St. Edmund's Chapel, Lyng

The ruins of St. Edmund's Chapel are located in a field to the east of the village of Lyng, Norfolk, England.

The chapel was formerly part of a Benedictine nunnery. It is unknown when the chapel was built, but the nuns moved away to Thetford in 1176. However we know that chapel was not abandoned. There is a glimpse of the chapel preserved in the Bodleian MS 240.[1]This dates from the 1370s, when in the space of five years there were seven miracles connected with the chapel. These mostly involved accidents in the surrounding villages, such as Bylaugh, Scarning and Sparham, but one involved a man from Kent whose wife was cured of paralysis. The ruins of the chapel which remain are not extensive but obviously date from after the removal of the nuns to Thetford; the window arches incorporate brick work which is probably fifteenth century. It is possible that it remained in use until the reformation. It was probably a chapel of ease for the hamlet of Lyng Eastaugh, in which it lies.

A newspaper article[2] records a tradition concerning the chapel. It was said that it was founded for the nuns to pray for the souls of those killed in a battle between the Danes and king Edmund’s Anglo-Saxons. It stands next to a wood whose name appears in a nineteenth century tithe map as King’s Grove. The wood contains a boulder – an erratic of conglomerate stone, left in the moraine of a retreating glacier. The stone is about 2 metres long by 1 metre wide, and is named St Edmund’s Stone on the map which accompanies the newspaper article.

When the nuns left Lyng in the twelfth century they retained the income derved from holding the annual fair on 20 November (St Edmund’s day). This fair long outlived the nunnery; it survived into the last quarter of the nineteenth century and is mentioned in Parson Woodforde’s diary.[3] There was also a guild of St Edmund in the village.


Sources

  1. ↑ T. Arnold (ed.), Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, Vol III (London, 1896) pp. 327-35
  2. ↑ In the Eastern Daily Press 13 March 1939, p.13.
  3. ↑ John Beresford (ed.), The Diary of a Country Parson, the Reverend James Woodforde vol.III (Oxford, 1927) p.228.

Coordinates: 52°42′51″N 1°04′39″E / 52.7141°N 1.0775°E / 52.7141; 1.0775


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