The Church stands next to 18 holm oaks (Bale Oaks, National Trust) which were planted to replace the famous Bale Oak, cut down because of decay in 1860. The Bale Oak was 500 years old and 36 feet in circumference and so large that it was reputed not only to have housed a cobbler’s workshop but also to have been used as a pig sty. 

The earliest known Rector of Bale with Gunthorpe  (as the parish then was) was Vincent de Norton in 1303. The earliest parts of the Church date from the 14th Century.  The Chancel,  with a single framed rafter roof, is the oldest part of the Church and dates from about 1300.  

The Nave, Transept Chapel and Tower were built or rebuilt sometime before 1400.  The South East Nave window contains 2000 pieces of beautiful medieval Norwich School glass, collected from other windows and rearranged in 1938, to fill three main and six tracery lights.  

Inside the Church and Tower are other items of interest: including:-

An original pulley block, high in the nave roof, which raised the candle beam to light the rood.   

Historically Bale was once known as Bathley, the “spring in the meadow”.

There is still a spring fed medieval defensive moat (English Heritage), which pottery fragments show as of 12th or 13th century origin.

Folk memory also tells of a Civil War skirmish at Blood Hill on the edge of the old common, at which Cromwell was reputed to have been present.

The Bale Oak itself was featured in “The Illustrated London News” of 17th May 1845.