All Saints

About the Church of All Saints, Great Fransham

The Church itself was made a Chapel of Ease in 1962. We approach the Church, which is an ancient building of flint and freestone, from the West. The 14th century Tower has a low wooden spire covered with lead. The bell openings have cusped Y-tracery with a string course below them and two diagonal buttresses reaching up to this string course on the Western corners. There are quatrefoil apertures half way up the tower. The West window has Y-tracery and it was blown in by a flying bomb that landed on the Farm just to the West of the Church in October 1944. This bomb did a lot of damage to the Church and extreme efforts were made to keep the weather out of damaged windows and dislodged tiles.

There is no longer a South aisle and the South wall of the Nave has four windows which were put in during the 1878 restorations when a new wall was built. The South Doorway is no longer visible. There is a cross flory at the East end of the Nave. The Chancel has no windows in its sides and neither is the Priest’s Door visible. The East window with its curious trellis tracery is probably Victorian. It was one of the windows that suffered from the flying bomb. On the North side of the Nave are two perpendicular windows with very low dripstone mouldings and small centre embattled transoms. We enter the Church through the North Porch which has a hood mould above it and a perpendicular door arch. The original oak door was painted brown as a gift of Thanks. There is a fine old key in the lock.

In the Nave, the font is modern built out of stone in the Gothic style. It replaced a smaller perpendicular font of Caen stone in three stages with no drain. A very old font from a redundant Church is at this moment awaiting installation. There is a straight sided niche in the North West corner just inside the door for a Benatura. On the other side of the door is a fine old Elizabethan Chest. The South Aisle disappeared about 1800 and a wall was built along the line of pillars. In 1878 these lovely 13th century pillars, which are leaning outwards, were freed of bricks and rubble and a new wall was built outside them. The arcade has four bays and the piers, capitals and abaci are circular and the stilted bases and arches are re-made perpendicular. The old pews were replaced by open benches to seat 200 people, the roofs were renewed and the pulpit and chancel panelled during these restorations. There is a table of Donations on the South Wall at the West end.

The Chancel arch is 14th century and is acutely pointed. There is a memorial to Thomas Case on the North Wall Mexx in 1793 and was an eminent attorney and was one of the Common Council men in the Borough of Kings Lynn. There is a particularly fine Brass in the North East corner of the Chancel to Galfridus Fransham who died in 1414. It is some 4’11” high and shows him in full armour under an elaborate canopy of an ogee gable with two shields. This Brass was originally in the Chapel at the East end of the South Aisle. The oak chair in the Sanctuary was donated by George Preston, Rector in 1888, in memory of his wife. It is also interesting to note that the red rug came off the same loom at Stoddard’s Carpet Walks in Scotland as the Queen’s Coronation Carpet in Westminster Abbey.

Vincent Raven who died in 1887, who was rector here for 35 years, carved and presented the magnificent oak altar table. It has clusters of grapes and ears of corn and a brass plate with an inscription at its base. He also carved the oak lectern with the arms of Magdalene College Cambridge (Patrons of the Living) and poppy heads on the stalls in the Chancel. The Communion Plate consists of an ancient market Chalice and Paten and a London made Flagon dated 1722. The Registers go back to 1558 and there were Rectors here since John Baldwin de Fransham in 1278.