Church of St John the Baptist

St John the Baptist and St Mary's Church is the parish church of Stiffkey, on the north Norfolk coast — a Grade I listed medieval church whose double dedication recalls the curious fact that two churches once stood in its single churchyard, and whose name is forever joined to the most extraordinary scandal in twentieth-century English church history: Harold Davidson, the Rector of Stiffkey, defrocked in 1932 and killed by a lion in Skegness.

The dedication tells the older story. Historically there were two churches in the churchyard — St John's and St Mary's. St Mary's was deconsecrated in 1563 and abandoned, and St John's was then renamed to carry both dedications. The surviving building is largely Perpendicular, though the west tower and the charnel are earlier; the chancel is late thirteenth or early fourteenth-century. The four-bay Perpendicular nave carries a flushwork parapet in the great Norfolk manner, and rood stairs survive on the south side. Among the monuments is a wall memorial to Nathaniel Bacon — of the Stiffkey Hall family, the half-brother of Francis Bacon — dating from before 1615 and possibly by Maximilian Colt, sculptor of Elizabeth I's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The organ was built by the Positive Organ Company, maker of small, mobile one-manual instruments well suited to small churches; the firm traded from 1898 to 1941, which brackets its date, and it was rebuilt in 1954 by Williamson & Hyatt of Trunch.

The benefice has gathered neighbouring parishes for centuries: Stiffkey was consolidated with All Saints, Morston in 1769; with St Andrew and St Mary, Langham Episcopi in 1972; with All Saints Cockthorpe (now redundant, in the care of the Norfolk Churches Trust) and the great Binham Priory in 1976; and in 2003 with Gunthorpe, Bale, Field Dalling, Saxlingham and Sharrington to form the present Benefice of Stiffkey and Bale.

But it is the clergy list that makes Stiffkey famous — and not only for Davidson. Theophilus Lowe, Rector from 1736 to 1769, held a canonry of Windsor in plurality. Lord Frederick Townshend, Rector from 1792 to 1836, was a younger son of Field Marshal George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend — and the central figure of a Georgian gothic tragedy. In May 1796 his brother Lord Charles Townshend was elected MP for Yarmouth; the brothers attended the declaration together and then raced to London in a carriage and four. On arrival on 27 May, Lord Charles's body was discovered in the coach, shot dead, and Lord Frederick was arrested for his murder. Judged insane, he was confined from 1806 at Hadham Palace — the former country house of the Bishops of London at Much Hadham, by then a lunatic asylum — where he remained until his death in 1836. Yet through all those thirty years he remained Rector of Stiffkey, the services taken by curates. His successor but one, George Townshend Hudson (Rector 1842–45), was his nephew, and brother of Sir James Hudson, ambassador to Piedmont-Sardinia in the Risorgimento years.

And then Harold Davidson, Rector from 1906 to 1932. Born to an ecclesiastical family in 1875, Davidson first pursued a career as a stage comedian before attending Exeter College, Oxford, and being ordained in 1903. Appointed to Stiffkey with Morston in 1906, he became obsessed with rescuing "fallen girls," and spent every week from Monday to Saturday in London ministering to young prostitutes — returning to Norfolk only for Sunday duties. His conduct led to a falling-out with the Morston churchwarden, a complaint to the Bishop of Norwich, and a sensational consistory court hearing in 1932 that transfixed the national press. Found guilty of five counts of immorality, Davidson was defrocked — he protested his innocence to the end — and returned to the stage, first at Blackpool and eventually at Skegness, where he performed a Daniel in the lions' den routine with an elderly, toothless lion named Freddie. The lion attacked him, and he died of his injuries in 1937. He was buried in the churchyard at Stiffkey, where the inscription on his grave defiantly describes him as "Priest." His own war memorial commission survives inside the church: a wall tablet depicting Calvary.

Later rectors add their own colour: Charles Harold Fitch (1932–42), the voice of Norfolk in a British Drama League dialect series; Victor Jagg (1946–55), awarded the Military Cross in 1919; and Cecil Cullingford (1968–71), Headmaster of Monmouth School and a noted speleologist whose books — Exploring Caves, British Caving, A Manual of Caving Techniques and The Science of Speleology — made him a founding author of the sport's literature. The churchyard holds, besides Davidson, the large stone Celtic cross of Eugene Sweny, Rector 1883–1906, and the graves of Aubrey Buxton, Baron Buxton of Alsa (1918–2009) — the naturalist and broadcaster who co-founded Anglia Television's Survival — and his first wife Pamela. Two churches' worth of dedication, a mad lord, a martyred showman-priest and a caving headmaster: few villages of Stiffkey's size have given the Church of England so much story.