St George in Stowlangtoft will have the distinction of acquiring the album with the most photos, help you save for Canterbury Cathedral. It was a amazing church, and 1 I liked viewing.
I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I understood these two counties. But of class 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 mate, Simon K, operates a fantastic website, which I url to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church web site he has visited 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a large amount of church buildings for two counties to share, and several of individuals churches are ancient, flint built, spherical towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or one thing really worth the effort and hard work of heading to see or trying to get out the keyholder to gain obtain.
What I necessarily mean is that there is no way somebody who only experienced their personal automobile till 1984, and had little fascination in churches or parishes could have heard of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I observed St George from the principal highway, I was having a limited slash to be part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last journey of the calendar year to lowestoft as Mother is now out of medical center and in the treatment of district nurses in order to get set again on her toes.
So I saw the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile absent, and considered I had more than enough time to go more than and see inside if I could.
I parked at the close of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I wander up the financial institution to the gate into the churchyard, the clean strains of the tower, well, towered over me.
In the porch I tried out the doorway and found it locked, but the keyholder list designed it very clear that the closest one particular, at Christmas Cottage, was just more than the street. So, why not check out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my facts in a ledger, a sensible evaluate. But I showed by driving licence to confirm that I was who I claimed. Little did I know the small village I lived in experienced been recognized. Far more of that in a minute.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the incredible pew ends animals of all varieties, actual and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only these of clear human sort. A single with the human body of a rooster but a very clear human encounter had been left by yourself, so is the madness of the puritan’s brain.
I made the decision that I would history each pew stop figure, and quite a few entire pew ends so fantastic that they were being.
There is the feint define of a huge wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most outstanding when freshly painted. There is also a good set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes under. It is alarmed, so you cannot search at them far too closely, sadly, but such is a indication of the moments.
I took the keys again, and the woman of the residence arrived to converse to me as she had been advised by her partner that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is in which her relatives is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor dwell in Cliffe. For the moment there was indeed two Cliffs in Kent, just one on the Hoo Peninsular, exactly where her family is from, and a person around to Dover. Several yrs back, Cliffe around to Dover was referred to as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake even further north. I spelled out this to her, but said St Helen in Cliffe is a person of my favourite Kent churches, built of alternate levels of black and mild flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Though St George right here in Stowlangtoft is a good church, it is in a bad point out of repair service, and is thanks to be made redundant in the new yr. Generally sad when that takes place to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken in excess of by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to continue to keep it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are also aged.
Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church and so happy am I that I invested 40 minutes of my time to go to it. Go to see it now just before it is way too late!
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In the summer season of 2003, this web site grew to become a 6-component series on BBC Radio Suffolk. Something I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a truthful amount of money of correspondence. Referring to the way quite a few church buildings had been restored in the 19th century, I observed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval even when the real furnishings and fittings are medieval, the whole piece is even now a Victorian conception.
People today wrote to me and mentioned items like “but in that circumstance, Simon, how do we know what was there at first and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “presume that very little is as it initial seems, as Sherlock Holmes claimed”. And if he did not, then he need to have carried out.
A key illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that might not basically be the truth is here in the flat fields in between Woolpit and Ixworth. This element of Suffolk can be fairly bleak, particularly in late Oct, but England’s very best summer season and autumn for many years experienced still left the churchyard right here verdant and golden, as stunning a position as any I might witnessed that calendar year. The church is significant, and sits on a mound that has been minimize down on a single aspect by the street. I walked up the slope, past the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never ever fails to transfer me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett says of it that it simply cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the types of the mere mind and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overcome as you may perhaps be by it, really don’t are unsuccessful to place the broken window tracery that has been made use of to construct the wall right here, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in case you you should not know, is 1 of the fantastic Suffolk church buildings. Whilst it could externally look a very little severe, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Very long Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure property of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in one particular go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not however complete of the ‘walls of glass’ confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and potentially even renewed, which could make clear why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Nevertheless, it won’t just take substantially to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it could 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 those yrs?
Yet another survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some questions. Unusually, it attributes a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ remaining on the westwards encounter. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it shows are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and considerably less generally St George. The cult of St George was at its peak in the early several years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it undoubtedly isn’t really hunting its greatest. But I assume there is much more going on here than fulfills the eye. Fonts were being plastered more than in Elizabethan moments, and only aid that stood proud of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not assume they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at least, this stonework appears weathered. I ponder if this font was taken out from the church, most likely 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 perfectly-documented. In 1832, as part of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was happy to discover that the church was at past going through repair service. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave utilised for companies. A new Rectory was becoming constructed. Who was the catalyst driving all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector listed here for just about the middle forty years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good buddy of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they frequently corresponded on the issue of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English church buildings. It is intriguing to imagine how, at this seminal instant, Rickards might have informed the thought of the Oxford Movement. Unfortunately, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He got the great Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and entire the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the same thing at Woolpit, a number of miles absent. Ringham’s operate is so good that it is at times hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it nonetheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals in this article, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and probably dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer amount – there are maybe 60 carvings – but also that there are various distinctive subjects you can see some of them below.
The carvings show up to be section 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 minimal alarm bell in your read need to get started to go “Hmmmm…..” because some of the carvings here are clearly not from the same group. It is tough to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the very same workshop, or even from the same decade. The benches them selves are no clue it was prevalent observe in the 19th century to swap medieval bench ends on fashionable benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern-day benches manufactured out of medieval timber (as transpired at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards observed some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the kind 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 1 that Rickards acquired soon after getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the terrific 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was masses of medieval junk lying about, a lot of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Properly, of course he almost certainly was. Glance at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south aspect of the nave. The 4 evangelists are earlier mentioned and down below two wonderful representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below click on them to enlarge them. Regretably, they are not medieval at all, and it is normally acknowledged that they ended up painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is some thing very similar the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Actually medieval is the huge St Christopher wall-portray nevertheless discernible on the north wall. It was likely one of the final to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of study course, as is the fine rood-monitor dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the upper 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 contemplating of? But we move through into the chancel, and all of a sudden the total thing moves up a gear. For below are some points that are truly amazing.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Guiding the rood screen dado is Suffolk’s most total set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that form finials to the stall finishes. They are members in the Mass, which includes two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk ought to be one of the best medieval photos in Suffolk Mortlock imagined the stalls the finest in England. I was listed here with my mate Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced beforehand photographed and composed about these carving a a couple of a long time 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 facial area eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are superb points: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Involving the seats are odd oriental faces. Some of them are below simply click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am going to ask following. How a lot of this is from this church initially? It all appears medieval do the job, and there is no purpose to feel it may well not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the features. What evidence have we obtained?
First of all, we need to discover that the only other Suffolk church with such a massive range of medieval misericords of this good quality is just a mile absent, at Norton. I don’t request you to see this as considerable, basically to observe it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does search to me as even though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that back again on to the display appear to have been integrated into the larger structure of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
Nevertheless, if you search closely at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche people. The Ashfield arms also look on the rood display, and the Ashfields had been the major donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to believe that the larger aspect of the stall framework was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I do not know. But I believe they have to be viewed as as portion of the similar set as all those at Norton. In which circumstance they might have come from the similar church, which may possibly have been this one, but may well not have been. Nearly certainly, the stalls at Norton did not appear from Norton church, and folklore has it that they have been at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other exceptional issues in St George incorporate FE Howard’s wonderful war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the exact function. It is as fantastic as his perform at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Good Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather significant altarpiece. They have been supplied to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly uncovered them in an Ixworth junk store. They demonstrate images from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They date from the 1480s, and had been just about undoubtedly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked throughout the French Revolution. I had viewed a little something equivalent at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a number of weeks just before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these when were being, and piled up in a block alternatively than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches above them, are 19th century. My favorite photographs are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the visuals below.
A person cold winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing at all extra was seen or listened to of them till 1982, when they had been identified on display in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted just one taken to Holland, they ended up employed as stability for a personal loan which was defaulted upon. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings ended up fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They ended up purchased from his shop, and taken to the museum, which instantly discovered them as 15th century carvings. They set them on exhibit, and a Dutch girl who had read through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to cease the new owner taking away them from the museum. The parish missing the situation, leaving them with a monstrous lawful invoice but the story has a delighted ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their order from the proprietor, paid off the legal payments, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at vast expense, but the businessman gave the present in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Nowadays, the carvings are mounted firmly in spot and alarmed, so they is not going to be going walkabout all over again. But a minor section of me miracles if they really need to be below at all. Sure, they are medieval, but they were not in this article initially they were not even in England originally. Wouldn’t it be improved if they had been shown someplace safer, exactly where men and women could shell out to see them, and supply some cash flow for the upkeep of the church constructing? And then, whisper it, St George could possibly even be stored open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village superior road. Three keyholders are outlined, two of them immediately opposite. I am informed that Wednesday is not a very good time to check out and get the essential – it is marketplace day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-19 09:10:34
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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