St John the Baptist, Hellington

YOU know you’re seriously off the beaten track when the cow parsley in the church yard is almost as tall at the arches in the porch. This is St John the Baptist at Hellington, a hamlet near, well, near nowhere that anybody’s heard of really. It’s close to Carleton St Peter, which is close to Claxton in a soft underbelly of Wherryman’s Way land where a church appears around every corner – despite a lack of obvious communities nearby.  I often drive home along these lanes as a gentler alternative to the A146. The porch, incidentally, is the highlight of the church. It baffles the experts who can’t work out when it was built – estimates vary from medieval to Victorian  - though Simon Knott has come up with a customarily erudite solution to an architectural mystery. For more go to his excellent Norfolk churches website.