“Saxeling(h)(a)ham/Saxelingaham; Bishop William; Peter de Valognes [or Valoines] and Theodoric from him. Church.”            Domesday Book (1086-7). 

In Saxon times prior to the Domesday Book, William Beaufoe, Bishop of Thetford, held the Manor (estate) of “Saxlingaham” containing a church. The rectors listed date from 1286, but the present church is mainly 15th century.

Peter de Valognes (arms: Argent, 3 pallets, wavy, gules) was nephew of William the Conqueror and married Albreda, sister of Eudo de Rye, Dapifer (Steward) to Henry I.

At the beginning of Henry’s reign, he and his wife founded Binham, and the caput baroniae was at Orford in Suffolk. Peter held 17 Lordships in Norfolk (“and had unlawfully possessed himself of six portions of land by invasion.” 

American Heydons (also spelt Haydon, Hyden, Hiden and Hyten) are drawn to visit here because of the Heydon connection. Indeed there is a Heydon Family Association - with its own family magazine - based at 7911 Yancey Drive, Falls Church, Virginia 22042 [tel: (703) 698-7911]. 

In the 16th century Sir John Heydon of Baconsthorpe was Lord of the Manor here, and built Heydon Hall – where he lived just as much as he did at his 15th century moated Baconsthorpe Castle, a defended manor house, 6 miles away.

The Heydons were big Norfolk landowners, and Sir John himself married Catherine, daughter of Lord Willoughby, a rich and famous family of Parham in Suffolk (and later – in the 1660s the 5th & 6th Barons Willoughby were in turn Governor of Barbados and of the Leeward Islands).  Sir John Heydon died in 1550.                       

Within Norfolk Sir John’s hot-headed, “duel-happy” offspring, Christopher and John the Younger, were, as regards Parliamentary seats, in the faction opposed to the Towshends (Raynham) and the Cokes, while on the national stage they were of the Earl of Essex’s clique. Indeed the tempestuous Earl knighted Christopher at Cadiz in 1587. And John had the dubious honour of being knighted by Essex on his disastrous Irish Campaign in 1599.   

In 1600 Sir Christopher Heydon and Sir John Townshend were brought before the Privy Council in London, because Heydon had challenged Townshend to a duel.  This duel was stopped (although Townshend lost his life in a duel 2-3 years later) – but meanwhile that October outside Norwich, Sir Christopher’s younger brother, Sir John Heydon, fought a duel with the young Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Mansell, in which Sir John fell, grievously wounded, losing a hand – which ended up as a ghoulish exhibit in the Canterbury Museum.  

The grandson of the duellist, another Sir Christopher, a keen astrologer, built an extraordinary monument in the chancel of St.Margaret’s to his first wife, daughter and co heiress of Sir Thomas Rivet, a rich London merchant, Lady Mirabel Rivet - who in 1593 aged 32 died, having borne him 8 children. 

The monument was an Egyptian pyramid covered in hieroglyphics and reached almost to the roof. In 1789 the pyramid was removed, since it had become dilapidated and dangerous, but the central figure survived. Today many visitors, including especially child visitors, come just to see Lady Mirabel kneeling on a tasselled cushion in a canopied niche.

 Her delicate hands clasped together in prayer, our delightful, delicate Elizabethan (1593) alabaster lady in an exquisite embroidered gown, an immaculate ruff around her neck and a tiny hat adorned with a band of flowers perched daintily on her hair, is a gem not to be missed.  

In 1896 the church was in a dreadful state, until two years later the rich and pious squire of Bayfield, Sir Alfred Jodrell, restored it, as one of several local churches he so refurbished. He replaced the roof, the chancel floor, the pews, the pulpit and the lectern.

It was probably before this that it lost its attractive mini-spire, visible in J.B.Ladbroke’s view from the southeast, circa 1823. The wall memorial to the Revd. Sheldon Jodrell (died 1855) with its coloured coats of arms of Jodrell, Rolles, Sheldon, Whetenhall, and Hase is popular with visitors keen on heraldry. 

The manor house east of the church was the home of the Heydons, until it was reduced to a ruin in two fires, the second one in 1901. Still visible on the porch are the arms of Heydon, and - lower left- those of Heydon impaling Willougby of Parham, and - lower right – those of Heydon impaling Drury of Hawstead.