I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I understood individuals two counties. But of system there is much 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 close friend, Simon K, operates a magnificent site, which I website link to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church webpage he has frequented 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a large amount of churches for two counties to share, and lots of of people church buildings are historical, flint developed, round towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or a thing truly worth the exertion of heading to see or looking for out the keyholder to gain entry.
What I imply is that there is no way somebody who only experienced their individual vehicle right until 1984, and experienced minor desire in church buildings or parishes could have read 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 getting a small lower to be a part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my very last trip of the year to lowestoft as Mother is now out of healthcare facility and in the treatment of district nurses in order to get set back on her ft.
So I observed the tower of St George from about 50 percent a mile absent, and thought I had more than enough 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 clean up lines of the tower, properly, towered around me.
In the porch I tried out the door and found it locked, but the keyholder listing designed it apparent that the nearest one particular, at Xmas Cottage, was just over the street. So, why not check out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my specifics in a ledger, a wise measure. But I showed by driving licence to confirm that I was who I claimed. Minor did I know the small village I lived in had been noticed. Far more of that in a moment.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the magnificent pew ends animals of all forms, genuine and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only individuals of apparent human type. Just one with the human body of a chicken but a obvious human confront had been still left by yourself, thus is the insanity of the puritan’s thoughts.
I made a decision that I would document every single pew conclusion figure, and many complete pew ends so great that they had been.
There is the feint define of a massive wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most outstanding when freshly painted. There is also a wonderful established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes under. It is alarmed, so you can not glimpse at them as well carefully, unfortunately, but this sort of is a signal of the moments.
I took the keys back, and the woman of the property arrived to converse to me as she experienced been advised by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is in which her relatives is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor live in Cliffe. For at the time there was certainly two Cliffs in Kent, one particular on the Hoo Peninsular, in which her loved ones is from, and a single close to to Dover. Quite a few yrs in the past, Cliffe around to Dover was named WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake even more north. I spelled out this to her, but reported St Helen in Cliffe is one particular of my favorite Kent church buildings, created of alternate levels of black and light flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Even though St George below in Stowlangtoft is a good church, it is in a weak state of repair, and is owing to be made redundant in the new yr. Always unhappy when that transpires to a parish church, but it is probable to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to continue to keep it tidy when the old wardens and keyholders are too previous.
Stowlangtoft is a magnificent church and so happy am I that I used 40 minutes of my time to pay a visit to it. Go to see it now just before it is too late!
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In the summer season of 2003, this web-site turned a six-portion series on BBC Radio Suffolk. One thing I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a truthful total of correspondence. Referring to the way many church buildings ended up 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 actual furnishings and fittings are medieval, the complete piece is nevertheless a Victorian conception.
Men and women wrote to me and reported issues 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 “assume that nothing is as it to start with appears, as Sherlock Holmes explained”. And if he did not, then he need to have carried out.
A primary instance of a church that assumes a continuity that may not really be the truth of the matter is here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be instead bleak, in particular in late Oct, but England’s greatest summer time and autumn for a long time had still left the churchyard listed here verdant and golden, as wonderful a position as any I might viewed that calendar year. The church is substantial, and sits on a mound that has been slice down on 1 aspect by the highway. I walked up the slope, past the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which by no means fails to shift me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett claims of it that it can not be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere head and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overcome as you could be by it, will not fail to location the damaged window tracery that has been made use of to create the wall right here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in case you never know, is one particular of the fantastic Suffolk church buildings. Although it may perhaps externally surface a tiny severe, and is by no usually 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 date, it was all rebuilt in a person go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not still whole of the ‘walls of glass’ self esteem that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and possibly even renewed, which might make clear why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Nonetheless, it does not choose a lot to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may be that the broken tracery is from the original church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall is just not medieval, so the place experienced it been all all those many years?
A different survival from the earlier church is the font. It also asks some queries. Unusually, it characteristics a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ staying on the westwards confront. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it exhibits are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and much less generally St George. The cult of St George was at its peak in the early yrs of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it undoubtedly just isn’t searching its most effective. But I feel there is more likely on here than fulfills the eye. Fonts have been plastered around in Elizabethan occasions, and only reduction that stood very pleased 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 minimum, this stonework appears weathered. I ponder if this font was eliminated from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an outside intent until eventually it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is well-documented. In 1832, as aspect of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was delighted to discover that the church was at past undergoing repair service. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave employed for expert services. A new Rectory was becoming built. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector listed here for just about the middle forty many years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good close friend of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they normally corresponded on the topic of the pre-Reformation buying of English churches. It is interesting to think how, at this seminal moment, Rickards could possibly have informed the believed of the Oxford Movement. Regrettably, when Newman became 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 bought the wonderful Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and entire the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the exact same issue at Woolpit, a several miles absent. Ringham’s get the job done is so excellent that it is in some cases tricky for the inexperienced eye to detect it nonetheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals listed here, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and likely 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 a number of special subjects you can see some of them under.
The carvings appear to be aspect of the exact 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 similar carvings elsewhere. And then ideally that minimal alarm bell in your heard need to get started to go “Hmmmm…..” since some of the carvings listed here are obviously not from the exact group. It is tough to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the very same workshop, or even from the same 10 years. The benches themselves are no clue it was frequent apply in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on fashionable benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern day benches produced out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards located some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the sort of human being to do a point like that?
Nicely, of course he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is one that Rickards obtained just after acquiring it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was masses of medieval junk lying close to, a lot of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Well, of course he probably was. Appear at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south facet of the nave. The 4 evangelists are higher than and under two exceptional representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them underneath click on on them to enlarge them. Sadly, they are not medieval at all, and it is usually acknowledged that they were painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is anything similar the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Genuinely medieval is the wide St Christopher wall-portray however discernible on the north wall. It was possibly a person of the previous to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of program, as is the wonderful 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 work of William White. What can Rickards have been wondering of? But we action by into the chancel, and quickly the full point moves up a equipment. For below are some points that are definitely outstanding.
In a county well known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. At the rear of the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most finish established of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that type finials to the stall ends. They are members in the Mass, like two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk ought to be a person of the ideal medieval photos in Suffolk Mortlock believed the stalls the very best in England. I was right here with my good friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had formerly photographed and created about these carving a a pair of several years in the past. But even he identified one thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that experience eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are wonderful matters: 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 weird oriental faces. Some of them are beneath click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am heading to check with next. How significantly of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval work, and there is no rationale to imagine it may possibly not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open up to the things. What proof have we bought?
To start with, we must recognize that the only other Suffolk church with these kinds of a large selection of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile absent, at Norton. I really don’t talk to you to see this as important, just to see it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does search to me as while two sets of furnishings have been cobbled jointly the stalls that again on to the display screen surface to have been built-in into the greater construction of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
Having said that, if you seem 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 show up on the rood display, and the Ashfields were the important donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to think that the higher component of the stall framework was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Properly, I will not know. But I feel they have to be deemed as component of the same established as those at Norton. In which case they might have come from the exact church, which may well have been this a single, but may well not have been. Pretty much undoubtedly, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been initially in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other exceptional items 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 beautiful St George, which serves the similar purpose. It is as excellent as his perform at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of class, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather major altarpiece. They were being presented to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly observed them in an Ixworth junk shop. They exhibit pictures from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides counsel. They date from the 1480s, and had been practically definitely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked throughout the French Revolution. I experienced viewed anything comparable at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a handful of months prior to. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these as soon as had been, and piled up in a block somewhat than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches over them, are 19th century. My favourite illustrations or photos are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the pictures beneath.
One particular cold winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Practically nothing more was noticed or heard of them till 1982, when they were identified on display screen in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted a single taken to Holland, they have been applied as security for a loan which was defaulted on. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings ended up fenced to an Amsterdam junk seller. They were purchased from his shop, and taken to the museum, which straight away recognized them as 15th century carvings. They place them on screen, and a Dutch woman who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to prevent the new operator eradicating them from the museum. The parish lost the situation, leaving them with a monstrous authorized invoice but the tale has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their purchase from the proprietor, paid off the lawful bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at wide price, but the businessman gave the present in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Currently, the carvings are fixed firmly in location and alarmed, so they is not going to be going walkabout again. But a minor section of me miracles if they actually should really be in this article at all. Sure, they are medieval, but they were not listed here initially they were not even in England originally. Wouldn’t it be far better if they have been exhibited somewhere safer, exactly where people today could shell out to see them, and offer some money for the routine maintenance of the church developing? And then, whisper it, St George may well even be saved open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village significant road. A few keyholders are outlined, two of them immediately reverse. I am informed that Wednesday is not a good time to check out and get the essential – it is industry day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:11
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , ends , carved pew finishes , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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