St.Andrew's Church, Church Lane, Bradenham, Norfolk. IP25 7QP - Medieval Churches on Waymarking.com

This parish church, Grade I listed, is medieval and later, built in flint with ashlar and some brick dressings it has slate coverings on the roofs. Consisting of a south-west tower porch, an aisled nave, and a chancel. It is one of two churches in Bradenham, the other one

The C14th tower porch has diagonal buttresses and a rectangular stair turret to the north-west. The entrance is a massive plain chamfered, two-centred arch on polygonal responds, the church doorway arch being of filletted rolls on two pairs of nook shafts with an elaborately cusped niche above it. On the south face is a rectangular loop to the upper floor, and on all sides above the upper string course are plain two-light Y-traceried bell-openings with a corbel table and crenellated parapet above.

The clock face is on the east face of the tower. Recently repaired and painted blue it is octagonal with the points of the octagon north-south. The outer ring with hour and minute marks, the Roman numerals, and the metal hands are all painted gold colour. The hours are struck on a bell of good tone hung in the tower.

The west wall has a restored three-light window to the nave with triple lancet tracery and a pair of restored panel-traceried 2-light windows to the aisles. In the west window are scenes from the Gospels by the O'Connor Brothers. In the north aisle, with a diagonal buttress on the west angle, is a C14th doorway of two orders with angle rolls and a hood mould, two C15th three-light panel traceried windows with shallow 4-centred heads either side of a square buttress, and a two-light Perpendicular east window with unusual inverted cross tracery motif. There is similar tracery to the two windows in the south aisle. The seven two-light cusped clearstorey windows are four to the north and three to the south.

The C13th or early C14th chancel has four two-light Y-traceried windows, a blocked rectangular leper's window to the south and a plain priest's doorway. The modern five-light east window in Geometric style holds glass by William Wailes depicting the crucifixion above scenes from the books of Genesis and Exodus.

The interior is a mix of C14th and C15th work. The four bays of early C14th quatrefoil piers support hollow-chamfered arches of two orders, the piers leaving the angles of their square cores apparent. The hollow-chamfered chancel arch is on polygonal responds and there is a surviving rood stair to the south. The south aisle has a plain rectangular piscina and the octagonal font is on an octagonal pillar with octagonal chamfers above a square plinth. C15th work includes moulded aisle roofs with embattled wall plates and spandrel tracery, an arch braced nave roof with excessively tall embattled wall plates retaining some original paint. The chancel has a fine piscina with triple sedilia beneath a hollow-chamfered arcade on single shafts with bell capitals and a hood mould with restored label stops. There is an elaborate aumbry to the north side of chancel with a crocketted ogee arch between crocketted pinnacles. The windows have hood moulds carved head label stops.

On the south angle of the south aisle is a rather ugly chimney breast above a cast iron grate built into the angle between the aisle's wall and the diagonal buttress, no doubt a local built attempt to provide some heating to this large, high church-on-a-hill. I don't think it would pass the exacting requirements of the current Diocesan Advisory Committee!

West Bradenham was one of the homes of the Haggards, that prominent Norfolk farming family who also gave the late Victorians and Edwardians their favourite author. Henry Rider Haggard was born here, and although he later lived, and is remembered, across the county at Ditchingham, the graveyard here is full of his ancestors.

For times of services please see the picture in the gallery.

When John L'Estrange, 1836-1877, wrote "The church bells of Norfolk : where, when, and by whom they were made, with the inscriptions on all the bells in the county" in 1874 he says of West Bradenham 'S. Andrew-—2.[bells] 1. [inscribed]+Virginis Egregie Vocor Campana Marie. 2. [inscribed]John Draper made me 1625, [Diameter 37 in.] On the crown of 1, three shields : Brasyer diapered.((—See p. 10.)) The initial cross and the words Virginis and Marie have been cut off. There were three bells here 6th Edward VI. and also when Blomefield wrote. The lost one appears to have been the treble.

Building Materials: Stone

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