Edgefield, Norfolk

The village is spread over a large area with the centre concentrated around a village pond. There is a public house which is called The Pigs, it has a garage which now only fixes cars. The village no longer has a school but the old school is now used as a house. The War Memorial which stands on the village green, alongside the Norwich to Holt road, was renovated at a cost of £1,968 in 2004. The Memorial was rededicated on Remembrance Sunday of that year.

Edgefield has an entry in the Domesday Book of 1085.[4] In the great book Edgefield is recorded by the name of Edisfelda, the main landholders being Peter de Valognes and his main tenant, said to be Humphrey from Ranulf, brothers of Ilger. There is said to be a mill and 2 beehives. The village is described as being near the River Geet.

The parish church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul was rebuilt in the 1880s[5] closer to the centre of the village at the instigation of the then rector, Canon Walter Herbert Marcon.[6] Marcon was rector here for sixty years from the 1870s to the 1930s, and is remembered in Norfolk as the cycling parson, and for moving his church half a mile, stone by stone. His daughter, Grace Marcon, was a militant suffragette who damaged paintings in the National Gallery.[7] She was buried here in 1965.[8]

The parish church of SS. Peter and Paul

The old church, although structurally sound, was in poor condition when Marcon, with the help of architect John Dando Sedding, decided to move the church. The new church was a reproduction of the old one, apart from the tower, using much of the masonry and fittings (such as the font, rood screen, pillars and windows) from the original, which stood a mile west.[5] Consecration took place in 1885 and the tower was built in 1907-09,[5] with a clock added in 1921.[5] The Canon is remembered in the new church where he is depicted riding his bicycle in a window, which also commemorates the building of the church. This window was installed in the church in the 1980s. The 13th century tower from the old church still stands in a farmyard on the road to Hunworth. It is octagonal in shape and built from flint and carrstone. The remnants and tower of the old church were renovated with grants from English Heritage in 1981. The rector and P.C.C. still have the responsibility for the tower, while responsibility for the churchyard has been passed to the civil authorities.

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  Remains of the old church tower
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  The old graveyard of Saint Peter and Saint Paul's Church
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  Stained glass roundel of "Canon Walter Herbert Marcon on his Bike" in the church

Media related to Edgefield, Norfolk at Wikimedia Commons