St George in Stowlangtoft will have the difference of obtaining the album with the most pictures, preserve for Canterbury Cathedral. It was a remarkable church, and one particular I loved viewing.
I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I knew these two counties. But of program there is a lot more 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 mate, Simon K, operates a fabulous web page, which I website link to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church web page he has frequented 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a great deal of churches for two counties to share, and quite a few of these churches are historic, flint crafted, round towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or some thing value the effort and hard work of heading to see or seeking out the keyholder to acquire access.
What I imply is that there is no way a person who only had their individual automobile until eventually 1984, and had small desire in churches or parishes could have heard of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I saw St George from the major road, I was taking a brief minimize to sign up for the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my previous excursion of the yr to lowestoft as Mom is now out of healthcare facility and in the treatment of district nurses in purchase to get place back again on her toes.
So I observed the tower of St George from about 50 % a mile away, and considered I had ample time to go around and see inside if I could.
I parked at the end of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the bank to the gate into the churchyard, the thoroughly clean traces of the tower, perfectly, towered in excess of me.
In the porch I attempted the doorway and found it locked, but the keyholder list produced it obvious that the nearest 1, at Christmas Cottage, was just in excess of the street. So, why not attempt, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my aspects in a ledger, a wise measure. But I showed by driving licence to show that I was who I claimed. Minor did I know the compact village I lived in experienced been observed. Far more of that in a moment.
Inside St George, you eye is stolen by the fantastic pew finishes animals of all forms, real and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only people of apparent human kind. A single with the physique of a hen but a apparent human face experienced been still left by yourself, so is the insanity of the puritan’s intellect.
I decided that I would record each pew stop determine, and lots of total pew ends so excellent that they were.
There is the feint define of a enormous wall portray, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a fine set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes beneath. It is alarmed, so you are unable to look at them far too intently, regrettably, but these kinds of is a indication of the instances.
I took the keys back, and the girl of the home arrived to speak to me as she had been explained to by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is the place her spouse and children is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor stay in Cliffe. For as soon as there was certainly two Cliffs in Kent, 1 on the Hoo Peninsular, where her spouse and children is from, and a single around to Dover. Several several years in the past, Cliffe in the vicinity of to Dover was termed WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake additional north. I discussed this to her, but reported St Helen in Cliffe is a single of my favorite Kent churches, created of alternate layers of black and gentle flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Although St George right here in Stowlangtoft is a good church, it is in a bad condition of repair, and is owing to be designed redundant in the new calendar year. Always unhappy when that transpires to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken about by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to maintain it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are as well previous.
Stowlangtoft is a amazing church and so glad am I that I put in 40 minutes of my time to visit it. Go to see it now ahead of it is way too late!
——————————————-
In the summer time of 2003, this website turned a six-aspect series on BBC Radio Suffolk. Some thing I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a good amount of correspondence. Referring to the way a lot of churches were being restored in the 19th century, I noticed 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 full piece is nevertheless a Victorian conception.
Persons wrote to me and reported points like “but in that circumstance, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “suppose that very little is as it initially seems, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he didn’t, then he need to have finished.
A primary illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that may not really be the fact is here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This section of Suffolk can be fairly bleak, primarily in late Oct, but England’s best summer season and autumn for a long time experienced left the churchyard below verdant and golden, as gorgeous a spot as any I’d noticed that calendar year. The church is large, and sits on a mound that has been cut down on a single facet by the road. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never fails to move me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett states of it that it simply cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere head and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overwhelmed as you may be by it, really don’t are unsuccessful to place the broken window tracery that has been made use of to construct the wall listed here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in scenario you never know, is a single of the excellent Suffolk churches. Despite the fact that it could externally look a tiny critical, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Extensive Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure residence of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in a person go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not however total of the ‘walls of glass’ assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and possibly even renewed, which may possibly demonstrate why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Having said that, it would not acquire a great deal to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it could be that the damaged tracery is from the primary church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall isn’t really medieval, so exactly where had it been all these many years?
One more survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some questions. Unusually, it capabilities a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ being on the westwards facial area. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it reveals are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and less normally St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early several years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it absolutely is just not on the lookout its very best. But I believe there is more heading on in this article than satisfies the eye. Fonts ended up plastered around in Elizabethan occasions, and only aid that stood happy of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not believe they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at minimum, this stonework appears weathered. I wonder if this font was taken off from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor purpose right until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is very well-documented. In 1832, as component of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was pleased to discover that the church was at previous going through fix. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave utilized for solutions. A new Rectory was being designed. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for almost the middle forty several years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a fantastic friend of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they often corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation buying of English church buildings. It is fascinating to assume how, at this seminal instant, Rickards could have knowledgeable the thought of the Oxford Movement. Regrettably, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
In the course of the class of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the good Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and full the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the exact thing at Woolpit, a handful of miles away. Ringham’s get the job done is so fantastic that it is in some cases difficult for the inexperienced eye to detect it having said that, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals below, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and in all probability dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer amount – there are maybe 60 carvings – but also that there are many exclusive subjects you can see some of them below.
The carvings surface to be section of the identical group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull enjoying a harp, the chook with a man’s head, from similar carvings in other places. And then hopefully that little alarm bell in your listened to really should start to go “Hmmmm…..” for the reason that some of the carvings in this article are clearly not from the same team. It is really hard to imagine that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the exact workshop, or even from the exact decade. The benches by themselves are no clue it was common practice in the 19th century to exchange medieval bench finishes on modern-day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern-day benches designed out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards observed some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the type of particular person to do a detail like that?
Effectively, yes he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a person that Rickards acquired following getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the excellent 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was hundreds of medieval junk lying all over, considerably of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the type of person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Perfectly, sure he most likely was. Glimpse at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The 4 evangelists are above and below two excellent representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below click on them to enlarge them. Sadly, they are not medieval at all, and it is commonly acknowledged that they had been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is some thing identical the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Definitely medieval is the broad St Christopher wall-painting nonetheless discernible on the north wall. It was likely a person of the previous to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of program, as is the great rood-monitor dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the higher tracery of some of the windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s fee, and the get the job done of William White. What can Rickards have been thinking of? But we step as a result of into the chancel, and out of the blue the total matter moves up a gear. For right here are some factors that are genuinely extraordinary.
In a county well known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that sort finials to the stall ends. They are individuals in the Mass, together with two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk ought to be a single of the finest medieval pictures in Suffolk Mortlock thought the stalls the greatest in England. I was below with my buddy Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had earlier photographed and written about these carving a a pair of years ago. But even he identified a little something new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that face eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are amazing points: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Concerning the seats are weird oriental faces. Some of them are beneath click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am heading to request future. How much of this is from this church initially? It all seems medieval get the job done, and there is no rationale to consider it could not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open up to the features. What evidence have we bought?
For starters, we should detect that the only other Suffolk church with this sort of a big amount of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile absent, at Norton. I will not ask you to see this as sizeable, simply to observe it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled collectively the stalls that again on to the display screen look to have been built-in into the larger composition of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south walls.
Having said that, if you look closely at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche family members. The Ashfield arms also look on the rood display, and the Ashfields were being the main donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to feel that the bigger component of the stall construction was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Well, I do not know. But I think they have to be deemed as component of the identical established as individuals at Norton. In which circumstance they may perhaps have appear from the exact church, which may perhaps have been this a person, but may possibly not have been. Practically unquestionably, the stalls at Norton did not appear from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other impressive issues in St George incorporate FE Howard’s attractive war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s lovely St George, which serves the same function. It is as great as his function at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Terrific Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of training course, most well-known for the Flemish carvings that flank the relatively major altarpiece. They have been presented to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly located them in an Ixworth junk store. They show pictures from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides recommend. They day from the 1480s, and had been almost absolutely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked through the French Revolution. I had viewed one thing equivalent at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a few months just before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these after have been, and piled up in a block instead than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches over them, are 19th century. My favorite illustrations or photos are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the photos down below.
1 chilly winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing at all far more was observed or heard of them until eventually 1982, when they were being learned on display in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they were being utilised as protection for a mortgage which was defaulted on. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings ended up fenced to an Amsterdam junk seller. They had been purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which straight away discovered them as 15th century carvings. They place them on exhibit, and a Dutch girl who had read through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to halt the new operator eradicating them from the museum. The parish lost the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous legal monthly bill but the story has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their obtain from the proprietor, compensated off the authorized bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at wide expense, but the businessman gave the present in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
These days, the carvings are fixed firmly in area and alarmed, so they will not likely be heading walkabout once again. But a minor portion of me wonders if they seriously should really be here at all. Guaranteed, they are medieval, but they were not in this article originally they were not even in England at first. Would not it be superior if they ended up shown someplace safer, the place persons could pay to see them, and offer some profits for the maintenance of the church making? And then, whisper it, St George may well even be kept open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village significant street. A few keyholders are stated, two of them promptly opposite. I am explained to that Wednesday is not a excellent time to attempt and get the key – it is sector working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-19 06:16:26
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
#home furnishings #Do it yourself #woodwork #woodworking #freedownload#woodworkingprojects #woodsmith ,wood craft, wood planer, good woodworking, wooden chairs, wood doing work instruments, well known woodworking, woodworking publications, woodworking workbench designs