The Churchyard

As you leave the church, do look back at the jambs of the doorway of the porch, which are adorned with flowers and heads. Frequently the heads depicted a caricature of the face of the builder’s foreman. As in the majority of East Anglian church porches, that of Tibenham is built on the south side as a protection for the door from the prevailing south west gales.

The tower has a handsome chequered pattern base and buttresses and is crowned, not with pinnacles, but with the emblems of the four evangelists; a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle. The north wall contains traces of Saxon flint work and the remains of two small narrow windows with flint arches, pointing to a church having stood here before the conquest (1066).

The War Memorial was unveiled on 13th April 1920. Twenty-one names are recorded of the brave men who died in the 1914 - 1918 war. Three names were added after the 1939 - 1945 war. The oldest gravestone is a 4ft high tabletop brick built tomb dated 1731 32. The earliest conventional gravestone is dated 1745. A graveyard survey, including that of the village Baptist Chapel has been carried out. For details of the graveyard survey, please . The iron “pales” around the churchyard were hand made by John Smith in 1731. Only those on the south and east sides remain today.

Restoration work on the church to date has been undertaken with help from English Heritage, The Norfolk Churches Trust, The Historic Churches Preservation Trust and the villagers of Tibenham.

This text was prepared by Tibenham Parochial Church Council with assistance from Dr P Cattermole - December 1995