St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk
Supplied that our parish church buildings just about without exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it need to be apparent that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian vision of the medieval. Even when the real furnishings and fittings are medieval, the total piece is however a Victorian conception.
Inevitably, the query arises of what was there right before the restoration and what wasn’t. The obvious response is that we will have to assume that very little is as it initially appears.
A prime example of a church that assumes a continuity that may perhaps not truly be the truth of the matter is listed here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This component of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak in winter season, but in summer the churchyard here is verdant and golden, as wonderful a position as any in the county. The church is massive, and nonetheless unusually slim. It sits on a mound that has been reduce down on just one aspect by the road. In the churchyard you may come across the well-acknowledged memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a car crash in 1990.
In the churchyard wall there is what appears to be damaged medieval window tracery, which is worthy of noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.
St George is just one of the excellent Suffolk church buildings. Whilst it may perhaps externally surface a small extreme, and is by no implies as grand as Blythburgh, Prolonged Melford and the rest, it is a treasure household of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in one go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not but entire of the ‘walls of glass’ assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been fixed, and possibly even renewed, which could demonstrate the tracery in the churchyard wall. Having said that, it won’t acquire 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 authentic church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall by itself is not medieval, so exactly where had it been all these a long time? Is it feasible that the existing window tracery is not medieval at all?
Stowlangtoft church featured in Simon Jenkins’ reserve England’s Thousand Greatest Church buildings, which sends a great deal of site visitors to its locked door, and may well aid stave off the inevitable for a though, for there is no actual congregation below any additional and the church is moribund. Typical services are held throughout the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only utilised on exclusive events. The crucial is held across the street, in which the incredibly awesome lady advised me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It appears to be probably that treatment of it will be conveyed into the hands of the Church buildings Conservation Trust.
You step in by means of the chancel door (the lock in this article is extremely awkward, but do persevere) and if you are something like me you will head straight down to the west stop where you will find the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some thoughts. 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 exhibits are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and fewer commonly St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it absolutely is not on the lookout its ideal. But I assume there is additional likely on right here than satisfies the eye. Fonts were being plastered above in Elizabethan occasions, and only aid that stood happy of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not think they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at least, this stonework appears weathered. I question if this font was taken out from the church, probably in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor intent until finally it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is perfectly-documented. In 1832, as element of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was pleased to come across that the church was at very last undergoing maintenance. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave used for solutions. A new Rectory was being designed. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for virtually the middle forty yrs of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good friend of John Henry Newman, the potential Cardinal, and they usually corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is appealing to think how, at this seminal minute, Rickards could have educated the considered of the Oxford Motion. Unfortunately, when Newman grew to become a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
All through the training course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and total the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the very same thing at Woolpit, a several miles away. Ringham’s operate is so great that it is in some cases challenging for the inexperienced eye to detect it. Having said that, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals listed here, and the weirder 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 perhaps 60 carvings – but also that there are a number of exclusive subjects.
The carvings appear to be part of the exact team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull taking part in a harp, the chicken with a man’s head, from comparable carvings somewhere else. And then ideally that tiny alarm bell in your heard need to start out to go “Hmmmm…..” due to the fact some of the carvings below are evidently not from the identical group. It is hard to imagine that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the exact same workshop, or even from the exact same ten years. The benches by themselves are no clue, as it was common apply in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on fashionable benches, or on medieval benches, or even on present day benches designed out of medieval timber (as took place at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards discovered some of these bench ends in other places? Could he have been the type of person to do a issue like that?
Effectively, certainly he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is East Anglian. Rickards obtained it just after getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. It presumably came from one particular of the Ipswich churches. In the ferment of the excellent 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was masses of medieval junk lying all around, a great deal of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Effectively, certainly he possibly was. The faux-medieval roundels in the windows of the nave are evidently not medieval at all, but have been in point the work of the young Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are plainly to the youthful girl’s design and style, and Pevsner notes that other individuals are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, while the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at least are really close copies of the Flemish roundels of the same subjects in Nowton church on the other facet of Bury St Edmunds.
Truly medieval is the extensive St Christopher wall-portray nevertheless discernible on the north wall. It was likely a person of the past to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of study course, as is the fantastic rood-display dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval figure glass in the higher tracery of some of the windows, including St Agnes keeping a lamb and four Previous Testament prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s fee, and the work of William White. What can Rickards have been considering of? But we step by means of into the chancel, and instantly the complete factor moves up a gear. For below are some issues that are genuinely exceptional.
In a county renowned for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood screen dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive set of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that type finials to the stall finishes. They are participants in the Mass, like two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk have to be 1 of the most effective medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk, and Mortlock believed the stalls the best in England.
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. Between the seats are weird oriental faces.
Now, you know what I am likely to inquire next. How substantially of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval do the job, and there is no reason to imagine it could possibly not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the features. What evidence have we acquired?
To begin with, we should detect that the only other Suffolk church with these kinds of a big selection of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I really don’t ask you to see this as substantial, simply to notice it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does glimpse to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that back on to the monitor appear to have been built-in into the bigger framework of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
However, if you search carefully 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 appear on the rood monitor, and the Ashfields were the significant donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to assume that the increased part of the stall construction was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I never know. But I consider they have to be thought of as portion of the similar established as those at Norton. In which case they may perhaps have come from the exact same church, which may well have been this a single, but may perhaps not have been. Pretty much unquestionably, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they have been at first in the quire of Bury Abbey.
Other impressive things in St George involve FE Howard’s attractive war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s unexpectedly stunning St George, which serves the same objective. He is not an artist I ordinarily admire, but it is as very good as his work at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of study course, most well known for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather heavy altarpiece. They have been given to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk shop. They display images from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They date from the 1480s, and ended up nearly surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked for the duration of the French Revolution. The carvings had been as soon as brightly painted, and piled up in a block rather than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches earlier mentioned them, are 19th century.
Just one chilly winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Absolutely nothing far more was noticed or heard of them until finally 1982, when they have been discovered on show in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one. Taken to Holland, they were utilized as stability for a financial loan which was defaulted upon. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings were fenced to an Amsterdam junk seller. They have been purchased from his shop, and taken to the museum, which straight away discovered them as 15th century carvings. They set them on show, and a Dutch female who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them back again. An injunction was taken out to quit the new operator getting rid of them from the museum. The parish lost the situation, leaving them with a monstrous lawful monthly bill, but the tale has a pleased ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their buy from the owner, compensated off the authorized expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at broad cost, but the businessman gave the gift in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Right now, the carvings are preset firmly in spot and alarmed, so they is not going to be likely walkabout once again. But a small portion of me miracles if they really should be in this article at all. Certain, they are medieval, but they weren’t right here originally, and they were not even in England initially. Would not it be improved if they ended up displayed someplace safer, where by people could pay out to see them, and offer some income for the servicing of the church developing? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they could even be capable to depart it open.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-13 17:26:05
Tagged: , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , east anglia , church
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