St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk
Offered that our parish church buildings almost without the need of exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it really should be noticeable that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval. Even when the precise furnishings and fittings are medieval, the full piece is however a Victorian conception.
Inevitably, the dilemma arises of what was there ahead of the restoration and what was not. The evident respond to is that we must presume that nothing at all is as it initially appears.
A prime illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that could not really be the real truth is below in the flat fields in between Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be rather bleak in winter season, but in summer the churchyard below is verdant and golden, as attractive a put as any in the county. The church is massive, and but unusually slender. It sits on a mound that has been slash down on one particular side by the highway. In the churchyard you can come across the perfectly-known memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a automobile crash in 1990.
In the churchyard wall there is what appears to be broken medieval window tracery, which is worthy of noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.
St George is a single of the wonderful Suffolk church buildings. Although it may possibly externally seem a minimal severe, and is by no implies as grand as Blythburgh, Extensive Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure house of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in 1 go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not still total of the ‘walls of glass’ self-confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and quite possibly even renewed, which may perhaps demonstrate the tracery in the churchyard wall. Even so, it won’t acquire a lot to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it might be that the broken tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall alone is just not medieval, so exactly where experienced it been all people many years? Is it achievable that the existing window tracery is not medieval at all?
Stowlangtoft church showcased in Simon Jenkins’ e-book England’s Thousand Most effective Church buildings, which sends loads of readers to its locked door, and may well enable stave off the inescapable for a while, for there is no true congregation in this article any a lot more and the church is moribund. Normal companies are held throughout the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only used on unique occasions. The essential is held throughout the road, where the incredibly wonderful lady told me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It would seem possible that treatment of it will be conveyed into the arms of the Church buildings Conservation Belief.
You phase in by way of the chancel door (the lock below is really awkward, but do persevere) and if you are anything like me you will head straight down to the west conclude where you will discover the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some inquiries. Unusually, it characteristics a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ becoming 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 less usually St George. The cult of St George was at its peak in the early yrs of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it absolutely isn’t really looking its greatest. But I consider there is a lot more heading on here than satisfies the eye. Fonts were plastered around 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 least, this stonework appears weathered. I wonder if this font was eliminated from the church, probably in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors intent till it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is perfectly-documented. In 1832, as aspect of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was pleased to uncover that the church was at past undergoing fix. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave used for services. A new Rectory was becoming created. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for virtually the middle forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a fantastic pal of John Henry Newman, the long run Cardinal, and they frequently corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English churches. It is attention-grabbing to feel how, at this seminal minute, Rickards may have informed the believed of the Oxford Motion. Sadly, when Newman turned a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
All through the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the wonderful Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and total the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the very same issue at Woolpit, a number of miles away. Ringham’s get the job done is so superior that it is in some cases really hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it. On the other hand, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals in this article, and the weirder stuff 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 possibly 60 carvings – but also that there are various unique subjects.
The carvings appear to be portion of the identical group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull taking part in a harp, the fowl with a man’s head, from related carvings in other places. And then ideally that little alarm bell in your read must start to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings in this article are clearly not from the exact group. It is hard to imagine that the mermaid and the owl, for illustration, are from the same workshop, or even from the same 10 years. The benches on their own are no clue, as it was widespread observe in the 19th century to switch medieval bench finishes on present day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern benches designed out of medieval timber (as took place at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards identified some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the sort of particular person to do a thing like that?
Well, sure he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is East Anglian. Rickards acquired it immediately after obtaining it in storage in Ipswich docks. It presumably came from one particular of the Ipswich church buildings. In the ferment of the excellent 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was hundreds of medieval junk lying close to, considerably of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Nicely, sure he possibly was. The fake-medieval roundels in the windows of the nave are evidently not medieval at all, but had been in simple fact the operate of the younger Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are plainly to the young girl’s style and design, and Pevsner notes that many others are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, even though the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at least are really close copies of the Flemish roundels of the exact topics in Nowton church on the other aspect of Bury St Edmunds.
Genuinely medieval is the large St Christopher wall-portray still discernible on the north wall. It was possibly a single of the final to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of training course, as is the great rood-display 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 4 Aged Testomony prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the get the job done of William White. What can Rickards have been contemplating of? But we step by into the chancel, and suddenly the entire thing moves up a gear. For right here are some points that are truly exceptional.
In a county well known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive set of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that form finials to the stall finishes. They are individuals in the Mass, such as two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk must be one particular of the very best medieval pictures in Suffolk, and Mortlock considered the stalls the greatest in England.
The benches that face 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. Involving the seats are weird oriental faces.
Now, you know what I am going to talk to upcoming. How substantially of this is from this church at first? It all seems medieval get the job done, and there is no explanation to feel it may well not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open up to the factors. What evidence have we received?
To start with, we need to see that the only other Suffolk church with these a substantial number of medieval misericords of this good quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I don’t question you to see this as considerable, merely to notice it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does glimpse to me as though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that back again on to the display screen look to have been built-in into the larger framework of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
However, if you look carefully at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche family members. The Ashfield arms also seem on the rood display, and the Ashfields ended up the main donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to imagine that the bigger element of the stall framework was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Perfectly, I really don’t know. But I consider they have to be regarded as as component of the very same set as those people at Norton. In which case they could have come from the very same church, which might have been this 1, but may possibly not have been. Virtually surely, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were initially in the quire of Bury Abbey.
Other amazing matters in St George contain FE Howard’s lovely war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s unexpectedly attractive St George, which serves the exact same intent. He is not an artist I ordinarily admire, but it is as fantastic as his do the job at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Terrific Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of class, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the somewhat hefty altarpiece. They have been supplied to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk shop. They show photos from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides counsel. They date from the 1480s, and had been virtually certainly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked through the French Revolution. The carvings had been at the time brightly painted, and piled up in a block rather than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches higher than them, are 19th century.
1 chilly winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Very little much more was viewed or listened to of them until 1982, when they were identified on screen in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted just one. Taken to Holland, they have been utilized as stability for a bank loan which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They have been bought from his shop, and taken to the museum, which instantly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They set them on display, and a Dutch lady who experienced go through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them again. An injunction was taken out to end the new proprietor getting rid of them from the museum. The parish missing the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous lawful invoice, but the tale has a joyful ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their obtain from the operator, compensated off the lawful charges, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at wide price tag, but the businessman gave the reward in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Currently, the carvings are fixed firmly in spot and alarmed, so they would not be heading walkabout yet again. But a tiny section of me wonders if they truly must be below at all. Confident, they are medieval, but they weren’t below at first, and they were not even in England at first. Would not it be much better if they ended up shown someplace safer, in which people today could fork out to see them, and give some income for the routine maintenance of the church creating? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they may even be in a position to depart it open.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-13 10:33:15
Tagged: , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , east Anglia
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