringly young for their age of death.
Whoever restored St Andrew in the 19th century relegated the large Elizabethan and Jacobean monuments to the north aisle chapel, where they are concealed by a Victorian screen. They show several late 16th and early 17th century mayors of Norwich with their wives. The biggest is to Sir John Suckling and his wife Martha. Mortlock notes that he was James I's treasurer, and also observes that the figures look stiff and uncomfortable. His parents face each other over a prayer desk on the eastern wall, flanked by some delightfully ghoulish skulls. In between there is a memorial to Francis Rugg, also three times mayor, who was a Senator of Senators renowned race. Robert Garsett is the most endearingly lifelike, another mayor who died in James I's reign."
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