I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I knew individuals two counties. But of course there is extra to Norfolk than Norwich, Cromer, Yarmouth and Kings Lynn, as there is to Suffolk than Ipswich, Lowestoft, Stowmarket and Bury St. Edmunds. And so on My good friend, Simon K, runs a fabulous website, which I connection to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church website page he has frequented 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a large amount of church buildings for two counties to share, and several of these churches are ancient, flint built, round towered or have wall paintings, picket roof angels or something really worth the work of heading to see or trying to get out the keyholder to obtain entry.
What I necessarily mean is that there is no way a person who only experienced their own car until finally 1984, and experienced tiny curiosity in churches or parishes could have listened to of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I observed St George from the primary street, I was having a shorter slice to be part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last trip of the 12 months to lowestoft as Mom is now out of medical center and in the treatment of district nurses in purchase to get set back on her toes.
So I observed the tower of St George from about 50 % a mile away, and assumed I had enough time to go around and see inside if I could.
I parked at the finish of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I stroll up the financial institution to the gate into the churchyard, the cleanse strains of the tower, perfectly, towered about me.
In the porch I attempted the door and observed it locked, but the keyholder checklist manufactured it very clear that the closest just one, at Xmas Cottage, was just over the street. So, why not check out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my information in a ledger, a smart measure. But I confirmed by driving licence to prove that I was who I claimed. Very little did I know the smaller village I lived in had been noticed. Additional of that in a minute.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the magnificent pew ends animals of all types, authentic and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only those people of noticeable human type. 1 with the physique of a rooster but a apparent human facial area had been left by itself, thus is the insanity of the puritan’s head.
I made the decision that I would document every pew conclude determine, and a lot of complete pew finishes so amazing that they were being.
There is the feint define of a substantial wall portray, Simon claims it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most extraordinary when freshly painted. There is also a high-quality established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes beneath. It is alarmed, so you cannot appear at them also intently, regrettably, but these kinds of is a signal of the moments.
I took the keys back, and the lady of the property came to discuss to me as she had been explained to by her partner that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is exactly where her spouse and children is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor live in Cliffe. For after there was in fact two Cliffs in Kent, 1 on the Hoo Peninsular, exactly where her family is from, and one particular in the vicinity of to Dover. Several yrs in the past, Cliffe in the vicinity of to Dover was known as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further more north. I explained this to her, but claimed St Helen in Cliffe is one particular of my favourite Kent church buildings, crafted of alternate levels of black and light-weight flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
While St George in this article in Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church, it is in a lousy condition of repair, and is thanks to be built redundant in the new calendar year. Generally unfortunate when that takes place to a parish church, but it is very likely to be taken more than by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to preserve it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are as well aged.
Stowlangtoft is a amazing church and so glad am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to visit it. Go to see it now ahead of it is also late!
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In the summer of 2003, this website turned a 6-part sequence on BBC Radio Suffolk. Some thing I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a truthful sum of correspondence. Referring to the way lots of churches were being restored in the 19th century, I observed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval even when the real furnishings and fittings are medieval, the whole piece is nonetheless a Victorian conception.
Folks wrote to me and explained factors like “but in that circumstance, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “believe that absolutely nothing is as it very first seems, as Sherlock Holmes claimed”. And if he didn’t, then he ought to have performed.
A primary example of a church that assumes a continuity that may not actually be the reality is listed here in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This portion of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak, in particular in late Oct, but England’s greatest summer months and autumn for decades had left the churchyard here verdant and golden, as attractive a place as any I would viewed that year. The church is massive, and sits on a mound that has been minimize down on one side by the road. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never ever fails to move me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett suggests of it that it simply cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the classes of the mere intellect and sings to us of our further self.
Overwhelmed as you may possibly be by it, do not fall short to spot the broken window tracery that has been made use of to build the wall here, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you will not know, is one particular of the excellent Suffolk churches. Although it may well externally surface a little extreme, and is by no indicates as grand as Blythburgh, Very long Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure home of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in a person go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not nevertheless whole of the ‘walls of glass’ self confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and possibly even renewed, which may possibly reveal why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. However, it isn’t going to take substantially to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it might be that the broken tracery is from the authentic church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall is just not medieval, so where experienced it been all all those a long time?
A further survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some concerns. Unusually, it characteristics a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ getting on the westwards face. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it demonstrates are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and significantly less typically St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it certainly is just not seeking its greatest. But I imagine there is much more going on below than satisfies the eye. Fonts were being plastered about in Elizabethan moments, and only reduction that stood proud of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not consider they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at the very least, this stonework seems weathered. I ponder if this font was taken out from the church, probably in the mid-17th century, and served an outside function until finally it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is effectively-documented. In 1832, as component of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was delighted to find that the church was at last going through fix. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave made use of for companies. A new Rectory was being crafted. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for pretty much the middle forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good friend of John Henry Newman, the upcoming Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is fascinating to imagine how, at this seminal minute, Rickards may possibly have informed the thought of the Oxford Movement. Unfortunately, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He got the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and finish the marvellous set of bench ends – Ringham did the very same matter at Woolpit, a couple of miles away. Ringham’s operate is so very good that it is at times really hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it nevertheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals here, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and possibly dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer quantity – there are possibly 60 carvings – but also that there are numerous unique topics you can see some of them beneath.
The carvings appear to be aspect of the similar group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull taking part in a harp, the chicken with a man’s head, from equivalent carvings in other places. And then ideally that tiny alarm bell in your listened to really should begin to go “Hmmmm…..” mainly because some of the carvings below are evidently not from the exact team. It is really hard to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the same workshop, or even from the similar ten years. The benches them selves are no clue it was typical exercise in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on present day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern benches created out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards discovered some of these bench finishes in other places? Could he have been the sort of man or woman to do a matter like that?
Effectively, indeed he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a person that Rickards obtained soon after finding it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was loads of medieval junk lying close to, a great deal of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the type of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Properly, sure he probably was. Seem at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south facet of the nave. The 4 evangelists are earlier mentioned and below two fantastic representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below click on on them to enlarge them. Sad to say, they are not medieval at all, and it is typically acknowledged that they were painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is a thing equivalent the other side of Bury at Hawstead.
Definitely medieval is the broad St Christopher wall-portray even now discernible on the north wall. It was in all probability one particular of the last to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of course, as is the high-quality rood-display screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the upper tracery of some of the home windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the perform of William White. What can Rickards have been imagining of? But we stage by way of into the chancel, and suddenly the full issue moves up a gear. For below are some items that are truly amazing.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most full set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that kind finials to the stall ends. They are contributors in the Mass, together with two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk should be one particular of the greatest medieval pictures in Suffolk Mortlock considered the stalls the best in England. I was below with my good friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had earlier photographed and published about these carving a a couple of a long time ago. But even he observed a thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that deal with eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are fantastic matters: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Concerning the seats are odd oriental faces. Some of them are underneath click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am heading to ask next. How much of this is from this church originally? It all appears medieval perform, and there is no purpose to believe that it could not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the factors. What proof have we obtained?
First of all, we must see that the only other Suffolk church with these a substantial quantity of medieval misericords of this top quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I really don’t inquire you to see this as significant, merely to observe it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does glimpse to me as while two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that back again on to the monitor show up to have been built-in into the larger structure of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
Even so, if you look closely at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche households. The Ashfield arms also surface on the rood monitor, and the Ashfields have been the main donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to feel that the bigger element of the stall composition was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I never know. But I feel they have to be regarded as as section of the exact same established as those at Norton. In which circumstance they may possibly have occur from the identical church, which could have been this just one, but could not have been. Almost absolutely, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were being initially in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other amazing things in St George incorporate FE Howard’s attractive war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the exact same purpose. It is as fantastic as his do the job at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most well known for the Flemish carvings that flank the alternatively major altarpiece. They were being provided to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly located them in an Ixworth junk store. They exhibit illustrations or photos from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides counsel. They date from the 1480s, and had been nearly undoubtedly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked all through the French Revolution. I had viewed some thing comparable at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a number of months before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these as soon as were being, and piled up in a block fairly than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches previously mentioned them, are 19th century. My favourite photos are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on the photos below.
One cold winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Very little extra was noticed or heard of them until finally 1982, when they were found out on screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they were being applied as protection for a loan which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They had been bought from his shop, and taken to the museum, which promptly determined them as 15th century carvings. They place them on exhibit, and a Dutch female who had study about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to stop the new proprietor getting rid of them from the museum. The parish misplaced the case, leaving them with a monstrous lawful bill but the tale has a pleased ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their order from the owner, compensated off the authorized expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at huge value, but the businessman gave the reward in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
These days, the carvings are set firmly in place and alarmed, so they is not going to be heading walkabout again. But a little component of me wonders if they definitely ought to be below at all. Sure, they are medieval, but they weren’t listed here at first they weren’t even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be far better if they have been shown someplace safer, in which people could pay back to see them, and present some cash flow for the servicing of the church developing? And then, whisper it, St George may even be retained open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high road. 3 keyholders are listed, two of them instantly opposite. I am informed that Wednesday is not a excellent time to try out and get the crucial – it is sector day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2020-05-05 05:06:27
Tagged: , Carved wood pew ends , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltecks , Jelltex
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