St Mary's Church, Elsing

Elsing is recorded as having a church, endowed with 18 acre of land, in the Domesday Book of 1086. The church was rebuilt by Sir Hugh de Hastings, and his wife Margaret in around 1330 to a single uniform plan. Sir Hugh, whose maternal grandfather was the powerful earl Hugh le Despenser, was summoned to parliament by King Edward III, with whom he was on good terms and who seems to have been a mourner at Hugh's funeral, as shown on his monumental brass. Some masonry from an earlier church survives in the west wall of the nave. Wall paintings discovered around 1860 and subsequently plastered over showed four scenes in the story of John the Baptist in 14th-century style. The first scene, which…

The church is built of flint with stone dressings and stands at the centre of a rectangular churchyard. The tower at the western end has battlements with an early example of flushwork panelling. The bell openings have reticulated tracery, with two minor reticulation units within the major one. The nave and chancel have battlemented parapets and a pantiled roof built in 1781, supported by kingposts on arched ties, which solved earlier problems caused by the width of the nave. The nave has three large three-light windows on each side with Curvilinear tracery based on the petal motif. The west door is of Perpendicular style opening into the nave through a tall narrow tower arch. There are both…

The church is part of a group of parishes which also includes All Saints, Bawdeswell, St Mary, Bylaugh, St Thomas, Foxley and St Mary, Sparham.