I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I assumed I realized individuals two counties. But of study course there is a lot 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, runs a fantastic internet site, which I website link to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church web site he has visited 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a great deal of churches for two counties to share, and numerous of all those churches are ancient, flint developed, spherical towered or have wall paintings, picket roof angels or a little something worthy of the hard work of likely to see or in search of out the keyholder to obtain entry.
What I indicate is that there is no way an individual who only experienced their very own automobile until 1984, and had minimal desire 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 noticed St George from the major street, I was having a brief reduce to join the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my previous vacation of the yr to lowestoft as Mom is now out of clinic and in the care of district nurses in purchase to get place again on her ft.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile absent, and believed I had plenty of time to go in excess of and see within if I could.
I parked at the conclude of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I wander up the financial institution to the gate into the churchyard, the cleanse strains of the tower, effectively, towered about me.
In the porch I experimented with the door and observed it locked, but the keyholder checklist manufactured it obvious that the nearest 1, at Xmas Cottage, was just above the highway. So, why not attempt, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my facts 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 modest village I lived in experienced been noticed. Additional of that in a minute.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the wonderful pew ends animals of all varieties, real and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only these of clear human form. 1 with the entire body of a hen but a obvious human deal with experienced been left by itself, thus is the insanity of the puritan’s thoughts.
I resolved that I would record each individual pew close figure, and quite a few complete pew ends so great that they ended up.
There is the feint define of a huge wall portray, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a fantastic set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes down below. It is alarmed, so you are unable to glimpse at them as well intently, sadly, but such is a sign of the instances.
I took the keys again, and the girl of the household came to discuss to me as she experienced been informed by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is wherever her family is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor are living in Cliffe. For once there was in truth two Cliffs in Kent, a person on the Hoo Peninsular, where by her relatives is from, and just one near to Dover. Many a long time in the past, Cliffe near to Dover was known as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake even more north. I discussed this to her, but said St Helen in Cliffe is one of my favourite Kent church buildings, built of alternate layers of black and gentle flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Despite the fact that St George right here in Stowlangtoft is a great church, it is in a weak condition of repair, and is thanks to be designed redundant in the new year. Generally unfortunate when that occurs to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken in excess of by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to preserve it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are as well aged.
Stowlangtoft is a amazing church and so happy am I that I put in 40 minutes of my time to visit it. Go to see it now just before it is far too late!
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In the summer of 2003, this web-site turned a six-aspect series on BBC Radio Suffolk. One thing I claimed in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a reasonable amount of correspondence. Referring to the way several churches were 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 actual furnishings and fittings are medieval, the total piece is continue to a Victorian conception.
People wrote to me and claimed items like “but in that case, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that almost nothing is as it very first appears, as Sherlock Holmes claimed”. And if he didn’t, then he must have performed.
A primary example of a church that assumes a continuity that may perhaps not in fact be the reality is below in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This portion of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak, primarily in late October, but England’s best summertime and autumn for many years had left the churchyard in this article verdant and golden, as attractive a position as any I might witnessed that 12 months. The church is large, and sits on a mound that has been cut down on a single aspect by the street. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never ever fails to move me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett suggests of it that it simply cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the classes of the mere intellect and sings to us of our further self.
Confused as you might be by it, you should not fail to place the damaged window tracery that has been applied to establish the wall below, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in situation you never know, is one particular of the excellent Suffolk church buildings. Although it could externally look a minor extreme, and is by no suggests as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the rest, it is a treasure dwelling of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in one particular go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not nonetheless whole of the ‘walls of glass’ assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and probably even renewed, which may well reveal why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it would not acquire significantly 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 authentic church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall isn’t medieval, so exactly where had it been all these several years?
Yet another survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some concerns. 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 demonstrates are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and much less frequently St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early many years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it unquestionably isn’t wanting its greatest. But I consider there is more going on in this article than meets the eye. Fonts ended up plastered above in Elizabethan situations, 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 least, this stonework seems weathered. I ponder if this font was eliminated from the church, in all probability in the mid-17th century, and served an outside intent right until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as component of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was delighted to uncover that the church was at very last undergoing fix. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave utilised for expert services. A new Rectory was becoming built. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector right here for pretty much the center forty years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good buddy of John Henry Newman, the long run Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is interesting to feel how, at this seminal minute, Rickards may possibly have knowledgeable the believed of the Oxford Movement. Regrettably, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the training course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He obtained the fantastic Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and complete the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the very same issue at Woolpit, a handful of miles away. Ringham’s work is so very good that it is often hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it however, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals right here, and the wierder things is all medieval, and possibly dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer amount – there are probably 60 carvings – but also that there are numerous unique subjects you can see some of them beneath.
The carvings look to be aspect of the similar group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull enjoying a harp, the fowl with a man’s head, from very similar carvings somewhere else. And then with any luck , that little alarm bell in your listened to should really start out to go “Hmmmm…..” for the reason that some of the carvings in this article are plainly not from the identical group. It is challenging to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the same workshop, or even from the same decade. The benches on their own are no clue it was prevalent observe in the 19th century to change medieval bench finishes on present day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern-day benches created out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards located some of these bench finishes in other places? Could he have been the kind of person to do a point like that?
Properly, yes he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a person that Rickards acquired following getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was hundreds of medieval junk lying all-around, a lot of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the type of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Perfectly, sure he probably was. Search at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The 4 evangelists are previously mentioned and beneath two exceptional representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them under click on them to enlarge them. However, they are not medieval at all, and it is frequently recognized that they have been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something equivalent the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Truly medieval is the wide St Christopher wall-portray continue to discernible on the north wall. It was almost certainly a person of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of system, as is the high-quality 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 fee, and the function of William White. What can Rickards have been contemplating of? But we action by way of into the chancel, and abruptly the total point moves up a gear. For listed here are some factors that are definitely exceptional.
In a county famed for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Guiding the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most total established of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that kind finials to the stall ends. They are contributors in the Mass, such as two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk need to be 1 of the very best medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock imagined the stalls the very best in England. I was right here with my close friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced formerly photographed and published about these carving a a couple of decades ago. But even he identified some 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 amazing points: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. In between the seats are weird oriental faces. Some of them are under 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 initially? It all appears medieval get the job done, and there is no purpose to believe that it might not have been moved somewhere else in the church when the chancel was open up to the features. What proof have we acquired?
First of all, we should detect that the only other Suffolk church with such a massive number of medieval misericords of this high-quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I will not request you to see this as considerable, just to notice it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled with each other the stalls that back again on to the display surface to have been built-in into the bigger construction of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
Nonetheless, if you glance intently 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 appear on the rood display, and the Ashfields had been the important donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to think that the better aspect of the stall composition was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Properly, I do not know. But I believe they have to be regarded as as aspect of the similar established as these at Norton. In which scenario they may have appear from the similar church, which may well have been this 1, but could not have been. Nearly surely, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other exceptional factors in St George incorporate FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s lovely St George, which serves the similar function. It is as great as his operate at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and acquired from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of system, most well known for the Flemish carvings that flank the instead significant altarpiece. They ended up presented to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk store. They display photographs from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They date from the 1480s, and have been almost surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked during the French Revolution. I had found anything comparable at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a several weeks right before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these the moment ended up, and piled up in a block alternatively than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches above them, are 19th century. My favourite pictures are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the pictures below.
Just one chilly winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Almost nothing a lot more was seen or listened to of them right until 1982, when they had been discovered on screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted a single taken to Holland, they have been utilized as safety for a mortgage which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings had been fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They ended up bought from his shop, and taken to the museum, which promptly discovered them as 15th century carvings. They place them on display, and a Dutch lady who had browse about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to cease the new proprietor taking away them from the museum. The parish dropped the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous authorized invoice but the story has a delighted ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their acquire from the operator, paid off the legal expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at wide cost, 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 fastened firmly in area and alarmed, so they won’t be heading walkabout again. But a minor element of me wonders if they really must be listed here at all. Confident, they are medieval, but they weren’t listed here at first they weren’t even in England at first. Would not it be far better if they were displayed somewhere safer, where by folks could fork out to see them, and present some revenue for the upkeep of the church constructing? And then, whisper it, St George may well even be kept open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village substantial road. 3 keyholders are outlined, two of them immediately reverse. I am explained to that Wednesday is not a great time to check out and get the critical – it is marketplace working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:36
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , ends , carved pew finishes , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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