I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I imagined I knew those two counties. But of class 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 pal, Simon K, runs a fantastic website, which I hyperlink to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church web page he has visited 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a large amount of churches for two counties to share, and quite a few of individuals church buildings are historic, flint created, round towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or something really worth the effort of heading to see or seeking out the keyholder to acquire entry.
What I imply is that there is no way somebody who only experienced their individual motor vehicle till 1984, and had minimal desire in churches or parishes could have read of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I observed St George from the primary street, I was using a short cut to sign up for 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 Mother is now out of healthcare facility and in the care of district nurses in get to get place back on her feet.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about 50 % a mile away, and considered I experienced ample time to go more than and see inside of if I could.
I parked at the conclusion of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I stroll up the bank to the gate into the churchyard, the clear lines of the tower, nicely, towered more than me.
In the porch I experimented with the doorway and identified it locked, but the keyholder listing manufactured it apparent that the nearest 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 experienced to fill out my specifics in a ledger, a sensible measure. But I showed by driving licence to demonstrate that I was who I claimed. Very little did I know the smaller village I lived in had been noticed. Additional of that in a moment.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the fantastic pew finishes animals of all forms, serious and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only all those of clear human type. 1 with the body of a chicken but a very clear human encounter experienced been remaining on your own, hence is the madness of the puritan’s mind.
I resolved that I would file every single pew conclusion figure, and a lot of total pew finishes so fantastic that they had been.
There is the feint define of a massive wall portray, Simon states it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most spectacular when freshly painted. There is also a great set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes beneath. It is alarmed, so you simply cannot glance at them much too closely, unfortunately, but these kinds of is a signal of the periods.
I took the keys again, and the girl of the home arrived to talk to me as she experienced been explained to by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is in which her spouse and children is from. Unfortunately, I am not from, nor live in Cliffe. For after there was without a doubt two Cliffs in Kent, one on the Hoo Peninsular, the place her family is from, and 1 near to Dover. Many several years ago, Cliffe close to to Dover was referred to as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further north. I spelled out this to her, but explained St Helen in Cliffe is a person of my favourite Kent church buildings, developed of alternate layers of black and gentle flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Whilst St George in this article in Stowlangtoft is a great church, it is in a weak condition of maintenance, and is thanks to be created redundant in the new 12 months. Generally sad when that comes about to a parish church, but it is most likely to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to preserve it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are far too previous.
Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church and so happy am I that I used 40 minutes of my time to check out it. Go to see it now right before it is too late!
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In the summer of 2003, this site became a 6-element series on BBC Radio Suffolk. Something I reported in the fourth programme, about Hessett, created a good amount of money of correspondence. Referring to the way quite a few church buildings were being 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 full piece is however a Victorian conception.
Individuals wrote to me and mentioned factors like “but in that circumstance, Simon, how do we know what was there at first and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “believe that nothing is as it initially seems, as Sherlock Holmes reported”. And if he didn’t, then he really should have carried out.
A primary instance of a church that assumes a continuity that may well not in fact be the reality is here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be instead bleak, primarily in late October, but England’s very best summer season and autumn for a long time had still left the churchyard listed here verdant and golden, as beautiful a area as any I’d observed that 12 months. The church is large, and sits on a mound that has been slash down on one particular facet by the street. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the artwork 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 says of it that it cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the categories of the mere brain and sings to us of our further self.
Overwhelmed as you may perhaps be by it, do not are unsuccessful to spot the broken window tracery that has been used to make the wall here, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in situation you really don’t know, is 1 of the terrific Suffolk churches. Though it might externally look a minor significant, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure house of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in 1 go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not yet full of the ‘walls of glass’ self confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been fixed, and quite possibly even renewed, which could describe why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Nevertheless, it won’t get a great deal to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it may well be that the damaged tracery is from the first church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall is just not medieval, so exactly where experienced it been all those people many years?
A different survival from the earlier church is the font. It also asks some questions. Unusually, it capabilities a Saint on seven 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 usually St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early a long time of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it absolutely is not hunting its most effective. But I assume there is more likely on here than meets the eye. Fonts were being plastered in excess of in Elizabethan instances, and only relief 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 the very least, this stonework seems weathered. I speculate if this font was eliminated from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an outside goal until eventually it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale 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 delighted to obtain that the church was at last undergoing mend. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave made use of for companies. A new Rectory was becoming created. Who was the catalyst driving all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector right here for nearly the center forty several years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a great buddy of John Henry Newman, the potential Cardinal, and they usually corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation ordering of English church buildings. It is appealing to believe how, at this seminal moment, Rickards may have knowledgeable the imagined of the Oxford Movement. Sadly, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and full the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the same matter at Woolpit, a several miles away. Ringham’s do the job is so excellent that it is from time to time tough for the inexperienced eye to detect it nevertheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals 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 probably 60 carvings – but also that there are many exceptional subjects you can see some of them below.
The carvings show up to be section of the identical group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull actively playing a harp, the fowl with a man’s head, from equivalent carvings in other places. And then hopefully that minor alarm bell in your listened to need to get started to go “Hmmmm…..” because some of the carvings here are obviously not from the very same group. It is really hard to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the exact workshop, or even from the exact same decade. The benches them selves are no clue it was common follow in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on present day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on fashionable benches designed out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards discovered some of these bench finishes elsewhere? Could he have been the form of person to do a matter like that?
Nicely, certainly he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is just one that Rickards obtained just after obtaining it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the excellent 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was loads of medieval junk lying about, substantially of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the form of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Nicely, yes he in all probability was. Glance at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south side of the nave. The 4 evangelists are above and under two outstanding 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. However, they are not medieval at all, and it is frequently acknowledged that they have been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is some thing identical the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Genuinely medieval is the huge St Christopher wall-painting nevertheless discernible on the north wall. It was possibly 1 of the past to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of training course, 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 do the job of William White. What can Rickards have been thinking of? But we move via into the chancel, and out of the blue the full thing moves up a gear. For right here are some issues that are genuinely impressive.
In a county renowned for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Powering the rood screen dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that sort finials to the stall finishes. They are participants in the Mass, such as two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk should be one particular of the very best medieval visuals in Suffolk Mortlock believed the stalls the greatest in England. I was right here with my good friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced formerly photographed and composed about these carving a a few of several years in the past. But even he identified a little something new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that confront eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are wonderful items: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Concerning the seats are weird oriental faces. Some of them are underneath click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am going to check with future. How a great deal of this is from this church originally? It all appears medieval get the job done, and there is no rationale to imagine it might not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open up to the features. What proof have we received?
To begin with, we ought to observe that the only other Suffolk church with these kinds of a massive quantity of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile absent, at Norton. I will not talk to you to see this as considerable, basically to recognize it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does glimpse to me as although two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that back again on to the monitor seem to have been integrated into the more substantial composition of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
Nevertheless, if you search intently at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche family members. The Ashfield arms also appear on the rood monitor, and the Ashfields had been the big donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to believe that the better component of the stall composition was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Effectively, I you should not know. But I assume they have to be regarded as component of the very same set as those at Norton. In which situation they could have appear from the similar church, which could have been this 1, but may well not have been. Almost certainly, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were being originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other amazing issues in St George include FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s attractive St George, which serves the similar purpose. It is as superior as his work at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Great Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of study course, most renowned for the Flemish carvings that flank the relatively significant altarpiece. They have been offered to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk store. They show illustrations or photos from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides recommend. They day from the 1480s, and ended up just about certainly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked for the duration of the French Revolution. I experienced found some thing equivalent at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a number of weeks ahead of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these the moment had been, and piled up in a block fairly than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches higher than them, are 19th century. My favourite visuals are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on the images under.
A single cold winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing far more was viewed or read of them until eventually 1982, when they were learned on display in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted 1 taken to Holland, they ended up utilised as security for a loan which was defaulted upon. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings were fenced to an Amsterdam junk seller. They were being purchased from his shop, and taken to the museum, which instantly recognized 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 again an injunction was taken out to cease the new owner eliminating them from the museum. The parish lost the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous lawful monthly bill but the tale has a joyful ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their purchase from the owner, compensated off the lawful expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at extensive charge, but the businessman gave the present in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Today, the carvings are set firmly in position and alarmed, so they will not likely be likely walkabout once again. But a very little portion of me wonders if they definitely should be right here at all. Confident, they are medieval, but they were not right here at first they weren’t even in England at first. Wouldn’t it be far better if they have been displayed somewhere safer, where by folks could pay out to see them, and present some cash flow for the routine maintenance of the church setting up? And then, whisper it, St George may well even be saved open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high street. A few keyholders are detailed, two of them quickly reverse. I am advised that Wednesday is not a fantastic 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 2017-12-17 14:43:53
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , ends , carved pew finishes , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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