I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I realized all 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 friend, Simon K, runs a magnificent web site, which I backlink to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church site he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a whole lot of church buildings for two counties to share, and several of individuals church buildings are historic, flint built, spherical towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or a little something truly worth the energy of heading to see or looking for out the keyholder to achieve accessibility.
What I suggest is that there is no way another person who only experienced their personal auto right up until 1984, and had 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 noticed St George from the most important highway, I was having a quick reduce 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 yr to lowestoft as Mom is now out of medical center and in the care of district nurses in buy to get put back again on her feet.
So I saw the tower of St George from about 50 percent a mile away, and believed I experienced adequate time to go over and see inside if I could.
I parked at the close of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the bank to the gate into the churchyard, the thoroughly clean lines of the tower, nicely, towered above me.
In the porch I tried the doorway and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder record produced it obvious that the nearest a single, at Xmas Cottage, was just more than the street. So, why not consider, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my aspects in a ledger, a sensible measure. But I showed by driving licence to prove that I was who I claimed. Very little did I know the modest village I lived in experienced been discovered. Extra of that in a moment.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the amazing pew ends animals of all types, actual and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only those people of obvious human form. One particular with the overall body of a chicken but a very clear human face experienced been remaining on your own, thus is the insanity of the puritan’s mind.
I made a decision that I would report just about every pew stop figure, and numerous whole pew finishes so great that they had been.
There is the feint outline of a big wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most remarkable when freshly painted. There is also a fine set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes under. It is alarmed, so you are unable to seem at them way too closely, sadly, but this kind of is a indicator of the times.
I took the keys back, and the woman of the property came to speak to me as she had been informed by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is the place her loved ones is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor reside in Cliffe. For as soon as there was indeed two Cliffs in Kent, just one on the Hoo Peninsular, wherever her spouse and children is from, and a single in close proximity to to Dover. A lot of several years back, Cliffe in close proximity to to Dover was known as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further more north. I explained this to her, but mentioned St Helen in Cliffe is a single of my favourite Kent church buildings, developed of alternate layers of black and mild flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
While St George here in Stowlangtoft is a great church, it is in a lousy state of repair, and is due to be designed redundant in the new year. Always unfortunate when that transpires to a parish church, but it is possible to be taken about by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to keep it tidy when the outdated wardens and keyholders are much too previous.
Stowlangtoft is a amazing church and so glad am I that I used 40 minutes of my time to check out it. Go to see it now just before it is way too late!
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In the summer time of 2003, this web-site grew to become a six-section series on BBC Radio Suffolk. Anything I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a fair sum of correspondence. Referring to the way a lot of church buildings had been restored in the 19th century, I observed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian vision of the medieval even when the true furnishings and fittings are medieval, the total piece is still a Victorian conception.
People today wrote to me and claimed points like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “presume that nothing is as it very first appears, as Sherlock Holmes stated”. And if he failed to, then he should really have done.
A prime example of a church that assumes a continuity that may not actually be the truth of the matter is right here in the flat fields involving Woolpit and Ixworth. This part of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak, especially in late Oct, but England’s finest summer and autumn for decades had remaining the churchyard here verdant and golden, as stunning a place as any I’d witnessed that yr. The church is large, and sits on a mound that has been reduce down on one particular side by the road. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never ever fails to shift me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett states of it that it cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the types of the mere intellect and sings to us of our deeper self.
Confused as you might be by it, really don’t are unsuccessful to location the broken window tracery that has been applied to construct the wall right here, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in scenario you do not know, is one of the terrific Suffolk churches. While it may perhaps externally look a minor serious, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Long 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 single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not nonetheless total of the ‘walls of glass’ self confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and potentially even renewed, which may clarify why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Nevertheless, it isn’t going to acquire substantially to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it might be that the damaged tracery is from the unique church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall isn’t medieval, so wherever had it been all these several years?
A further survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some questions. Unusually, it options a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ currently being on the westwards confront. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it shows are acquainted cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and considerably less usually 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 definitely isn’t really searching its greatest. But I consider there is far more going on in this article than meets the eye. Fonts ended up plastered about in Elizabethan times, and only aid that stood proud of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not think they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at least, this stonework seems weathered. I surprise if this font was eradicated from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an outside function right up until it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as aspect of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was happy to locate that the church was at last undergoing maintenance. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave employed for providers. A new Rectory was remaining developed. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for just about the middle forty decades of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good pal of John Henry Newman, the long term Cardinal, and they usually corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation buying of English church buildings. It is appealing to consider how, at this seminal instant, Rickards may possibly have knowledgeable the thought of the Oxford Motion. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Through the program of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He obtained the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and full the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the exact same factor at Woolpit, a few miles away. Ringham’s operate is so fantastic that it is from time to time 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 possibly dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer quantity – there are potentially 60 carvings – but also that there are quite a few exceptional topics you can see some of them below.
The carvings appear to be part of the very same team 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 identical carvings in other places. And then hopefully that minimal alarm bell in your read must start off to go “Hmmmm…..” because some of the carvings below are clearly not from the exact same group. It is challenging to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the similar workshop, or even from the exact same ten years. The benches them selves are no clue it was widespread apply in the 19th century to substitute medieval bench ends on fashionable benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern benches designed out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards found some of these bench ends in other places? Could he have been the form of individual to do a issue like that?
Very well, yes he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is one that Rickards acquired immediately after discovering it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the great 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was masses of medieval junk lying around, a great deal of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of man or woman to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Effectively, indeed he probably was. Look at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south facet of the nave. The four evangelists are previously mentioned and beneath two outstanding representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them under simply click on them to enlarge them. However, they are not medieval at all, and it is generally approved that they had been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something very similar the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Actually medieval is the large St Christopher wall-portray nevertheless discernible on the north wall. It was likely a person of the previous to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of course, as is the wonderful 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 do the job of William White. What can Rickards have been pondering of? But we step by into the chancel, and suddenly the whole point moves up a equipment. For right here are some things that are certainly extraordinary.
In a county renowned for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. At the rear of the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most complete set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that kind finials to the stall finishes. They are members in the Mass, such as two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk will have to be one of the very best medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock imagined the stalls the very best in England. I was right here with my buddy Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had earlier photographed and prepared about these carving a a pair of a long time back. But even he observed one thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that confront eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are amazing matters: 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 weird oriental faces. Some of them are down below simply click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to talk to up coming. How considerably of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval function, and there is no explanation to feel it may not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the aspects. What proof have we acquired?
To begin with, we should really recognize that the only other Suffolk church with this sort of a substantial amount of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I will not question you to see this as important, simply to discover it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does search to me as though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled jointly the stalls that back again on to the display screen seem to have been integrated into the larger sized framework of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south walls.
Nonetheless, if you appear 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 look on the rood screen, and the Ashfields ended up the main donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to consider that the better element of the stall framework was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Properly, I do not know. But I believe they have to be considered as portion of the similar set as all those at Norton. In which situation they may perhaps have arrive from the same church, which may well have been this a person, but may perhaps not have been. Pretty much undoubtedly, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been initially in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other exceptional issues in St George include FE Howard’s wonderful war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s magnificent St George, which serves the exact purpose. It is as excellent as his perform at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and acquired from, the Fantastic Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of program, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the somewhat large altarpiece. They were supplied to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk shop. They display visuals from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They date from the 1480s, and were being almost surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked in the course of the French Revolution. I experienced observed anything similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a number of weeks ahead of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these as soon as have been, and piled up in a block relatively than distribute 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. Simply click on the pictures under.
A single chilly winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of intruders broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing much more was found or heard of them right up until 1982, when they ended up identified on display in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted just one taken to Holland, they were being used as safety for a financial loan which was defaulted upon. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings ended up fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They were being purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which promptly discovered them as 15th century carvings. They place them on show, and a Dutch woman who experienced browse about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to prevent the new proprietor eradicating them from the museum. The parish misplaced the situation, leaving them with a monstrous lawful monthly bill but the story has a satisfied ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their obtain from the proprietor, paid off the lawful payments, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at broad cost, 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 put and alarmed, so they will never be going walkabout again. But a tiny portion of me wonders if they actually really should be right here at all. Guaranteed, they are medieval, but they were not listed here originally they weren’t even in England at first. Would not it be superior if they had been exhibited someplace safer, where by men and women could pay to see them, and give some profits for the maintenance of the church making? And then, whisper it, St George could possibly even be saved open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village substantial road. 3 keyholders are detailed, two of them quickly opposite. I am instructed that Wednesday is not a excellent time to attempt and get the important – it is industry day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 17:26:54
Tagged: , Carved wooden pew finishes , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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