Gillian Higham

In June 1992, Gloria Davey pushed through dense undergrowth during a Women’s Institute walk in Norfolk and found gravestones. Behind them was a church almost swallowed by ivy. She got inside. By then the roof was failing, the tower was cracked, burial vaults had been exposed and the abandoned building showed signs of satanic use. Her husband Bob was a retired agricultural engineer and a churchwarden. When Gloria told him what she had found at St Mary’s, Houghton-on-the-Hill, he decided he could not leave a consecrated church that way. He began clearing the churchyard. Then the church. What started as tidying became the work of the rest of his life. With a few volunteers and support from Norfolk County Council, Bob cut back the ivy, repaired walls, reroofed the nave and chancel, put glass back in the windows, laid a floor and rebuilt the north doorway. The bell tower was repaired too. The original bell was found, lifted back into place and rang for the Millennium. Then, in 1996, the restoration changed completely. A contractor noticed paint in a corner of the nave. According to Bob, when plaster came away, “The first thing I saw was the head of an angel.” Beneath later plaster were layers of medieval paintings, including an extraordinary late-11th-century scheme now regarded as one of the most complete early medieval sets in Britain. Some may date to around 1090. The east wall includes a rare early image of the Trinity and Last Judgement. A church that had been left open to rain and ivy was holding Christian art that had survived for roughly nine centuries without anyone understanding what was still there. Experts stepped in. In 2006 the Friends of St Mary’s received £191,500 from the Heritage Fund for conservation of the wall paintings. Bob had already spent years doing work himself, finding money and persuading others to help. He later received an MBE for services to church restoration. St Mary’s is still a consecrated Anglican church. Volunteers care for it, welcome visitors and keep the place open, and worship returned after decades of silence. The deserted medieval village around Houghton-on-the-Hill largely disappeared. Its little church survived — and because one couple refused to walk past a ruin, so did a remarkable thousand-year record of Christian faith.