St George in Stowlangtoft will have the difference of having the album with the most photographs, save for Canterbury Cathedral. It was a impressive church, and 1 I liked browsing.
I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I understood individuals two counties. But of training course 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 website, which I hyperlink to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church web page he has frequented 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a ton of churches for two counties to share, and a lot of of people church buildings are historic, flint created, round towered or have wall paintings, picket roof angels or one thing worthy of the hard work of heading to see or trying to find out the keyholder to achieve entry.
What I signify is that there is no way a person who only experienced their individual automobile until finally 1984, and experienced tiny curiosity in church buildings 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 getting a short reduce to join the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my past journey 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 again on her ft.
So I observed the tower of St George from about 50 % a mile absent, and imagined I experienced more than enough time to go more than and see within if I could.
I parked at the finish of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the lender to the gate into the churchyard, the clean lines of the tower, nicely, towered more than me.
In the porch I tried out the doorway and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder checklist manufactured it crystal clear that the closest a single, at Christmas Cottage, was just more than the highway. So, why not test, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my particulars in a ledger, a smart measure. But I showed by driving licence to prove that I was who I claimed. Small did I know the tiny village I lived in experienced been seen. Far more of that in a minute.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the wonderful pew finishes animals of all varieties, serious and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only individuals of apparent human type. A person with the body of a rooster but a very clear human facial area had been left alone, so is the insanity of the puritan’s head.
I decided that I would document just about every pew conclusion figure, and numerous entire pew ends so excellent that they were.
There is the feint define of a large wall painting, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a good established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes under. It is alarmed, so you simply cannot search at them also closely, sadly, but these is a sign of the times.
I took the keys again, and the woman of the home arrived to discuss to me as she experienced been told by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is wherever her relatives is from. Unfortunately, I am not from, nor dwell in Cliffe. For at the time there was indeed two Cliffs in Kent, one on the Hoo Peninsular, the place her family members is from, and one particular near to Dover. Several several years ago, Cliffe close to to Dover was identified as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further north. I explained this to her, but explained St Helen in Cliffe is a single of my favorite Kent church buildings, developed of alternate layers of black and mild flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Even though St George right here in Stowlangtoft is a good church, it is in a inadequate state of repair service, and is thanks to be built redundant in the new year. Usually sad when that transpires to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken more than by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to maintain it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are much too previous.
Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church and so happy am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to check out it. Go to see it now before it is far too late!
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In the summer time of 2003, this web page turned a 6-aspect series on BBC Radio Suffolk. Anything I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a fair total of correspondence. Referring to the way numerous church buildings had been 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 entire piece is even now a Victorian conception.
Men and women wrote to me and stated things like “but in that scenario, Simon, how do we know what was there at first and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “believe that very little is as it initial seems, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he failed to, then he really should have carried out.
A prime illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that may possibly not actually be the real truth is listed here in the flat fields between Woolpit and Ixworth. This portion of Suffolk can be fairly bleak, in particular in late Oct, but England’s finest summertime and autumn for decades experienced left the churchyard right here verdant and golden, as beautiful a put as any I might found that year. The church is substantial, and sits on a mound that has been reduce down on one aspect by the road. I walked up the slope, past the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which by no means fails to transfer me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett claims of it that it cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere mind and sings to us of our further self.
Confused as you could be by it, will not fall short to spot the damaged window tracery that has been employed to build the wall in this article, for thus hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you don’t know, is a person of the great Suffolk churches. Even though it may perhaps externally look a small intense, and is by no signifies as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure dwelling 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 nevertheless total of the ‘walls of glass’ assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and possibly even renewed, which may possibly explain why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it won’t choose much to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it might be that the broken tracery is from the primary church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall isn’t medieval, so exactly where had it been all those people a long time?
A further survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some issues. Unusually, it attributes a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ staying on the westwards deal with. 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 normally St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it undoubtedly is not looking its very best. But I consider there is far more likely on below than meets the eye. Fonts were plastered about in Elizabethan instances, and only relief 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 speculate if this font was taken out from the church, probably in the mid-17th century, and served an outside objective till it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is perfectly-documented. In 1832, as portion of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was happy to discover that the church was at final undergoing repair service. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave utilized for expert services. A new Rectory was being designed. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for nearly the middle forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good pal of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the topic of the pre-Reformation ordering of English church buildings. It is attention-grabbing to imagine how, at this seminal second, Rickards could have educated the assumed of the Oxford Motion. Unfortunately, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
All through the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He bought the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and full the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the same point at Woolpit, a number of miles absent. Ringham’s do the job is so great that it is from time to time tough 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 most likely dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer amount – there are possibly 60 carvings – but also that there are quite a few exceptional topics you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings appear to be element of the similar 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 identical carvings in other places. And then ideally that tiny alarm bell in your read need to get started to go “Hmmmm…..” for the reason that some of the carvings in this article are evidently not from the similar team. It is hard to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the exact workshop, or even from the similar decade. The benches by themselves are no clue it was widespread practice in the 19th century to replace medieval bench ends on contemporary benches, or on medieval benches, or even on present day benches built out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards discovered some of these bench ends in other places? Could he have been the sort of person to do a matter like that?
Perfectly, indeed 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 right after getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the great 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was loads of medieval junk lying all over, considerably of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the type of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Nicely, sure he probably was. Appear at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The four evangelists are earlier mentioned and under two superb representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them underneath click on on them to enlarge them. Regrettably, they are not medieval at all, and it is normally approved that they have been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is a thing equivalent the other side of Bury at Hawstead.
Definitely medieval is the broad St Christopher wall-painting nonetheless discernible on the north wall. It was possibly a single of the very last 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 fee, and the work of William White. What can Rickards have been pondering of? But we move by way of into the chancel, and quickly the full point moves up a gear. For right here are some factors that are really impressive.
In a county famous for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. At the rear of the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive established of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that sort finials to the stall ends. They are contributors in the Mass, which include two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk have to be 1 of the best medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock considered the stalls the greatest in England. I was here with my buddy Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced beforehand photographed and created about these carving a a couple of many years in the past. But even he discovered a 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 great items: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Between the seats are unusual oriental faces. Some of them are down below click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am heading to talk to following. How a great deal of this is from this church initially? It all seems medieval work, and there is no motive to imagine it may possibly not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the features. What proof have we acquired?
Firstly, we really should recognize that the only other Suffolk church with this kind of a substantial selection of medieval misericords of this top quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I will not check with you to see this as sizeable, basically to observe it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does seem to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that again on to the display screen look to have been integrated into the larger sized composition of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
Nevertheless, if you look closely 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 look on the rood screen, and the Ashfields ended up the important donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to imagine that the better component of the stall construction was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Nicely, I will not know. But I think they have to be viewed as as component of the very same established as individuals at Norton. In which circumstance they may well have come from the exact same church, which may have been this 1, but may well not have been. Just about undoubtedly, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they ended up at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other extraordinary factors in St George contain FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s lovely St George, which serves the exact same objective. It is as good as his function at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Fantastic Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the relatively heavy altarpiece. They have been supplied to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk store. They clearly show visuals from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They day from the 1480s, and were almost surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked in the course of the French Revolution. I had observed one thing very similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a number of weeks ahead of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these after have been, and piled up in a block fairly than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches previously mentioned them, are 19th century. My favorite visuals are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on the images down below.
A person cold winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Very little far more was viewed or heard of them right until 1982, when they were being found out on display screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they were utilised as security for a personal loan which was defaulted on. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings were fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They had been purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which immediately recognized them as 15th century carvings. They set them on screen, and a Dutch female who experienced go through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to end the new proprietor eradicating them from the museum. The parish missing the scenario, leaving them with a monstrous legal invoice but the story has a delighted ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their obtain from the proprietor, compensated off the legal expenses, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at vast price, but the businessman gave the reward in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Right now, the carvings are preset firmly in place and alarmed, so they will not likely be likely walkabout all over again. But a minimal part of me wonders if they truly need to be listed here at all. Guaranteed, they are medieval, but they weren’t below at first they weren’t even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be better if they were being exhibited somewhere safer, where persons could pay to see them, and offer some cash flow for the upkeep of the church building? And then, whisper it, St George could possibly even be stored open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high street. Three keyholders are listed, two of them right away opposite. I am explained to that Wednesday is not a excellent time to test and get the vital – it is market day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-18 20:11:54
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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