St Mary's, Burgh-next-Aylsham

In May 1876 Sir George Gilbert Scott went on an extensive tour of Norfolk where his work, up until then, had been rather sparse. Norwich Cathedral was one of the few great English cathedrals where he had had no involvement. John Brown, the Architect to the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral, died in 1876 and it may have been because of this that Scott felt ‘at liberty to stir’. He met the Diocesan Surveyor, Richard Makilwaine Phipson, who had been one of the successful competitors for a block plan in the Government Offices Competition, and together they designed a particularly fine new east end for the church at Burgh-next-Aylsham, ten miles from Norwich.

Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 (Continium, London, 2001), vol. I, p. 274, vol. II, p. 369.
Clarke, B. F. L., Church Builders of the Nineteenth Century, A Study of the Gothic Revival in England (David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1969), p. 259.
Toplis, I., The Foreign Office, an Architectural History (Mansell Publishing, London and New York, 1987), p. 55.
Pevsner, N. and Wilson, B., Norfolk : Norwich and North-East, Buildings of England (Penguin Books, London, 1997), p. 417, plate 10.