Waterworks Road

The district of Heigham, flanked by the city on the east and by Earlham on the west, grew during the nineteenth century from a small village clustered around the church of St Bartholomew to a large residential suburb. This growth led to its division into several parishes of a more manageable size, served by the new churches of St Barnabas, St Philip, St Thomas and Holy Trinity.

It was unfortunate that the “mother” church of St Bartholomew, with its continuous history going back over centuries, should have been the victim of an incendiary attack during the raid of 29th April 1942. As it stood at the time of its destruction it consisted of a square embattled western tower some forty-four feet high, in which were two bells; a nave, without clerestory; north and south aisles; and a chancel. Of the aisles, the north one was built in 1878 as a memorial to Bishop Hall, who died in 1656 while residing in the nearby house now known as the Dolphin inn. A north porch and vestry were removed when this work was carried out. The main entrance to the church was by a doorway in the south aisle, near its western end. The nave and chancel were under one continuous roof, of a simple archbraced type dating from the Victorian restoration.

Most of the furnishings were modern, but the font, split to pieces in the raid, was of the old East Anglian type with four lions sejant around the stem. The eight panels bore the Emblem of the Trinity, Instruments of the Passion, St George’s Cross, and a Cross of Moline, alternating with Tudor roses. The sill of the easternmost window in the south wall of the chancel formed the sedilia, with an angle piscina (pictured below) to the left.

The church, including the tower, was completely burnt out in the raid; only the walls were left standing. The two bells that had hung in the tower crashed to the ground and were rendered quite useless; the treble lost its upper part, and the tenor, falling upside down, had its canons forced into the top of the bell itself.

Among the monuments existing in 1942 was a tablet on the south wall of the chancel to the memory of Bishop Hall. It showed the figure of a skeleton on a black ground holding in one hand a paper on which was written “Debemus Morti, Nos Nostraque” and in its other hand a paper inscribed “Persolvit et Quietus est”. At the foot was the inscription “Josephvs Hallvs olim humilis Ecclesiae Servus”. Other tablets were to the memory of the Hangar, Haylett, Parr, Robins, Seaman, Smith and Unthank families.

In 1949 the future of the churchyard and its ruins was under consideration by the Diocesan Advisory Committee; services were held in the meantime in the disused Nelson Street Methodist Chapel. Four years later the magistrates made an order requiring all necessary action to be taken to make the ruins safe. This meant the demolition of all but the tower. Within six months the work had been done. The tower, which had sustained only slight exterior damage, was unusual and worthy of preservation, if only because it had no freestone quoins - a rare occurrence in East Anglia in a square flint tower. The tower of Beeston Regis church is another example, but there the corners are not so carefully constructed as at Heigham, though larger flints were used.

Repairs to the tower were authorised in January 1976, and six months later the City Council prepared plans to make the churchyard into a public open space. No doubt this had already been foreseen, as on 21st May of the previous year the remains of Bishop Hall had been exhumed from the site of the chancel, and taken to be re-interred in the cloister garth of Norwich Cathedral.

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Paul Welbank's local history of Heigham