The dedication of Downham Market church is to St. Edmund. According to Linnell, Rev. C.L.S. Norfolk Church Dedications (St. Anthony’s Press, York, 1962) this dedication comes ninth in the rank order of Norfolk church dedications, the county’s churches having a total of 21 with this dedication (top of the rank order, as across most of the country, is St. Mary, 196 Norfolk churches, and second All Saints, 153). However, across the whole country Rev. Linnell notes that St. Edmund as a dedication doesn’t come in the top 18 of dedications. For a possible explanation one needs to research the man himself.
Although Edmund was king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia from 855-869 the only surviving reference to him is from part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written decades after his death. Here legend has it that a Danish army invading East Anglia beat Edmund, shot him with arrows (see picture above from a medieval illuminated manuscript) before beheading him, this, allegedly, because he would not renounce his Christian faith. Through the Middle Ages the status of patron saint of England was shared by Edmund, Edward the Confessor and George, during the reign of the boy-king Edward VI (Reformation) all saints banners were banned except for that of St. George.
As speculated in the last blog the present church of St. Edmund’s, Downham Market may well stand on the site of a much earlier church, perhaps late Saxon, and even though church dedications could change over time, it seems likely that the church’s dedication has a real historical context.