St Peter, Walpole St Peter

St Peter is a Grade I parish church on Church Road in Walpole St Peter, Norfolk, in the Diocese of Ely. It is often called the Cathedral of the Fens.

Overview

Historic England records an early fourteenth-century base to the west tower and a late fourteenth-century nave, aisles and chancel, restored in 1898, of ashlar with lead roofs. The four-stage tower has angle buttresses, a polygonal south-west stair turret, an early fourteenth-century two-light west window, transomed belfry windows and a crenellated parapet with gargoyles. Aisles and clerestory have crenellated parapets with panelling and animal-head gargoyles. An elaborate two-storey early fifteenth-century south porch has a two-bay vault with carved bosses and original double timber doors with carved arcading.

A vaulted processional passageway runs beneath the east bay of the chancel. The interior has a seven-bay arcade of quatrefoil piers, a fifteenth-century rood-screen dado with painted saints, a pulpit dated 1620, an octagonal font dated 1532 with an early seventeenth-century cover, and a poor box inscribed Remember the Poore 1639. Eighteenth-century box pews survive in the nave. The church remains open daily and is regarded as one of England's finest Perpendicular parish churches.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1264167
• British Listed Buildings: Church of St Peter