North Elmham was one of the early sites of the Bishops of East Anglia - there was a cathedral here for more than a hundred years at the start of the last millennium. In 1073 it was moved to Thetford, and then to Norwich, where both Bishops of East Anglia, Catholic and Protestant, have their cathedrals today. No trace survives of the North Elmham cathedral, which was almost certainly a wooden building. The Normans probably moved the See away from here because this little village in the Wensum valley was simply too remote from their great castles at Thetford and Norwich. Even sleepier today, the graveyard of St Mary is home to wandering sheep and their lambs, and it feels a long way from anywhere. But as if to make up for it, St Mary is a vast Perpendicular church, as big as a small cathedral, a solid and buttressed example of the best that Norfolk craftsmen could do.
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