St Mary in the Marsh

So this church has illuded me for some time. I think half of the problem was the fact that the church no longer existed having been demolished in the 1500s, as I expected to see some trace of it in the form of ruins or small flint wall sections however there was no trace of this church. 

Some information about this church had come to my attention and so I discussed it with a couple of my friends and on many occassions we looked over the information about the church and its location to see if we could determine the location with respect to the current buildings.

The information I had come across narrowed down our search to the cathedral close as we had found out that the Church of St Mary in the Marsh had been the parish church for the cathedral close or precinct as it would have been known. The church was used constantly and had been extended and rebuilt over the years until in 1564 it was closed and demolished at which point the materials were sold off. However on the plaque in the cathedral close it says that the church was not demolished until 1775. I ponder that this may have been when the final traces of the building were removed.

However the story does not end there and the parish of St Mary in the Marsh continued after this time and still continues to this day. Rather than redrawing parish boundaries after the church was closed, the bishop of Norwich gave permission for one of the side chapels of the cathedral could be used as the parish church instead. The other interesting point about this is that the font from the church was brought over to the new location and still sits in St Luke's chapel at Norwich cathedral.

Well to finish this post off I can say that during a stroll about looking for more forgotten histories, I came across a plaque within the upper close of the Cathedral displaying the location of the church. This I have to say made me very happy. I had finally found the location of the church I had been searching for, for several months. To my annoyance though, I suddenly realised I had strolled past this plaque several time in search of the site. As they say you find things when you are not looking for them!