In a deserted village, in a deserted church once used for Satanic rituals and brought back from the dead by an angel, two ghostly guardians watch over this hilltop house of worship.
Lonely St Mary’s church on the outskirts of North Pickenham once served Houghton town, a vanished village where the remaining buildings fell to the wrecking ball in 1994.
The church is all that remains of this lost village, that and the two ghosts (at least!) that have made it their home.
In addition to two ghostly robed monks who have been seen by numerous visitors, investigators have also reported seeing shadowy figures moving inside the church, heard footsteps and breathing and felt the touch from an invisible hand.
Left to ruination in 1937, St Mary’s, this is a church where the dead were disturbed and desecrated, but which has been brought back to life by love.
The remarkable man who saved this beautiful church in the middle of fields was Bob Davey MBE, who sadly passed away in 2021, but who painstakingly restored St Mary’s over decades.
Forlorn, forgotten and derelict, Bob’s wife Gloria discovered the church hidden in dense undergrowth while out walking with her Women’s Institute group in June 1992.
She had spotted some gravestones and, curious, scrambled through the ivy and inside a ruined church where she found symbols of Satanic worship: an altar, the number 666 scratched on a wall and a goat-headed image on another.
The 11th century building once served a now deserted medieval village at Houghton-on-the-Hill, near Swaffham and stood close to the Peddar’s Way.
It had been struck by a German bomb, torn apart by American GIs and used by devil worshippers – it had no roof, door or windows and was filled with rubbish.
Gloria told Bob, who was churchwarden at North Pickenham, about her find and, horrified that the church was being used by devil-worshippers, he took action the next day, cutting down the ivy and trees which had hidden the church from view.
Satanists had, it is said, ransacked the grave of a former rector, stealing his bones and were using the church for night-time rituals: so Bob guarded the building at night, particularly when there was a full moon.
After two years of solo vigils, a death threat, the church walls being smeared with blood and surviving a car being driven at him, Bob was joined by local Territorial Army soldiers for Winter Solstice who provided him with back-up. The Satanists disappeared.
Bob built a new access road by hand, cleared vegetation, organised repairs, hunted down the church’s original furnishings and uncovered original wall paintings hidden under plaster.
As he patched a wall in 1996, a lump of plaster fell: “The first thing I saw was the head of an angel,” he said. Bob had discovered 16th century painted texts from Queen Elizabeth’s reign and underneath them, wall paintings from the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries.
On an unofficial St Mary's website last updated in 2010, the tale of the church’s other guardians is told.
Sir Robert Neville, who was buried in the long-since demolished south aisle following his execution in Yorkshire on the orders of Henry III.
He was sentenced to death for holding a “criminal conversation” with a lady “of certain standing” – believed to be the Queen.
Robert’s wife, Lady Mary, had a house built near to the church for two Carmelite Friars, who said daily mass for her husband’s soul. This continued until the house fell victim to Henry VIII’s anti-monastic campaign.
But the monks remained and have been seen ever since, particularly while restoration works were being carried out, including three times in 2003, including during a Christmas prayer meeting and to craftsmen who were restoring the north window.
The website recounts two tales.
“During one of the official tours, a visitor approached Bob and asked: ‘who is the rude, robe-wearing official’ who had ignored his questions and simply walked off without even speaking? The visitor had been near the south door at the time – one can only surmise he had had a chance meeting with one of the Carmelite monks.
“A farm worker while following the combine in the field to the east, flew out of his tractor, shouting and waving his fists, certain that the combine had almost run someone over…yet there was no one there.
“He ran over to Bob who was busy tending the [church] garden to enquire if he had seen ‘the stupid bloke in the long brown coat walking in front of the combine’? Where had he gone? He could have been killed!
“Bob’s simple reply was that. You could not kill someone who was already dead.”
* The official website for St Mary's with details about the church, its trustees and its opening times can be found here www.houghtonstmarys.org.uk.
Do you have a story for Weird Norfolk? Email stacia.briggs@archant.co.uk.
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