Irstead

The Archangel and the River Ant

Above the south porch of St Michael's, a stone figure of the archangel fights a serpent. It looks medieval and isn't: David Holgate carved it in 1970. The door beneath it has ironwork on the oak dated to around 1290.

The church is thatched, its flint walls picked out with ashlar dressings, and it stands on a ridge above the River Ant where an early builder would have wanted it. Irstead itself is barely a village. Water wraps it on two sides, the River Ant slides out of Barton Broad just below, and what remains above the waterline is the church and a scatter of riverside houses. The parish council calls it "a great place to escape the world," and the roads bear this out. You reach it down narrow lanes through Neatishead, which has the nearest bus stop.

Boardwalk and Staithe

A signed car park sits between Neatishead and Irstead, and from it an easy kilometre of path leads to a wooden boardwalk that carries you over wet carr woodland to a viewpoint on Barton Broad. This is the second largest of the Norfolk Broads, a flooded medieval peat working that the River Ant was rerouted through in the 1700s to make it navigable. Norfolk Wildlife Trust bought it in 1945. In summer you may see common terns feeding and, with luck, an otter; the wider reserve holds marsh harrier, kingfisher, water vole, swallowtail and Norfolk hawker. The boardwalk is level enough for wheelchairs and there are toilets, but only assistance dogs are allowed past the car park.

The staithe was once a working place, where reed and sedge cut from the marshes were loaded and unloaded. It is quiet now, managed for wildlife rather than trade.

Community Shop and Brew Pub

Irstead has no pub or shop of its own; for both you go to Neatishead. The village shop there, White House Stores, is community-owned. When the original closed in 2011, residents of Neatishead, Irstead and Barton Turf formed a society, bought the freehold and reopened it. It carries the everyday basics along with local honey and artisan bread, and doubles as a ticket office and information point.

The pub is the White Horse Inn, which describes itself as a brew pub and installed a microbrewery in 2015. It pours its own Pell & Co beer alongside the Sunday roast; a recent visitor came away happy with dressed crab on rocket salad with new potatoes, and a meat pie. Dogs are welcome in the bar at any time, with water bowls, though not in the restaurant.

Museums and Church Treasures

If you want a full day out, the RAF Air Defence Radar Museum at Neatishead occupies the original 1942 operations building and runs from the Second World War through the Cold War. Further out there is the Museum of the Broads at Stalham, and How Hill near Ludham, where the wherry Hathor lies at its summer mooring.

Back inside the church, the octagonal font is late 14th century, carved with figures and animals; the 16th-century benches end in poppyheads and animal armrests; a St Christopher survives in fragments on the wall, and the chancel stalls are dated 1663. Sir Francis Palgrave, who founded the Public Record Office and served as its first Deputy Keeper, is buried near the east window. His son Francis Turner Palgrave edited The Golden Treasury.

A Midshipman Remembered

On the wall is an 1811 tablet to Charles Hornor, an Irstead boy of eighteen who died off Madras on his first voyage as a midshipman aboard the Rose.