Set amid private woodlands, noted for woodcock and lilies of the valley, the church was here in Norman times and surely earlier than that, since the western corner of the nave and part of the south wall are constructed of conglomerate stone – which is normally indicative of Saxon stonework (as at the cathedral at North Elmham).  

St.Edmund

The church was named after Edmund, King of East Anglia, who in AD 870 was captured by the Danes, tied to a tree near the little bridge in Hoxne, north Suffolk – and shot full of arrows until his body was “like a thistle covered with prickles”. (And to this day newly-weds will not cross the bridge on their wedding day). The King lay buried at Hoxne for 33 years. He was canonised and moved to Bury St.Edmund’s.

On the outside of the west wall, below the window, is an attractive niche with ogee-shaped top, which probably once contained a little statue of the martyred King. 

De Nuiers

The south wall here still contains the top of a Norman doorway. The name de Novers, de Nowers, De Noers, de Nodarijs, or more correctly de Nuiers was of Norman origin.  

Building and Re-Building

The tower was built in the 1200s, and in the 1300s, the belfry, the font and a piscina  - the last two both marked with the distinctive monogram “N” (misread by some as a “W”), which simply must be for de Nuiers. And, at that time (as Dutt has it), the church “was refashioned”. 

Major restoration took place in 1821 (of the dilapidated chancel and tower) and in 1881 (when a north aisle with arcading was added, and a south porch was built to replace the decrepit old north porch) and again – when the church was literally about to fall down - in 1960. The first two benefactors are commemorated as under:

• John Dew - grand marble memorial in the chancel, 1832
• Charles Atkinson – altar tomb near the south porch, 1895

American visitors, aware that at Jamestown, Virginia, in the early 1600s John Rolfe from Heacham near Kings Lynn, married the Indian Chief’s daughter, Pocahontas, are quick to notice the memorial in the chancel to the son of the Revd. George Rolfe: Captain Philip Rolfe, Army Service Corps, attached to the 7th Battalion the Norfolk Regiment, who was killed in action in 1918 in World War I in France.