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The deserted medieval village of Bixley
Not much is known about the village of Bixley, which spread out between the church of St Wandregesilius, then a small chapel, in the north and Bixley Hall, further to the south. In what today is a large sheep pasture, a number of earthworks can still be discerned in the vicinity of the church and several house and building platforms, ponds and banked and ditched boundaries have been identified. One of the holloways runs parallel to the old course of the Norwich to Bungay Road and another extends south-westwards from the church. At least four of the ponds were expanded for clay and gravel extraction.
The Bixley Estate is currently owned by the Colman family. Bixley Hall was built by the Ward family who settled there in the mid sixteenth century and lived here for 200 years. By the 19th century the house had become so dilapidated that it had to be pulled down. Today only a few walls - see Link and Link - remain on the moated site situated about one kilometre to the south-east of the village church.
The medieval chapel which until the 16th century stood at the location of the current church, dedicated to St Wandregesilius, was situated on a pilgrim route and contained an important statue of the saint. The current church dates from the 1860s, with the only part originating from the old chapel being the body of the tower. The church stands at the end of a track turning off the busy B1332 (Norwich Road). The historian Arthur Mee describes a simple screen with tracery above bays open to the floor and memorials to the Wards, one of Bixley's old families, and he mentions an Elizabethan monument depicting a sculptured group in prayer. All this went up in smoke in May 2004, when the church was destroyed by a fire, believed to have been started deliberately. 15 years later, nothing seems to have come of the plans for rebuilding the church.
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