Cornerstones
East Harling is a very small south Norfolk market town, whose most remarkable possession is its medieval church. Its tower was built in the 14th century but given a facelift a century later when the rest of the church was reconstructed, notably its battlements and lead spirelet. In the early 18th century, the Rev. Francis Blomefield, the pioneering Norfolk historian, saw records that have since disappeared and noted that the steeple was “finished” in 1449.
The rebuilding campaign was led not by a vicar or a knight but by a remarkable lady, Anne Herling Chamberlain Wingfield. The daughter of a soldier, she was born around 1426 but lost her father, Sir Robert, in 1435; he was killed defending Paris, at a time when the English were fighting to retain a toehold in France.
Anne Herling suddenly became a very rich heiress. While still no more than a girl, she was married in 1438 to another soldier, Sir Richard Chamberlain, who like her father was busy fighting in France, ending in his captivity. Anne was a dutiful daughter; shortly after the time that Sir Richard returned from Normandy, a license was granted in 1447 for the foundation of a chantry in this church, fulfilling the wishes of Sir Robert Herling.
Anne oversaw its construction as a chapel at the east end of the south aisle, but went far beyond that as she rebuilt the chancel and nave, with two aisles, and hammerbeam roof and clerestory; and building the chapel of her patron, Saint Anne, at the end of the north aisle — in other words, virtually the whole church. Sir Robert had a tomb recess in his chantry, though the effigy there is not now his.
We know this from two documents. In her will of 1498, Anne asked “to be buryed in the chapell of Seint Anne, joyned to the chauncell of the churche of the holy appostellys of Seint Peter and Paule in Estharlyng, in the tombe wt my late worshypfull husbond, Sir William Chamberleyn [her first husband, who died in 1462], accordyng to my promyse made unto hym afore this tyme.”
Still in its original location linking the chancel with the north chapel, this tomb was also intended to play its part in the Holy Week liturgy as a support for an Easter Sepulchre. In the Middle Ages, deceased benefactors to a church were prayed for at the parish Mass on Sunday, with the reading of what was known as the “bede roll,” a list of people who had given to that church.
These bede rolls hardly ever survived, but in the 17th century someone copied the (already damaged) early 16th-century East Harling bede roll. The original document is now lost, but the copy survives. It says of her: “whyche gode lady dede edify ye body of thys newe [sic] church … and bore at hir owyn charge alle maner costys for stuff, masonrye … and werkemanshepe,” and recording in considerable detail the parts she had built.
It was not just a matter of wood and stone. Around 1460, Anne Harling called in the top makers of stained glass in Norfolk, the workshop of John Wighton in Norwich. Among the windows they glazed was the east window of the Harling chantry chapel, which was provided with numerous scenes of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
These have had an almost miraculous survival, being taken down at different times to protect them from Puritans and Adolf Hitler (among others) and now reside in the east window of the chancel. So today you can admire the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity (with two midwives), the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, Christ among the Doctors, the Wedding at Cana, the Betrayal in Gethsemane, the Crucifixion, the Pietà, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost, and the Assumption of the Virgin. Among the other details are kneeling figures of two knights. One is Sir William Chamberlain, and the other is her second husband, Sir Robert Wingfield, who died in 1480. In 1491, Anne Harling was to marry a third time to John, Lord Scrope of Bolton, who died before her, by a few weeks, in 1498.
Let no one tell you that women were invisible and had no influence in the Middle Ages. Anne Herling Wingfield was the driving force behind the building of a masterpiece of Gothic art that still inspires us, over five centuries after its creation.
Dr. Simon Cotton is honorary senior lecturer in chemistry at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and a former churchwarden of St. Giles, Norwich, and St. Jude, Peterborough. He is a member of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.