"We are a welcoming church"

I spent last week in Norfolk and will be talking a bit about that in the coming days. To get me in the frame of mind (perhaps), here's a grouse! I had no idea that the Norfolk town churches are sometimes so huge, arising from the considerable wealth of the region towards the end of the Middle Ages. They vary in 'churchmanship', as you can sometimes pick out from the fantastic Norfolk Churches website maintained by Simon Knott; St Nicholas, North Walsham, is moderately Anglo-Catholic, with its statue of its patron saint surrounded by candles, as is St Michael's Aylsham, the only church where I've ever seen the traditional Epiphany cypher (20+C+M+B+14, this year) chalked on the wall; St Peter Mancroft in Norwich is the grandest of civic churches; SS Peter & Paul, Cromer, is evangelical, with a fabric 'flame' rippling away in a side chapel to encourage visitors to reflect on the action of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

I'm less sure about the stance of the two biggest churches of all, as St Nicholas Dereham and St Nicholas Great Yarmouth (popular dedication in Norfolk, it seems) were both resolutely shut. I went to Dereham mainly to see the holy well of St Withburga which rises just west of the church, and was frankly shocked to find the colossal building closed. It's rather ironic in view of the edition of the Ecclesiastical Insurance newsletter I found waiting for me when I got home - Ecclesiastical is the not-for-profit Church of England insurance company - which contained a series of articles encouraging churches to stay open, even if it meant (as one correspondent described) 'walking away leaving the door unlocked for the first time'. I sometimes find closed churches put up a note for visitors blaming the insurers for the building being locked, which isn't true. Dereham displays its mission statement, 'to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with our community' (or similar words) on its noticeboard, and I'm afraid I mentally made several uncharitable amendments to this.

Great Yarmouth church - which calls itself a 'minster', inaccurately but not unreasonably considering it's the biggest parish church in England by floor area, is even more vast, and even more closed. When I arrived in the town there was a graduation ceremony or something going on, so I thought I'd come back on my way back to the car park. I did, and found it shut. Walking around the building, and noting the positively terrifying west front two of whose three towering gables you can see in this picture, I discovered this is the only church I've ever encountered which has barbed wire around the roof. True, it's only around the flat roofs of the vestries at the east end, but even so. Are the residents of Yarmouth really that bad? To judge by the style of the little plastic signs which warn potential ne'er-do-wells about the barbed wire, it's been up there possibly since the late '70s. The wire, which is that type with razor blades rather than spikes, is now rusting nicely so trespassers run the risk of tetanus as well as lacerations.

I note that Simon Knott hasn't been able to get into Yarmouth Minster yet, either.