I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I realized those two counties. But of program there is 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 good friend, Simon K, operates a magnificent site, which I connection to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church website page he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a ton of churches for two counties to share, and a lot of of these churches are ancient, flint created, spherical towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or a thing well worth the exertion of going to see or looking for out the keyholder to acquire obtain.
What I imply is that there is no way anyone who only experienced their own auto until 1984, and had minimal 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 saw St George from the principal highway, I was having a small slice to sign up for the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my past excursion of the year to lowestoft as Mom is now out of hospital and in the treatment of district nurses in purchase to get put again on her feet.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about 50 percent a mile away, and imagined I experienced adequate time to go more than and see inside if I could.
I parked at the stop of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I stroll up the lender to the gate into the churchyard, the clear lines of the tower, perfectly, towered over me.
In the porch I experimented with the door and discovered it locked, but the keyholder listing produced it very clear that the nearest one particular, at Christmas Cottage, was just in excess of the road. So, why not try, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my facts in a ledger, a practical evaluate. But I confirmed by driving licence to confirm that I was who I claimed. Very little did I know the modest village I lived in experienced been discovered. A lot more of that in a moment.
Inside St George, you eye is stolen by the fabulous pew finishes animals of all varieties, actual and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only those people of noticeable human sort. Just one with the human body of a chicken but a apparent human confront experienced been left by yourself, therefore is the insanity of the puritan’s mind.
I made a decision that I would record every pew close figure, and a lot of total pew ends so amazing that they were.
There is the feint define of a big wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most extraordinary when freshly painted. There is also a high-quality set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into detail Simon goes down below. It is alarmed, so you cannot glimpse at them as well carefully, regrettably, but these types of is a indicator of the situations.
I took the keys back, and the woman of the house arrived to speak to me as she experienced been explained to by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is in which her loved ones is from. Unfortunately, I am not from, nor dwell in Cliffe. For at the time there was indeed two Cliffs in Kent, one particular on the Hoo Peninsular, the place her spouse and children is from, and a single around to Dover. Several a long time back, Cliffe in the vicinity of to Dover was named WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake additional north. I defined this to her, but mentioned St Helen in Cliffe is 1 of my favourite Kent church buildings, constructed of alternate levels of black and gentle flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Even though St George below in Stowlangtoft is a high-quality church, it is in a poor point out of fix, and is because of to be designed redundant in the new year. Often sad when that comes about to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken about by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to retain it tidy when the old wardens and keyholders are way too aged.
Stowlangtoft is a magnificent church and so glad am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to take a look at it. Go to see it now before it is as well late!
——————————————-
In the summer months of 2003, this internet site turned a 6-portion sequence on BBC Radio Suffolk. One thing I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a fair quantity of correspondence. Referring to the way a lot of church buildings were being 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 true furnishings and fittings are medieval, the entire piece is still a Victorian conception.
Folks wrote to me and mentioned things 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 “think that practically nothing is as it initially seems, as Sherlock Holmes explained”. And if he didn’t, then he need to have accomplished.
A key case in point of a church that assumes a continuity that might not really be the truth of the matter is listed here in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This element of Suffolk can be somewhat bleak, particularly in late October, but England’s best summer months and autumn for decades experienced left the churchyard right here verdant and golden, as lovely a position as any I might witnessed that yr. The church is large, and sits on a mound that has been slice down on one facet by the road. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which in no way 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 categories of the mere mind and sings to us of our further self.
Overwhelmed as you could be by it, don’t are unsuccessful to place the damaged window tracery that has been utilized to build the wall in this article, for thus hangs a tale.
St George, in case you don’t know, is just one of the excellent Suffolk churches. Though it may perhaps externally surface a little extreme, and is by no suggests as grand as Blythburgh, Extensive Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure home of the medieval within. 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 still total of the ‘walls of glass’ confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and possibly even renewed, which may demonstrate why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. However, it isn’t going to choose substantially to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it may well be that the damaged tracery is from the unique church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall isn’t really medieval, so where by experienced it been all these several years?
A further survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some inquiries. Unusually, it options a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ remaining on the westwards facial area. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it shows are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and significantly less generally 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 definitely just isn’t seeking its greatest. But I feel there is more going on right here than fulfills the eye. Fonts have been plastered more than in Elizabethan situations, and only relief that stood happy 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 least, this stonework appears weathered. I ponder if this font was eliminated from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors function till it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is properly-documented. In 1832, as portion of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was pleased to discover that the church was at past undergoing fix. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave used for solutions. A new Rectory was remaining constructed. Who was the catalyst driving all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector listed here for pretty much the middle forty several years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good friend of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the topic of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English churches. It is attention-grabbing to assume how, at this seminal moment, Rickards could have educated the believed of the Oxford Motion. Sadly, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Throughout the training course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He received the terrific Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and finish the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the very same factor at Woolpit, a couple of miles absent. Ringham’s operate is so fantastic that it is at times challenging for the inexperienced eye to detect it even so, 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 quite a few unique topics you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings show up to be section of the exact same team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull actively playing a harp, the chook with a man’s head, from very similar carvings somewhere else. And then hopefully that minimal alarm bell in your heard ought to start out to go “Hmmmm…..” due to the fact some of the carvings listed here are obviously not from the similar team. It is really hard to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the same workshop, or even from the exact same ten years. The benches them selves are no clue it was typical follow in the 19th century to substitute medieval bench ends on modern-day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern-day benches made out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards uncovered some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the type of human being to do a issue like that?
Perfectly, yes he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a single that Rickards obtained after finding 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, considerably of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the kind of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Well, of course he probably was. Glimpse at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The 4 evangelists are higher than and down below two outstanding representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them down below click on them to enlarge them. Sad to say, they are not medieval at all, and it is frequently acknowledged that they were painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is anything equivalent the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Definitely medieval is the extensive St Christopher wall-portray still discernible on the north wall. It was almost certainly one particular of the past to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of study course, as is the good 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 commission, and the function of William White. What can Rickards have been wondering of? But we step by into the chancel, and suddenly the full point moves up a equipment. For here are some matters that are definitely remarkable.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are spectacular, even awe-inspiring. Powering the rood screen dado is Suffolk’s most complete set of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that type finials to the stall ends. They are members in the Mass, together with two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk must be 1 of the most effective medieval photographs in Suffolk Mortlock thought the stalls the greatest in England. I was in this article with my mate Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced beforehand photographed and created about these carving a a couple of several years in the past. But even he located a thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that deal with eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are great factors: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Concerning the seats are weird oriental faces. Some of them are under click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to question following. How substantially of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval operate, and there is no rationale to consider it may not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open up to the factors. What proof have we obtained?
First of all, we really should recognize that the only other Suffolk church with these types of a huge selection of medieval misericords of this top quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I really don’t question you to see this as important, merely to observe it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does appear to me as although two sets of furnishings have been cobbled jointly the stalls that back on to the display screen appear to have been built-in into the more substantial structure of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
However, if you seem intently 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 surface on the rood display, 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 framework was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Properly, I will not know. But I imagine they have to be thought of as portion of the same set as those at Norton. In which circumstance they may possibly have come from the exact same church, which may perhaps have been this 1, but may possibly not have been. Nearly definitely, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they have been at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other amazing issues in St George incorporate 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 same reason. It is as fantastic as his work at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and obtained from, the Fantastic Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of study course, most popular for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather hefty altarpiece. They ended up supplied to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk store. They present illustrations or photos from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They date from the 1480s, and had been practically definitely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked during the French Revolution. I experienced viewed something equivalent at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a handful of months ahead of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these the moment have been, and piled up in a block alternatively than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches previously mentioned them, are 19th century. My favourite photographs are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Simply click on the pictures underneath.
1 chilly winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Practically nothing additional was seen or heard of them until 1982, when they were found out on exhibit in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted a person taken to Holland, they have been employed as safety for a loan which was defaulted on. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings had been fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They were acquired from his shop, and taken to the museum, which quickly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They place them on show, and a Dutch female who experienced browse about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to prevent the new proprietor removing them from the museum. The parish dropped the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous lawful invoice but the story has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the owner, paid out off the lawful bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at wide expense, but the businessman gave the present in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Currently, the carvings are mounted firmly in location and alarmed, so they will never be going walkabout all over again. But a minor component of me miracles if they seriously must be right here at all. Guaranteed, they are medieval, but they were not below initially they were not even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be improved if they were being displayed somewhere safer, wherever folks could pay back to see them, and supply some revenue for the maintenance of the church constructing? And then, whisper it, St George may well even be retained open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high road. 3 keyholders are detailed, two of them instantly reverse. I am informed that Wednesday is not a fantastic time to test and get the critical – it is current market working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-18 10:31:32
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
#home furnishings #Do-it-yourself #woodwork #woodworking #freedownload#woodworkingprojects #woodsmith ,wood craft, wood planer, great woodworking, picket chairs, wood doing work equipment, well known woodworking, woodworking publications, woodworking workbench programs