St Clement's Church, Norwich

St Clement’s Church stands on an island of footways between Fyebridge Street and Colegate, close to Fye Bridge in Norwich. Built of flint with stone and brick dressings under a slate roof, it has a wide aisleless nave, a simple chancel and a west tower with a clock and crenellated parapet. The tower’s clock once spun backwards after a power cut in 2011, a quirk that drew an apology from the Norwich Historic Churches Trust. The church sits beside the river Wensum, sharing its dedication with another lost Norwich church, St Clement Conesford. Its flint walls still show traces of an earlier, narrower nave from the 15th century. The church’s history reaches back to at least the early 11th century, though firm records begin between 1090 and 1121 when it was given to Stoke by Clare Priory. Ownership later passed to Mendham Priory and then to Gonville and Caius College after the Reformation. By the later 19th century it had become one of Norwich’s leading Ritualist churches, switching quickly from extreme evangelicalism. It was made redundant in the 1960s and later served as a place of all-faith prayer under the Reverend Jack Burton from 1977 to 1999. Inside, the nave is three bays wide with a low-pitched roof braced by principals and arch-braced collars. The chancel arch was added after the new nave was built in the 1440s. Four-centred three-light windows with shouldered ogees and quatrefoils light the space, and the south door, once protected by a porch, remains well preserved. The chancel’s side walls were rebuilt, and its two-bay interior holds Perpendicular windows. The tower’s rough flintwork shows where the original nave’s quoins were reused.