ST. BOTOLPH'S CHURCH - STOW BEDON
The church at Stow Bedon is dedicated to St. Botolph; the dedication implies a Saxon origin, which may mean there was an earlier church on the site. St. Botolph was an Anglo-Saxon who was born in the seventh century. After receiving his religious education in France he returned to England to found a Benedictine monastery at a place called Ikenhoo. He also conducted many missionary journeys throughout East Anglia; therefore, it is fitting, perhaps, that this remote church in the East Anglian countryside is dedicated to him.
Location and Early History
The present village of Stow Bedon is a small, quiet and rather scattered residential area, which lies just east of the A1075 Watton to Thetford road. Today it consists of Stow Bedon and Lower Stow Bedon. "Stow" is an Anglo-Saxon word, originally meaning a home or settlement, but later used to denote a place of worship. The manor was owned by the de Bidun family during the thirteenth century. There appear to have been three manor houses in the area during the medieval period, but none of these have survived.
The village contains a wetland or mere, which is now an award-winning conservation area, and which was probably always an important resource for the community. A minor road links it to the small hamlet of Lower Stow Bedon, about 2km to the south-east.
The church of St. Botolph stands on high ground, near the 40m contour line and about 1 km south-east of the modern village. It is quite isolated at the centre of the parish, halfway between the two communities. There are two houses, one the former Victorian school, at the edge of the churchyard. On the opposite side of the church is a poultry farm.
The area is rich in archaeological finds, including Neolithic artefacts and pottery fragments from the Iron Age, Roman, Saxon and Mediaeval periods, but there is no clear evidence of settlements. Four certain and three possible Iron Age pottery fragments have been found near the east end of the church; a trench dug for electricity cables in 1998 exposed a prehistoric flint tool and pottery fragments from the Iron Age, Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon and Mediaeval periods. There appears to be no evidence of early burials close to the church.
There is no mention of the church in Domesday Book, where the manor is referred to as 'Stou'; the name 'Stouwebidun' first appears in the thirteenth century. Edward I gave the benefice to the Abbess of Marham in 1295, and the first recorded vicar is William de Banham in 1303. There were major rebuilding operations in the fourteenth, fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the oldest parts of the church are believed to date from the twelfth century.
It is not known why the settlement has developed at a distance from the church but it may be that it is simply the result of the migration trends which took place in many villages during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Faden's map of Norfolk for 1797 shows the village in its modern location. Lower Stow Bedon does not appear until a later map of 1828, perhaps as a result of the Enclosure Acts of 1814, when the sale of common land into private ownership caused considerable changes in the pattern of settlement
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