St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk
Given that our parish churches just about without exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it should be obvious 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 full piece is nonetheless a Victorian conception.
Inevitably, the question arises of what was there ahead of the restoration and what was not. The apparent solution is that we have to suppose that nothing is as it very first appears.
A key instance of a church that assumes a continuity that may well not essentially be the fact is listed here in the flat fields in between Woolpit and Ixworth. This component of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak in wintertime, but in summer time the churchyard right here is verdant and golden, as lovely a location as any in the county. The church is big, and still unusually narrow. It sits on a mound that has been reduce down on 1 facet by the street. In the churchyard you may come across the effectively-recognized memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a vehicle crash in 1990.
In the churchyard wall there is what seems to be broken medieval window tracery, which is truly worth noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.
St George is one of the great Suffolk church buildings. Whilst it may well externally seem a minor extreme, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Lengthy Melford and the rest, it is a treasure property 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 windows are not yet comprehensive of the ‘walls of glass’ self confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and maybe even renewed, which could reveal the tracery in the churchyard wall. Nonetheless, it would not take considerably to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it may possibly be that the broken tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall by itself just isn’t medieval, so where by had it been all those people years? Is it achievable that the latest window tracery is not medieval at all?
Stowlangtoft church featured in Simon Jenkins’ guide England’s Thousand Ideal Church buildings, which sends a good deal of people to its locked door, and may well assistance stave off the inevitable for a though, for there is no actual congregation in this article any more and the church is moribund. Standard solutions are held across the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only utilised on special events. The essential is kept throughout the highway, where the incredibly awesome woman informed me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It looks possible that care of it will be conveyed into the palms of the Churches Conservation Trust.
You move in by means of the chancel doorway (the lock here is very uncomfortable, but do persevere) and if you are everything like me you will head straight down to the west finish the place you will discover the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some thoughts. Unusually, it features a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ remaining on the westwards experience. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it shows are acquainted cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and considerably less commonly St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early several years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it surely is just not on the lookout its very best. But I feel there is more going on here than satisfies the eye. Fonts ended up plastered in excess of in Elizabethan moments, and only relief that stood very pleased of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not believe they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at the very 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 outside intent right up until it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as part of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was delighted to come across that the church was at last undergoing restore. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave utilised for companies. A new Rectory was staying built. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for almost the center forty several years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good buddy of John Henry Newman, the potential Cardinal, and they normally corresponded on the topic of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English church buildings. It is interesting to assume how, at this seminal moment, Rickards may have informed the thought of the Oxford Motion. Unfortunately, when Newman turned a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He got the terrific Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and comprehensive the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the similar point at Woolpit, a couple of miles away. Ringham’s perform is so very good that it is sometimes challenging for the inexperienced eye to detect it. Having said that, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals right here, and the weirder things is all medieval, and most likely dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer amount – there are potentially 60 carvings – but also that there are a number of one of a kind topics.
The carvings appear to be element of the similar group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull enjoying a harp, the bird with a man’s head, from identical carvings in other places. And then with any luck , that minimal alarm bell in your listened to need to begin to go “Hmmmm…..” since some of the carvings in this article are clearly not from the exact same team. It is hard to consider that the mermaid and the owl, for illustration, are from the same workshop, or even from the exact same decade. The benches by themselves are no clue, as it was popular practice in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on modern-day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on present day benches made out of medieval timber (as transpired at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards observed some of these bench finishes in other places? Could he have been the form of man or woman to do a issue like that?
Well, yes he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is East Anglian. Rickards obtained it just after obtaining it in storage in Ipswich docks. It presumably arrived from just one of the Ipswich church buildings. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was hundreds of medieval junk lying all around, considerably of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of man or woman to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Well, certainly he most likely was. The fake-medieval roundels in the windows of the nave are evidently not medieval at all, but have been in simple fact the perform of the younger Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are plainly to the young girl’s layout, and Pevsner notes that many others are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, though the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at the very least are pretty shut copies of the Flemish roundels of the very same topics in Nowton church on the other side of Bury St Edmunds.
Certainly medieval is the wide St Christopher wall-portray nevertheless discernible on the north wall. It was almost certainly one of the very last to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of training course, as is the high-quality rood-monitor dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval determine glass in the upper tracery of some of the home windows, including St Agnes holding a lamb and four Aged Testament prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the perform of William White. What can Rickards have been thinking of? But we step via into the chancel, and out of the blue the full point moves up a gear. For listed here are some items that are certainly remarkable.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive set of return stalls. Most placing are the figures that type finials to the stall finishes. They are contributors in the Mass, which include two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk will have to be one of the most effective medieval photographs in Suffolk, and Mortlock believed the stalls the finest in England.
The benches that experience eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are great matters: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. In between the seats are odd oriental faces.
Now, you know what I am heading to check with subsequent. How considerably of this is from this church at first? It all seems medieval function, and there is no purpose to think it may not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open up to the features. What evidence have we obtained?
To begin with, we need to recognize that the only other Suffolk church with these a significant selection of medieval misericords of this good quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I will not ask you to see this as significant, just to notice it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as even though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that back on to the display screen surface to have been built-in into the bigger framework of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
However, if you appear 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 being the main donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to imagine that the better component of the stall construction was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Nicely, I do not know. But I imagine they have to be deemed as section of the exact same set as people at Norton. In which scenario they might have appear from the similar church, which may possibly have been this a single, but may perhaps not have been. Virtually undoubtedly, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been initially in the quire of Bury Abbey.
Other extraordinary points in St George include things like FE Howard’s stunning war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s unexpectedly stunning St George, which serves the similar goal. He is not an artist I usually admire, but it is as excellent as his function at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Terrific Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of study course, most well known for the Flemish carvings that flank the fairly heavy altarpiece. They have been specified to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk shop. They present pictures from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They day from the 1480s, and had been virtually undoubtedly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked for the duration of the French Revolution. The carvings ended up when brightly painted, and piled up in a block fairly than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches over them, are 19th century.
Just one cold winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Absolutely nothing more was observed or heard of them till 1982, when they were being learned on show in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted one particular. Taken to Holland, they ended up employed as safety for a bank loan which was defaulted upon. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings were fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They ended up bought from his store, and taken to the museum, which quickly discovered them as 15th century carvings. They place them on display screen, and a Dutch female who had read through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them again. An injunction was taken out to quit the new proprietor taking away them from the museum. The parish misplaced the scenario, leaving them with a monstrous authorized monthly bill, but the tale has a delighted ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their buy from the proprietor, paid off the legal charges, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at extensive price tag, but the businessman gave the present in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Currently, the carvings are fixed firmly in put and alarmed, so they is not going to be likely walkabout again. But a little section of me miracles if they definitely ought to be below at all. Absolutely sure, they are medieval, but they weren’t right here initially, and they were not even in England initially. Would not it be greater if they have been exhibited someplace safer, in which people could pay to see them, and deliver some earnings for the servicing of the church setting up? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they may well even be equipped to go away it open up.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-13 17:26:08
Tagged: , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , east anglia , church
#household furniture #Do-it-yourself #woodwork #woodworking #freedownload#woodworkingprojects #woodsmith ,wood craft, wooden planer, high-quality woodworking, wooden chairs, wood operating resources, common woodworking, woodworking guides, woodworking workbench strategies