Village Church

St James Church SOUTH ELMHAM

WELCOME to St James, which is set in an unspoilt and idyllic comer of North Suffolk. It is one of the six South Elmham parishes (villages where to elms grew), each named after its church's Patron Saint, which- together with the four adjacent Ilketshalls - are known locally as 'The Saints'.

What were once seven South Elmham parishes, together with nearby Flixton and Homersfield, made up the ancient deanery and township ( or desmesne ), given to the Bishops of Dunwich who evangelised this part of Suffolk, and subsequent Bishops of East Anglia held all the South Elmham deanery manors. The remains of the Saxon minster church may be seen in the neighbouring parish of St Cross. It is thought that the Bishops transferred their centre of activity to North Elmham, Norfolk, about 750, then to Thetford in 1075 and finally to Norwich in 1094.

The church has a sequestered and idyllic SETTING, along a short lane from The Street, beside the old school, built in 1860 and with the initials carved in stone of Sir Robert Shafto Adair who gave it. Rising from its green, tree-shaded churchyard rise the flint-rubble walls of the parish's oldest building by far, which is still in active use as a nucleus of Christian worship and witness, the purpose for which it was built some 900 years ago.