Memento Mori Monday: This fragment of a gravestone is kept at The Norwich Historic Churches Trust’s Visitor Centre at St Martin-at-Palace Church on Bishopgate in Norwich (find out more HERE).
The NHCT has been looking after 18 of the city’s medieval churches that are no longer used for religious worship since 1973, including St Michael at Plea (now a bookshop and tearoom), St Peter Parmentergate (now a skating arena), St James at Pockthorpe (the Puppet Theatre) and St Gregory’s (now an antiques centre).
The fragment is from St Michael and All Angels in Bowthorpe, which is now ruined. Redundant since the 16th century, the formerly round-towered church is believed to have been used as a barn until in the 1790s the church collapsed and fell into ruin.
The tower was then used as a brick-filled oven and by the 1900s, became a home for pigs. There are stories that claim that during excavations in the 1980s, a skeleton was found in the oven.
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