The waterways in fenland carried wool to east-coast ports and on to the continent from the uplands of England leading to great wealth which was shown in the great churches of the area including Tilney All Saints.
This late C12th parish church is Grade I listed, the nave and chancel are from this date, the west tower is late C13th and C14th with a spire dated 1428. The nave and chancel aisles were remodelled in the C15th with battlements added 1523-1525. It is built of barnack stone and flint, partly rendered and belonging to a group of fenland churches with very long naves built on land reclaimed from the sea.
The four-stage C13th tower has big polygonal buttresses developing into polygonal corner turrets which terminate above the crenellated parapet in crocketted pinnacles. The upper stages and short recessed stone spire are referred to in bequests dated 1428. The west doorway, Decorated, is of four orders of undercut mouldings below an ogeed hood. The west window of three pointed lancets, each separated by pilaster strips. The is similar fenestration to the north and south but with a blind central light. The two-light ogeed reticulated ringing chamber windows and two-light belfry windows are of mouchette form. String courses divide the storeys and the octagonal spire has gabled lucarnes at the base on alternate facets. There is a ring of six bells in the tower hung so as to enable ringing in the English style. The lighter four of the six are C18th bells, the two heaviest are modern replacements.
The following is a table extracted from Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers showing the weights in kg, the sounding notes of the bells, the founder and the year of casting.
Bell Weight Note Dated Founder
1 246.75 C# 1745 Thomas Gardiner
2 273.06 B 1745 Thomas Gardiner
3 410.95 A 1720 Thomas Newman
4 430.01 G# 1745 Thomas Gardiner
5 592.85 F# 1950 Mears and Stainbank
6 840.51 E 1950 Mears and Stainbank
The bells are hung in a timber frame dated c.1624.
In an audit of all the bells in Norfolk made in 1874 by John L'Estrange, the bells at Terrington were listed as follows with their inscriptions;
1, 2, 4. Tho. Gardiner Norwich fecit 1745.
3. Tho. Newman fecit 1720 Lestrange Southgate Tho.Johnson C.W.
5. T. Newman made me 1731 Matthew Southgate and Richard Johnson C. W.
6. G. Thomas Norris made mee 1661.
Thomas Newman cast bells in Cambridge between 1699 and 1745.
Thomas Gardiner was the founder at Sudbury from 1709 - 1762 and at the Brocandale foundry in Norwich from 1727 to 1747. He died in 1769 and may well have been a very old man, to allow fifty-three years of bell founding and casting well over two hundred and fifty nine bells, all are in East Anglia, excepting one in Kent.
The fifth and sixth bells were replced in 1950 with two new ones cast by Mears and Stainbank of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, London.
Words variously from British Listed Buildings, Pevsner's Norfolk Buildings, Simon Jenkins 'England's Thousand Best Churches', The Church Bells of Norfolk, John L'Estange, 1874, amended and added to with own on-site observations.
Co-ordinates are for the tower.