St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk
Offered that our parish churches pretty much with out exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it should be apparent that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval. Even when the true furnishings and fittings are medieval, the full piece is nevertheless a Victorian conception.
Inevitably, the question occurs of what was there before the restoration and what was not. The apparent response is that we ought to believe that nothing is as it very first seems.
A primary example of a church that assumes a continuity that may well not really be the fact is here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This portion of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak in winter season, but in summer months the churchyard below is verdant and golden, as attractive a area as any in the county. The church is significant, and nevertheless unusually slim. It sits on a mound that has been slash down on one facet by the highway. In the churchyard you can expect to come across the nicely-acknowledged memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a car crash in 1990.
In the churchyard wall there is what appears to be broken medieval window tracery, which is worth noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.
St George is one of the terrific Suffolk church buildings. Though it may perhaps externally appear a little serious, and is by no signifies as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the relaxation, 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 home windows are not nonetheless whole of the ‘walls of glass’ self confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and maybe even renewed, which may well clarify the tracery in the churchyard wall. Nonetheless, it will not just take a great deal 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 initial church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall alone isn’t really medieval, so in which had it been all those people several years? Is it doable that the recent window tracery is not medieval at all?
Stowlangtoft church highlighted in Simon Jenkins’ reserve England’s Thousand Best Churches, which sends lots of guests to its locked door, and may perhaps assist stave off the inevitable for a when, for there is no real congregation here any additional and the church is moribund. Regular products and services are held across the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only utilised on unique instances. The important is saved across the street, where by the very great girl told me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It appears likely that treatment of it will be conveyed into the palms of the Church buildings Conservation Believe in.
You action in by the chancel door (the lock right here is incredibly uncomfortable, but do persevere) and if you are anything at all like me you will head straight down to the west end in which you will find the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some issues. Unusually, it attributes a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ remaining on the westwards experience. 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 fewer commonly St George. The cult of St George was at its peak in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it certainly just isn’t looking its finest. But I assume there is much more heading on here than meets the eye. Fonts had been plastered over in Elizabethan periods, and only reduction that stood very pleased of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not imagine they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at least, this stonework seems weathered. I marvel if this font was eliminated from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors purpose until finally it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is well-documented. In 1832, as element of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was delighted to locate that the church was at last going through mend. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave made use of for expert services. A new Rectory was becoming constructed. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for nearly the center forty decades of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a excellent mate of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they generally corresponded on the issue of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is appealing to imagine how, at this seminal moment, Rickards may well have knowledgeable the assumed of the Oxford Movement. Regrettably, when Newman turned a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
In the course of the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He obtained the great Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and full the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the exact same matter at Woolpit, a few miles absent. Ringham’s perform is so good that it is at times really hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it. Nevertheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals listed here, and the weirder things is all medieval, and probably dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer quantity – there are most likely 60 carvings – but also that there are a number of distinctive topics.
The carvings show up to be portion of the same team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull actively playing a harp, the fowl with a man’s head, from related carvings somewhere else. And then hopefully that minor alarm bell in your read should get started to go “Hmmmm…..” due to the fact some of the carvings in this article are clearly not from the similar team. It is really hard to consider that the mermaid and the owl, for illustration, are from the same workshop, or even from the identical ten years. The benches by themselves are no clue, as it was widespread apply in the 19th century to swap medieval bench ends on present day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern day benches designed out of medieval timber (as transpired at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards identified some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the type of individual to do a issue like that?
Well, of course 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 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 masses of medieval junk lying all-around, significantly of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the form of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Well, indeed he most likely was. The faux-medieval roundels in the home windows of the nave are clearly not medieval at all, but were in actuality the function of the younger Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are obviously to the younger girl’s structure, and Pevsner notes that other people are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, while the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at the very least are pretty close copies of the Flemish roundels of the same subjects in Nowton church on the other side of Bury St Edmunds.
Certainly medieval is the extensive St Christopher wall-painting however discernible on the north wall. It was likely one of the past to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of study course, as is the fantastic rood-monitor dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval determine glass in the higher tracery of some of the windows, which include St Agnes holding a lamb and 4 Old Testomony prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the do the job of William White. What can Rickards have been imagining of? But we action via into the chancel, and suddenly the entire issue moves up a gear. For in this article are some factors that are actually outstanding.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most finish established of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that sort finials to the stall finishes. They are individuals in the Mass, such as two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk will have to be 1 of the greatest medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk, and Mortlock considered the stalls the finest in England.
The benches that confront eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are amazing factors: 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 weird oriental faces.
Now, you know what I am likely to inquire following. How a lot of this is from this church originally? It all appears medieval do the job, and there is no purpose to think it might not have been moved somewhere else in the church when the chancel was open to the elements. What evidence have we bought?
Firstly, we really should discover that the only other Suffolk church with these a huge number of medieval misericords of this top quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I will not ask you to see this as significant, simply to recognize it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does appear to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled collectively the stalls that again on to the screen show up to have been built-in into the bigger structure of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
Having said that, if you appear 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 seem on the rood display, and the Ashfields have been the key donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on harmony I am inclined to believe that the better aspect of the stall framework was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Nicely, I you should not know. But I feel they have to be thought of as section of the very same set as individuals at Norton. In which situation they may possibly have come from the identical church, which may have been this one, but might not have been. Virtually unquestionably, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they ended up initially in the quire of Bury Abbey.
Other amazing factors in St George include things like FE Howard’s lovely war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s unexpectedly gorgeous St George, which serves the identical intent. He is not an artist I ordinarily admire, but it is as excellent as his do the job at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of training course, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the relatively significant altarpiece. They had been presented to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly uncovered them in an Ixworth junk store. They exhibit visuals from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They day from the 1480s, and have been virtually unquestionably the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked all through the French Revolution. The carvings were being after brightly painted, and piled up in a block instead than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches above them, are 19th century.
1 cold winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Almost nothing extra was viewed or read of them right until 1982, when they were identified on display in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted a person. Taken to Holland, they ended up used as security for a mortgage which was defaulted on. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings were fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They were purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which quickly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They set them on screen, and a Dutch female who had examine about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them again. An injunction was taken out to cease the new proprietor removing them from the museum. The parish misplaced the case, leaving them with a monstrous authorized bill, but the story has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the owner, paid off the lawful costs, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at wide value, 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 fixed firmly in area and alarmed, so they is not going to be likely walkabout once more. But a little portion of me miracles if they seriously should really be in this article at all. Positive, they are medieval, but they were not below at first, and they were not even in England initially. Would not it be better if they were being displayed somewhere safer, exactly where people could pay back to see them, and offer some revenue for the upkeep of the church developing? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they may possibly even be ready to leave it open up.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-13 17:26:11
Tagged: , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , east anglia , church
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