This church building is managed by Norfolk Churches Trust.

The word ‘remote’ has figured more than once in the description of the churches covered so far in these descriptions of the Norfolk Churches Trust’s leased churches. It could only be that Lady Harrod loved the churches in the landscape of Norfolk and the more remote and isolated they happened to be the more she resolved to take them into the Trust’s care if they became redundant. There can be few more remote than romantic little Barmer, All Saints. It sits off the road near Fakenham, about 250 yards across a field in a copse of oaks and chestnuts. It is invisible from the road apart from a glimpse of its rather squat round tower through the trees. There are supposed to be traces of a Saxon hamlet, but nothing further is known of any village. Could it have been lost as a result of the plague? We shall never know. Whatever happened to the village, the church survived after a fashion. In 1602 it was already a ruin and so it remained for nearly 300 years. Then in 1885 the Kerslake family decided to turn it into a mausoleum and employed the well-known Victorian architect Frederick Preedy to restore the church. What exists today is largely Preedy’s work, but there are glimpses of its earlier history. The round tower is Norman, but the origins may have been Saxon as indicated by the flint quoins at the west end of the nave. The chancel arch is 12th century, the nave 13th century. The church was finally declared redundant in 1970 and was taken over by the Norfolk Churches Trust in 1978.