by
Stephen R Heywood Lic.
es L, M.A., F.S.A.
Conservation Officer, Department of Planning and
Transportation,
Norfolk County Council
© Norfolk County Council, May 1997
Introduction
The former village school of Pulham St Mary has a remarkable history which is rendered exceptional by the survival of a medieval chapel of considerable distinction at its core.
The documentary history of the site has been researched and published by Hilary Clutten (Clutten, 1994). During the later Middle Ages the principal source of income and the wealthy status of Pulham was due to hat-making and weaving. A local guild was formed of hatters, cappers and hurers who were sufficiently wealthy to build a chapel dedicated to St James and to employ a priest to say masses. It was initially attached to the parish church but was rebuilt in the centre of the village in about 1401. This date comes from Bishop Fordham of Ely's register for 26th June 1401 granting indulgences to all assisting the re-establishment of the Chapel of St James and its poor incumbent, Walter Colman. The re-established guild chapel may also have served as a guildhall.
The guild was dissolved in 1547. The manor court rolls reveal that the chapel was held in copyhold of the manor in conjunction with a farm named Baldwin's (thought to be Town Farm). In 1628 the lordship of the manor was sold and vested in fifteen local trustees. William Pennoyer, a wealthy puritan, bought a fifteenth share of the manor in 1657. His will of 1670 states that after the death of his wife Martha, the rents and profits of his share of the manor should go towards the maintenance of widows teaching fatherless children and the establishment of a free school in the chapel. Martha died in 1674 and the same year John Starkey BA is recorded as receiving a licence to teach in the free school.
The building remained a school until it was closed in 1988. It was included in the national system and was extended in the 1860s and 70s.
The chapel
The building (Pl. I) is of flint with ashlar dressings. The neatly coursed flint was originally rendered and some of the thin textured render survives on the south side. One broken Roman tegula can be detected adjacent to the eastern window on the south side. The roof is of black pantiles.
The plan (Fig. 1) was a simple rectangle with stepped diagonal buttresses at each angle, all surviving except for the south-east corner where, it must be supposed, it was removed at the time of the Victorian extension. The east wall is almost the only missing part of the original medieval masonry. There is a fine western door and a priest's door on the north side. The doorways both have the same typical 15th-century mouldings with carved roses decorating the two-centred arches (Pls II, III; Fig. 2).
There are four surviving arched windows each subdivided into two lights by anomalous vertical mullions (Pls IV, V). These are clearly post medieval replacements of the original tracery and Pevsner suggests that they date from the 17th century when the school was established (Pevsner, 1962, p.287). There certainly was tracery originally as there is provision for mullions on the sills of the two southern windows (Pl. VI). The windows on the north side have been altered somewhat and an area of blocking beneath the easternmost window contains many fragments of stone mullions yet no evidence of cusped fragments (Pl. VII). This may suggest that the original tracery was more simple than might be expected in the 15th century, Y tracery for example. It is perhaps more probable that all evidence has been lost. The north west window has an arch rebuilt in semicircular form, whilst all the others have two-centred heads with hood moulds terminating in finely carved lion's head label stops (Pl. VIII).
The gable of the west wall has the remains of a medieval blocked brick-dressed window replaced by a large lunette of 19th-century date with 'Diocletian' mullions and glazing bars (Pl.I). The gable has parapets with stone copings.
The roof structure is mid Victorian and was built to be seen (Pl. IX). It is of clasped purlin construction with tie beams and straight braces from the principal rafters to the collars (soulaces). All the visible timbers are decorated with simple chamfers. The roof over the eastern Victorian extension is of the same type.
Discussion
The existence of the small priest's door suggests that there was never a chancel occupying a narrower building attached to the east wall. This can be discounted because priest's doors always lead into the chancel. The altar was accommodated against the east wall which may have had a large window. This area was probably divided off from the nave by a screen. Although there is no visible evidence of the screen it is suggested by the asymmetrical positions of the windows on the south side of the nave. They are displaced to the west as if to leave space for the screen. This interpretation is slightly frustrated by the fact that a screen could only be accommodated at an angle due to the position of the priest's door on the north side. The angle would have been very slight and imperceptible without taking measurements or seeing an accurate plan.
The lion's head label stops and the roses decorating the doorways are the chapel's most distinctive details. The elaborate 15th-century porch of the parish church has very similar carved heads and roses carved into the jambs of the porch entrance (Pls X, XI). There is a possibility that the same masons were responsible for the construction of the porch and the chapel but the mouldings, which are veritable signatures of masons, are dissimilar.
Guild chapels were usually attached to parish churches, as, indeed originally at Pulham. A possible reason for its relocation may have been in order to combine chapel and hall. A similar combination exists at the 14th-century hall of the Guild of Merchant Adventurers in York (Pevsner and Neave, 1995, pp216-219). A stone chapel was added to the timber-framed hall in 1411. Whether or not it served as hall and chapel, it remains an extremely rare and valuable witness of a local medieval guild.
Stephen Heywood, May 1997
Bibliography
Clutten H, School's out, privately published, Ipswich, 1994.
Pevsner N, North west and south Norfolk, Buildings of England, Harmondsworth, 1962
Pevsner N and Neave D, Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, Buildings of England, Harmondsworth, second edition, 1995.
List of illustrations
[These are not reproduced here]
Figure 1 Plan of chapel after Simon Whiteside
Figure 2 Moulding of south jamb of west door
Plate I Chapel from south west
Plate II West doorway
Plate III Priest's door
Plate IV Nave south wall
Plate V Nave north wall
Plate VI Sill of south west window
Plate VII Fabric beneath north east window
Plate VIII Hood mould above south east window
Plate IX Nave roof
Plate X Porch of parish church. Niches to east of entrance
Plate XI Porch of parish church. East jamb of entrance
Reurn to Pennoyer's School page.
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