Saint Peter Church Yaxham, Norfolk Round Tower Church

St. Peters constructed from local Norfolk knapped Flint Stone

Yaxham St. Peter is one of the 124 Norfolk churches built in the round tower structure that still exist, as is St. Peters Church in Repps with Bastwick. An easily recognisable feature in most of these churches is their stone construction round-shaped main towers. The churches that have this type of shape and flint type stone material construction are usually located in places where they lack natural sources of more traditional building stone, therefore they used the flint based stone building materails. Knapped flint stones were too difficult to use for constructing buildings in the standard rectangular manner, so the workers opted for round, thick tower walls instead that could be more easily formed with flint stone. In addition, the churches are situated where raids from enemies of the church usually occurred and the thick round tower walls provided a better defensive position that the more common thinner church walls. Unfortunately, the towers were not particularly useful in defending the churches as in the most part they were too short to provide an adequate defense against enemies, for example marauding Vikings.

Flint Stone Walls of Yaxham Church Round Tower Structure

A common feature in Norfolk Churches,round tower construction from local flint.