All Saints Rounded Tower - Out of Place Graves on Waymarking.com

All Saints Church, Hemblington, Norfolk stands in solitary state on high ground in the North East corner of the parish of Hemblington. It has a circular tower which is estimated to have been standing in 1086 when the Domesday Survey was made.

The Church is unfortunately locked, although visitors may contact one of the keyholders, from the list displayed on the porch notice board, if they wish to explore inside.

Originally this was to be a virtual geocache, as an interesting building near my old home.

However on exploring the churchyard I came across the grave of a Squadron Leader G.E.Weston DFC and G.R. Weston from the New Zealand Airforce. The village near where I now live (Sutton Veny, Wilsthire) has a huge ANZAC cemetary, mainly for soldiers from the Great War who succumbed to the Flu epidemic, and this prompted me to investigate further.

George E. Weston was christened in this church and then moved to the south island, New Zealand where he grew up and joined the New Zealand airforce, returning to England in 1939. He earned his DFC in the attack of an enemy vessel in in dock at Brest, February 1941, where, even with engine failure and heavy enemy artillery he pressed his attack and succeeded. Returning over the English Channel his engines failed once more, but he landed safely.

He took part in many more raids and flights over the next year until when in October 1942 he was piloting a Lancaster, bound for Germany, when an incident in the aircraft, the dinghy breaking loose and fouling the tailplane, forced the Lancaster to crash in Nottinghamshire. All seven crew members died.

Geoffrey Randall Weston also served with the New Zealand airforce, and served through Canada, Novia Scotia, eventually to England and then Wales. In 1944 he was serving in Stradishall, Suffolk as a crew member on a Short Stirling Bomber, when during a night flying exercise practising landings and take-offs the aircraft bounced heavily and when attempting to turn and re-try the landing it dived into the ground killing all five crew members.

The Weston family wished that these brave men were buried in the village church, and so they are under a single Commonwealth War Graves Portland Stone Memorial.

Inside the church there is a beautiful mural, discovered under layers of whitewash in 1937, depicting the legend of St Christopher.

It really is a lovely church and if you are lucky enough to be able to look around inside its well worth spending the time: there are services every sunday at 9.30 and all are welcome to visit.

Outside, at the time of setting this cache there is a small wood filled with snowdrops and daffodils, which brightened up a cold wintry days visit for us.

This was also originally intended as a virtual cache under geocaching.com but now moved to waymarking.com under the new rules.

First Name: Not listed Last Name: Not listed Born: Not listed Died: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   02/03/2012 CEO44 visited it