St Mary’s Church took some finding, in the middle of nowhere and I mean nowhere, you drive down the side of a field, through some woods and suddenly you see the church tower.  Its down to a remarkable man, Bob Davey who is 83, and has been restoring St Mary’s in the abandoned medieval village of Houghton-on-the-Hill, near Swaffham, Norfolk, since his wife discovered it while leading a Women’s Institute ramble 20 years ago.

Back in 1992, the church was covered in ivy and had no roof or floor, Mr Davey said it was damaged by a German Zeppelin in the first world war and then followed decades of vandalism.  The nave dates from about 1,000AD and when restoring the building, it was only as layers of whitewash were removed, that the building’s true glory became clear – the oldest wall paintings in the country came to light.  Romanesque wall paintings…