Church Of St Andrew

The Church of St Andrew is a Grade II* parish church located in Congham, dating back to the 13th century and restored in 1873. The building features uncoursed broken and whole flint, along with some Sandringham sandstone, carstone, limestone, and erratics, with stone dressings and a roof covered in plain tiles. The church comprises a west tower, nave, and chancel all in one structure.

The west tower is a three-stage square design topped with an embattled brick parapet and diagonal buttresses. It has a 19th-century west doorway and a window above it featuring two cusped lights under a quatrefoil. The second stage includes small pierced limestone soundholes, with trefoil openings on the north and west sides and a quatrefoil on the south. The bell openings are adorned with Y tracery and infilled with honeycomb brickwork.

The nave has large figure kneelers on the west side. The south nave features a double hollow chamfer on the south doorway and three small windows with two trefoil-headed lights under a quatrefoil; the westernmost window is original, while the eastern windows have renewed heads. The north nave has a plain chamfered doorway and a two-light window to the west with plate tracery of a quatrefoil. The central window consists of three trefoil ogee-headed lights under a segmental arch, and the eastern window matches that of the south nave.

The chancel has a gable parapet with a cross and diagonal buttresses. The east window, dating from the 19th century, has three lights with geometric tracery, while the north window features three lights with transomed panel tracery above the central light and quatrefoils above the flanking lights. The south chancel has two windows with two trefoil-headed lights under a quatrefoil, with renewed mullions and heads. Below the eastern window is a small rectangular opening, and there is a buttress to the left.

Inside, the tall tower arch has polygonal shafts and a double hollow chamfered arch. There is a screen and doors to the arch made of 17th-century panelling with a carved frieze. The church contains a 13th-century octagonal font with a Purbeck marble bowl featuring shallow blank arcading on the splayed faces, supported by a base and stem with eight granite columns dated 1864. There is a piscina in the east wall with a trefoil-headed ogee arch, and several Tournai marble ledger slabs, some of which are heraldic. The oak reredos features a relief of vine trees and the cross, while the wine glass pulpit, made of floral open panels, both date from around 1897 and were crafted by the Royal Carving School at Sandringham.