Dominating the market place of Norwich, St Peter Mancroft is the city's major civic church — that of the mayors, the guilds and the drapery merchants whose wealth financed it. Completed just before our period, it came through its religious upheavals, to which a rare décor and the men who served it bear witness.
The church of drapery wealth
St Peter Mancroft was rebuilt in Perpendicular style from 1430 to 1465 (consecrated in 1455), thanks to the fortune of drapery Norwich — the city was then one of the richest in England, prospering on the trade in wool and cloth. Merchant-mayors such as Robert Toppes were its great donors (he gave its east window). The church presented its completed Perpendicular aspect on the very eve of the period, with its angel-adorned hammerbeam roof and its great east window of 42 medieval panels — a décor worthy of a cathedral, financed by trade.
A rare décor and the Reformation
St Peter Mancroft continues in the full sixteenth century: the rare wooden canopy of its baptismal font, carved in the 1520s, is a precious survival of the religious décor on the eve of the Reformation — most of these font covers were destroyed by Protestant iconoclasm. The Reformation can also be read in the men: in 1564, John Walker became principal minister of the parish, a Protestant preacher of Puritan spirit, a sign of the rooting of the new faith in this great merchant city. To see: the hammerbeam roof with angels, the great east window (42 medieval panels), the octagonal font (c. 1465) and its wooden canopy (1520s).
Did you know?
The wooden canopy that crowns the font of St Peter Mancroft narrowly escaped destruction: these tall carved covers, which protected the baptismal water, were almost all pulled down by the Protestant reformers as superstitious. That of Norwich, of the 1520s, is one of the few survivors — a fragile wooden witness of what an English church looked like just before the Reformation stripped its decoration.
Notes
St Peter Mancroft lies on the market place of Norwich, Norfolk; a working parish church, open to visits. Hours to check.
Quiz
- Thanks to what wealth was St Peter Mancroft built?
- The drapery wealth of Norwich
- The gold of the colonies
- A royal treasure
- What is rare about its font canopy?
- It is a survival of the 1520s, from before the Reformation
- It is of gold
- It is Roman
- Who became a Puritan minister in 1564?
- John Walker
- Robert Toppes
- Thomas Morley