I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I believed I knew those two counties. But of system there is additional 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 internet site, which I connection to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church page he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a ton of churches for two counties to share, and lots of of those people church buildings are historical, flint created, round towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or anything value the effort of heading to see or looking for out the keyholder to acquire accessibility.
What I suggest is that there is no way anyone who only had their personal auto until 1984, and had little 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 saw St George from the most important road, I was having a shorter minimize to be a part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last journey of the calendar year to lowestoft as Mother is now out of clinic and in the treatment of district nurses in get to get set back on her toes.
So I observed the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile away, and considered I experienced enough time to go above and see inside of if I could.
I parked at the finish of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the financial institution to the gate into the churchyard, the clear strains of the tower, very well, towered more than me.
In the porch I tried using the door and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder list manufactured it very clear that the closest just one, at Xmas Cottage, was just above the road. So, why not try out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my facts in a ledger, a wise measure. But I confirmed by driving licence to confirm that I was who I claimed. Tiny did I know the modest village I lived in experienced been recognized. A lot more of that in a minute.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the magnificent pew ends animals of all kinds, genuine and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only those of obvious human form. A person with the body of a chicken but a obvious human encounter experienced been remaining on your own, as a result is the insanity of the puritan’s mind.
I determined that I would file each and every pew end figure, and several full pew ends so great that they ended up.
There is the feint outline of a big wall painting, Simon claims it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a fine established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes below. It is alarmed, so you can not glance at them far too carefully, unfortunately, but such is a signal of the moments.
I took the keys again, and the woman of the household came to communicate to me as she experienced been instructed by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is the place her family is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor dwell in Cliffe. For at the time there was in fact two Cliffs in Kent, a person on the Hoo Peninsular, where by her spouse and children is from, and one particular around to Dover. Several many years in the past, Cliffe close to to Dover was identified as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake even more north. I described this to her, but claimed St Helen in Cliffe is 1 of my favorite Kent churches, crafted of alternate levels of black and gentle flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
While St George right here in Stowlangtoft is a fine church, it is in a inadequate point out of mend, and is due to be designed redundant in the new calendar year. Often unfortunate when that comes about to a parish church, but it is possible to be taken over by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to continue to keep it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are also previous.
Stowlangtoft is a incredible church and so happy am I that I invested 40 minutes of my time to take a look at it. Go to see it now just before it is way too late!
——————————————-
In the summer of 2003, this internet site grew to become a 6-component sequence on BBC Radio Suffolk. Anything I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a reasonable total of correspondence. Referring to the way lots of church buildings ended up restored in the 19th century, I noticed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian vision of the medieval even when the precise furnishings and fittings are medieval, the complete piece is even now a Victorian conception.
Folks wrote to me and said items like “but in that scenario, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that nothing at all is as it to start with appears, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he failed to, then he should have done.
A prime example of a church that assumes a continuity that might not truly be the truth of the matter is right here in the flat fields involving Woolpit and Ixworth. This portion of Suffolk can be rather bleak, particularly in late October, but England’s greatest summer months and autumn for a long time had remaining the churchyard here verdant and golden, as lovely a position as any I’d viewed that yr. The church is massive, and sits on a mound that has been cut down on one particular facet by the street. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which under no circumstances fails to go me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett states of it that it can not be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere intellect and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overcome as you may be by it, never fail to spot the broken window tracery that has been utilized to build the wall here, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in situation you do not know, is one particular of the good Suffolk church buildings. Though it may perhaps externally show up a small severe, and is by no implies as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure property of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in a single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not but total of the ‘walls of glass’ self esteem that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been fixed, and probably even renewed, which may well clarify why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Having said that, it isn’t going to consider much to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it may possibly be that the broken tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall isn’t medieval, so where experienced it been all individuals several years?
An additional survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some concerns. Unusually, it capabilities a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ getting on the westwards experience. 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 frequently St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early a long time of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it absolutely just isn’t seeking its very best. But I consider there is additional going on here than meets the eye. Fonts were being plastered over in Elizabethan periods, and only aid that stood happy of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not imagine they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at least, this stonework seems weathered. I wonder if this font was taken off from the church, probably in the mid-17th century, and served an outside purpose until finally it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is effectively-documented. In 1832, as aspect of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was happy to uncover that the church was at past going through maintenance. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave utilised for services. A new Rectory was becoming created. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for virtually the center forty decades of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a great friend of John Henry Newman, the long run Cardinal, and they generally corresponded on the subject matter of the pre-Reformation buying of English churches. It is intriguing to consider how, at this seminal instant, Rickards may have knowledgeable the thought of the Oxford Motion. Unfortunately, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Through the program of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He got the good Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and entire the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the exact same issue at Woolpit, a few miles absent. Ringham’s perform is so great that it is in some cases tricky for the inexperienced eye to detect it having said that, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals in this article, and the wierder things is all medieval, and almost certainly dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer amount – there are perhaps 60 carvings – but also that there are numerous unique topics you can see some of them below.
The carvings seem to be element of the same group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull taking part in a harp, the bird with a man’s head, from related carvings somewhere else. And then hopefully that little alarm bell in your read must start off to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings listed here are obviously not from the exact group. It is challenging to imagine that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the identical workshop, or even from the exact decade. The benches on their own are no clue it was prevalent observe in the 19th century to swap medieval bench ends on modern-day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern day benches created out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards located some of these bench finishes in other places? Could he have been the form of individual to do a point like that?
Perfectly, sure 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 immediately after acquiring it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the great 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was loads of medieval junk lying close to, significantly of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Nicely, indeed he almost certainly was. Appear at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The four evangelists are earlier mentioned and down below two superb representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them down below simply click on them to enlarge them. Regretably, they are not medieval at all, and it is typically approved that they had been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something comparable the other side of Bury at Hawstead.
Truly medieval is the broad St Christopher wall-portray continue to discernible on the north wall. It was most likely a single of the past to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of training course, as is the great rood-display screen 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 commission, and the work of William White. What can Rickards have been imagining of? But we step by way of into the chancel, and quickly the total factor moves up a gear. For listed here are some factors that are truly extraordinary.
In a county famous for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most complete established of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that kind finials to the stall finishes. They are contributors in the Mass, such as two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk should be a single of the best medieval photos in Suffolk Mortlock considered the stalls the greatest in England. I was here with my mate Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had formerly photographed and written about these carving a a few of years ago. But even he discovered 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 amazing points: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped 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 simply click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am going to ask upcoming. How a great deal of this is from this church initially? It all appears medieval perform, and there is no rationale to believe that it could possibly not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the features. What evidence have we acquired?
To begin with, we should detect that the only other Suffolk church with this kind of a huge quantity of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile absent, at Norton. I never talk to you to see this as considerable, basically to observe it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does glimpse to me as although two sets of furnishings have been cobbled collectively the stalls that again on to the screen appear to have been integrated into the bigger composition of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
Nonetheless, if you search intently at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche people. The Ashfield arms also look on the rood screen, and the Ashfields were the significant donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on harmony I am inclined to imagine that the better section of the stall construction was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Well, I will not know. But I imagine they have to be regarded as component of the very same set as people at Norton. In which scenario they may well have appear from the identical church, which may perhaps have been this one, but might not have been. Just about undoubtedly, the stalls at Norton did not appear from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were being originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other exceptional points in St George contain FE Howard’s stunning war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s stunning St George, which serves the identical intent. It is as great as his get the job done at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Good Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most famous for the Flemish carvings that flank the fairly large altarpiece. They were offered to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk store. They display photographs from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides counsel. They day from the 1480s, and had been nearly surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked for the duration of the French Revolution. I experienced found anything equivalent at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a couple of weeks before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these the moment had been, and piled up in a block rather than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches previously mentioned them, are 19th century. My favorite images are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Simply click on the pictures below.
A single cold winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Almost nothing far more was found or read of them until finally 1982, when they were being identified on show in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one particular taken to Holland, they were being used as safety for a loan which was defaulted upon. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They were being bought from his store, and taken to the museum, which instantly discovered them as 15th century carvings. They put them on display, and a Dutch woman who had read through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to end the new owner getting rid of them from the museum. The parish misplaced the case, leaving them with a monstrous lawful invoice but the tale has a joyful ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the proprietor, compensated off the authorized payments, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at large price tag, but the businessman gave the present in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
These days, the carvings are mounted firmly in position and alarmed, so they will never be going walkabout yet again. But a minimal section of me wonders if they actually must be right here at all. Sure, they are medieval, but they were not in this article originally they weren’t even in England at first. Wouldn’t it be improved if they were being exhibited someplace safer, in which folks could shell out to see them, and supply some income for the upkeep of the church constructing? And then, whisper it, St George could possibly even be saved open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village superior avenue. A few keyholders are detailed, two of them right away opposite. I am informed that Wednesday is not a great time to try out and get the key – it is market day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 11:53:00
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
#home furniture #Do-it-yourself #woodwork #woodworking #freedownload#woodworkingprojects #woodsmith ,wooden craft, wood planer, wonderful woodworking, picket chairs, wooden operating equipment, well-liked woodworking, woodworking textbooks, woodworking workbench options