Acle, Norfolk

St Mary Church, Fishley

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Current Rector Rev Martin Greenland, The Rectory, Norwich Road, Acle NR133BU 01493 750393 rector@aclechurch.plus.com Fundraising Events The Church is open each Friday between 10am-3pm, with Lunchtime prayers at noon led by Rev Martin Greenland. Many other fundraising events are being planned and details will be made available here shortly.

History King Athelstan, like his grandfather King Alfred the Great, was a remarkable ruler. He was able to unite most of present-day England, regaining much of the North-East from Viking rule. (Under his rule many descendants of Vikings remained on their land. These included the inhabitants of some of the villages which still have their round tower churches. The name ending in -by is a pointer to a Viking settlement.) In 937 King Athelstan issued a law laying down what was needed for a local leader to claim the status of thegn (as in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor). One requirement was that the thegn’s land must have a bell tower on it. It is possible that some of our round towers owe their existence to this decree. There is evidence that a few of them were built onto pre-existing churches. There is discussion about how many of the surviving round tower churches date from Saxon times before the Norman Conquest of 1066. The founder of the Round Tower Churches Society, W.J.Goode, spent many years studying the churches and favours a high figure. Recent work by expert and RTCS Council Member Stephen Hart places the number rather lower. He calculates that there are 181 old churches with visible round towers in England, including those attached to ruins and those that have lost their upper stages. He says that in Norfolk there are 22 definitely Saxon round tower churches, 10 with an overlap of Saxon and Norman features, and 25 definitely Norman out of the 126 in total in the county. The church of Fishley St Mary was built around 950. What to See Inside the Church has an organ - as there is no electricity - has still to be handled manually (two people are needed, one operating the bellow).