A tour of abandoned Norfolk churches prompts reflections on the future of these sacred buildings in an age of declining faith
They are the ghosts of Easter – past, present and future. The four medieval churches that stand on the 12,140-hectare (30,000-acre) military base known as the Norfolk battle training area near Swaffham have been empty since the whole area was taken over as part of the war effort in 1942, and the 1,000-strong population of the villages they served – West Tofts, Stanford, Langford and Tottington – were forcibly and unhappily removed.
They were never let back in, and the last survivor among the displaced died in 2019. These churches are, as I saw last month when I joined the annual tour that the military allows, relics in a very literal sense of Easters past. Eight decades ago, the main festival of the Christian calendar would have seen their pews full because they were at the very heart of village life, just as Anglicanism was part of the fabric of the nation.
