I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I believed I knew all those two counties. But of study 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 close friend, Simon K, runs a incredible web site, which I connection to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church page he has frequented 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a large amount of churches for two counties to share, and several of all those church buildings are ancient, flint created, round towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or some thing truly worth the hard work of heading to see or trying to get out the keyholder to gain accessibility.
What I mean is that there is no way an individual who only had their own motor vehicle right up until 1984, and had little fascination in church buildings or parishes could have heard of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I noticed St George from the principal highway, I was getting a limited lower to be a part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my past 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 place back on her feet.
So I saw the tower of St George from about 50 percent a mile absent, and considered I experienced more than enough time to go about and see inside if I could.
I parked at the conclude of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I wander up the bank to the gate into the churchyard, the clear traces of the tower, perfectly, towered over me.
In the porch I tried out the doorway and discovered it locked, but the keyholder checklist produced it apparent that the closest one, at Xmas Cottage, was just in excess of the highway. So, why not test, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my specifics in a ledger, a smart evaluate. But I confirmed by driving licence to show that I was who I claimed. Minimal did I know the compact village I lived in had been noticed. A lot more of that in a minute.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the magnificent pew ends animals of all kinds, serious and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only people of noticeable human kind. A single with the body of a chicken but a distinct human facial area experienced been left on your own, hence is the madness of the puritan’s intellect.
I resolved that I would record each pew finish determine, and a lot of total pew finishes so fantastic that they ended up.
There is the feint define of a huge wall painting, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most remarkable when freshly painted. There is also a great set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into detail Simon goes beneath. It is alarmed, so you can’t search at them also carefully, unfortunately, but this kind of is a indicator of the occasions.
I took the keys again, and the woman of the home came to communicate to me as she experienced been explained to by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is the place her spouse and children is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor stay in Cliffe. For once there was in truth two Cliffs in Kent, just one on the Hoo Peninsular, where by her loved ones is from, and 1 around to Dover. Lots of many years in the past, Cliffe in close proximity to to Dover was named WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake additional north. I discussed this to her, but explained St Helen in Cliffe is one of my favourite Kent churches, created of alternate levels of black and gentle flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Whilst St George here in Stowlangtoft is a high-quality church, it is in a poor state of repair service, and is thanks to be manufactured redundant in the new yr. Always sad when that transpires to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to retain it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are way too aged.
Stowlangtoft is a fabulous church and so glad am I that I used 40 minutes of my time to stop by it. Go to see it now in advance of it is as well late!
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In the summer time of 2003, this website became a 6-portion series on BBC Radio Suffolk. One thing I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a honest quantity of correspondence. Referring to the way quite a few churches have been 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 precise furnishings and fittings are medieval, the total piece is still a Victorian conception.
People wrote to me and stated matters like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “think that practically nothing is as it initially seems, as Sherlock Holmes reported”. And if he didn’t, then he should have carried out.
A key example of a church that assumes a continuity that might not basically be the reality is here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak, specifically in late October, but England’s greatest summer time and autumn for many years experienced still left the churchyard below verdant and golden, as stunning a area as any I would viewed that year. The church is massive, and sits on a mound that has been slice down on a single aspect by the street. I walked up the slope, past the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never fails to transfer me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett says of it that it can not be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the types of the mere intellect and sings to us of our further self.
Overcome as you may possibly be by it, never fall short to spot the damaged window tracery that has been made use of to construct the wall right here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you don’t know, is one particular of the excellent Suffolk church buildings. Though it may well externally seem a little extreme, and is by no implies as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the rest, it is a treasure house of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in 1 go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not still full of the ‘walls of glass’ self esteem that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and quite possibly even renewed, which may well demonstrate why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it will not choose considerably to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it could be that the broken tracery is from the authentic church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall isn’t really medieval, so exactly where experienced it been all individuals yrs?
Another survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some thoughts. Unusually, it options a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ being on the westwards confront. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it displays are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and much less frequently St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early many years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it absolutely isn’t hunting its best. But I imagine there is more heading on right here than satisfies the eye. Fonts had been plastered over in Elizabethan instances, and only relief that stood proud of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not feel they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at minimum, this stonework seems weathered. I question if this font was eliminated from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor reason till it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is effectively-documented. In 1832, as section of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was pleased to find that the church was at last undergoing repair service. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave made use of for companies. A new Rectory was staying designed. Who was the catalyst driving all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for virtually the middle forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a excellent close friend of John Henry Newman, the long term Cardinal, and they frequently corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English church buildings. It is exciting to consider how, at this seminal minute, Rickards may well have knowledgeable the believed of the Oxford Motion. Regrettably, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
In the course of the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He obtained the terrific Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and complete the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the very same detail at Woolpit, a several miles away. Ringham’s function is so excellent that it is in some cases really hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it nonetheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals right here, and the wierder things is all medieval, and probably dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer amount – there are maybe 60 carvings – but also that there are quite a few exclusive subjects you can see some of them beneath.
The carvings appear to be section of the very same team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull participating in a harp, the chicken with a man’s head, from identical carvings elsewhere. And then ideally that little alarm bell in your listened to ought to begin to go “Hmmmm…..” due to the fact some of the carvings in this article are evidently not from the very same group. It is difficult to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the similar workshop, or even from the same 10 years. The benches on their own are no clue it was typical practice in the 19th century to switch medieval bench finishes on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern benches produced out of medieval timber (as took place at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards located some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the sort of particular person to do a thing like that?
Perfectly, yes he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is one particular that Rickards obtained right after acquiring it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was hundreds of medieval junk lying all around, considerably of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of particular person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Properly, sure he probably was. Look at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south side of the nave. The four evangelists are previously mentioned and down below two fantastic representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them under simply click on them to enlarge them. Regrettably, they are not medieval at all, and it is generally recognized that they were being painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is anything similar the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Actually medieval is the huge St Christopher wall-painting however discernible on the north wall. It was possibly a person of the final to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of system, as is the great rood-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 thinking of? But we stage by into the chancel, and suddenly the complete issue moves up a gear. For here are some points that are actually impressive.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are spectacular, even awe-inspiring. Powering the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most full established of return stalls. Most placing are the figures that sort finials to the stall finishes. They are members in the Mass, which include two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk should be just one of the most effective medieval visuals in Suffolk Mortlock imagined the stalls the greatest in England. I was below with my friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had previously photographed and composed about these carving a a couple of several years ago. But even he observed some thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that face eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are excellent issues: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. In between the seats are bizarre oriental faces. Some of them are below click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am heading to request subsequent. How substantially of this is from this church at first? It all seems medieval do the job, and there is no rationale to feel it could not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the elements. What evidence have we got?
Firstly, we ought to notice that the only other Suffolk church with these a big quantity of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile away, at Norton. I you should not request you to see this as important, simply to see it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does appear to me as while two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that back on to the monitor seem to have been built-in into the much larger composition of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south walls.
On the other hand, if you glimpse carefully at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche families. The Ashfield arms also surface on the rood screen, and the Ashfields were the important donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to consider that the greater section of the stall framework was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I you should not know. But I think they have to be deemed as component of the same established as individuals at Norton. In which scenario they could have arrive from the same church, which could have been this a person, but may well not have been. Virtually unquestionably, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other outstanding points in St George involve FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the same goal. It is as superior as his function at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Great Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of class, most well known for the Flemish carvings that flank the relatively hefty altarpiece. They had been specified to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly located them in an Ixworth junk store. They display photos from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They day from the 1480s, and were being nearly surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked through the French Revolution. I had seen something very similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a few weeks right before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these after ended up, and piled up in a block instead than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches higher than them, are 19th century. My favourite illustrations or photos are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Simply click on the illustrations or photos under.
One chilly winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of intruders broke into this locked church and stole them. Very little additional was found or heard of them right up until 1982, when they have been learned on exhibit in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted a single taken to Holland, they were being employed as stability for a bank loan which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings have been fenced to an Amsterdam junk seller. They have been bought from his shop, and taken to the museum, which immediately recognized them as 15th century carvings. They put them on show, and a Dutch lady who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to quit the new owner taking away them from the museum. The parish shed the case, leaving them with a monstrous authorized bill but the tale has a satisfied ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their obtain from the owner, compensated off the lawful costs, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at wide charge, but the businessman gave the gift in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Right now, the carvings are fastened firmly in location and alarmed, so they will not be going walkabout yet again. But a tiny section of me miracles if they seriously ought to be below at all. Absolutely sure, they are medieval, but they weren’t right here at first they weren’t even in England originally. Would not it be improved if they had been exhibited somewhere safer, in which folks could pay back to see them, and provide some profits for the upkeep of the church constructing? And then, whisper it, St George may possibly even be saved open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village large avenue. 3 keyholders are listed, two of them promptly opposite. I am advised that Wednesday is not a very good time to try out and get the important – it is marketplace working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-18 14:36:34
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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