I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I believed I knew these two counties. But of system there is additional 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 good friend, Simon K, runs a magnificent web-site, which I connection to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church webpage he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a lot of churches for two counties to share, and lots of of people churches are historical, flint created, round towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or one thing well worth the work of likely to see or seeking out the keyholder to get obtain.
What I suggest is that there is no way another person who only experienced their personal vehicle till 1984, and had minimal curiosity 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 saw St George from the principal highway, I was getting a brief minimize to sign up for the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my final journey of the 12 months to lowestoft as Mother is now out of healthcare facility and in the treatment of district nurses in get to get put back again on her toes.
So I observed the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile absent, and considered I experienced enough time to go above and see inside of 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 clear lines of the tower, perfectly, towered above me.
In the porch I tried using the door and identified it locked, but the keyholder listing built it crystal clear that the nearest a single, at Christmas Cottage, was just in excess of the highway. So, why not try out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my specifics in a ledger, a practical measure. But I showed by driving licence to verify that I was who I claimed. Small did I know the compact village I lived in experienced been recognized. Far more of that in a minute.
Inside St George, you eye is stolen by the magnificent pew finishes animals of all sorts, authentic and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only all those of apparent human variety. A single with the system of a chicken but a clear human experience had been still left by yourself, as a result is the madness of the puritan’s mind.
I decided that I would document just about every pew end figure, and many total pew ends so superb that they ended up.
There is the feint outline of a substantial wall painting, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most outstanding when freshly painted. There is also a good set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into detail Simon goes down below. It is alarmed, so you can’t glance at them also carefully, unfortunately, but these kinds of is a signal of the occasions.
I took the keys back again, and the woman of the dwelling arrived to communicate to me as she experienced been instructed by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is the place her family is from. Unfortunately, I am not from, nor stay in Cliffe. For as soon as there was indeed two Cliffs in Kent, just one on the Hoo Peninsular, where by her family members is from, and one particular in close proximity to to Dover. Numerous several years in the past, Cliffe close to to Dover was known as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake even further north. I discussed this to her, but mentioned St Helen in Cliffe is just one of my favourite Kent church buildings, built of alternate layers of black and gentle flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Although St George listed here in Stowlangtoft is a fantastic church, it is in a poor state of restore, and is owing to be designed redundant in the new calendar year. Always unhappy when that occurs to a parish church, but it is probable to be taken more than by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to keep it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are far too previous.
Stowlangtoft is a incredible church and so glad am I that I expended 40 minutes of my time to pay a visit to it. Go to see it now prior to it is way too late!
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In the summer of 2003, this web page grew to become a 6-element series on BBC Radio Suffolk. Anything I reported in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a fair total of correspondence. Referring to the way quite a few church buildings were being restored in the 19th century, I observed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian vision of the medieval even when the precise furnishings and fittings are medieval, the full piece is nevertheless a Victorian conception.
Individuals wrote to me and stated items like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “think that practically nothing is as it 1st seems, as Sherlock Holmes stated”. And if he did not, then he need to have finished.
A primary instance of a church that assumes a continuity that could not truly be the reality is right here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This section of Suffolk can be somewhat bleak, primarily in late Oct, but England’s greatest summer time and autumn for a long time had still left the churchyard here verdant and golden, as lovely a place as any I might witnessed that yr. The church is big, and sits on a mound that has been reduce down on one aspect by the highway. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never fails to go me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett states of it that it are not able to be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere mind and sings to us of our further self.
Confused as you could be by it, will not are unsuccessful to spot the broken window tracery that has been employed to develop the wall here, for thus hangs a tale.
St George, in scenario you do not know, is one of the excellent Suffolk church buildings. Though it may possibly externally seem a very little severe, and is by no implies as grand as Blythburgh, Very long 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 one go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not however complete of the ‘walls of glass’ self-confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and perhaps even renewed, which could demonstrate why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Having said that, it will not get a great deal to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may perhaps be that the broken tracery is from the unique church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall isn’t medieval, so exactly where experienced it been all those people yrs?
One more survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some queries. Unusually, it characteristics a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ getting on the westwards experience. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it exhibits are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and a lot less usually St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it definitely is not on the lookout its finest. But I consider there is a lot more going on listed here than satisfies the eye. Fonts ended up plastered above in Elizabethan situations, and only reduction that stood very pleased of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not assume they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at the very least, this stonework appears weathered. I surprise if this font was taken out from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an outside reason until eventually 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 locate that the church was at last going through maintenance. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave utilised for companies. A new Rectory was getting built. Who was the catalyst powering all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for pretty much the center forty years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a great mate of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the issue of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English churches. It is appealing to consider how, at this seminal minute, Rickards may well have informed the imagined of the Oxford Movement. Regrettably, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Throughout the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He obtained the terrific Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and finish the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the exact factor at Woolpit, a number of miles away. Ringham’s operate is so good that it is at times really hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it even so, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals in this article, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and possibly dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer quantity – there are possibly 60 carvings – but also that there are quite a few one of a kind subjects you can see some of them below.
The carvings show up to be component of the very same team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull actively playing a harp, the chook with a man’s head, from comparable carvings in other places. And then hopefully that minor alarm bell in your heard ought to start out to go “Hmmmm…..” since some of the carvings here are evidently not from the exact group. It is challenging to imagine that the mermaid and the owl, for instance, are from the very same workshop, or even from the same decade. The benches on their own are no clue it was typical observe in the 19th century to switch medieval bench finishes 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 found some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the form of individual to do a point like that?
Nicely, sure he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is one particular that Rickards obtained right after obtaining it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was masses of medieval junk lying all-around, much of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of man or woman to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Very well, indeed he most likely was. Seem at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south side of the nave. The 4 evangelists are previously mentioned and down below two excellent representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them underneath click on them to enlarge them. Sad to say, they are not medieval at all, and it is generally accepted that they had been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is a thing equivalent the other side of Bury at Hawstead.
Definitely medieval is the broad St Christopher wall-portray however discernible on the north wall. It was likely 1 of the very last to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of course, as is the good rood-display screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the higher tracery of some of the windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the work of William White. What can Rickards have been imagining of? But we phase via into the chancel, and quickly the complete issue moves up a gear. For here are some issues that are definitely remarkable.
In a county renowned for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most complete set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that kind finials to the stall ends. They are participants in the Mass, which include two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk must be just one of the best medieval photographs in Suffolk Mortlock considered the stalls the greatest in England. I was below with my buddy Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced previously photographed and composed about these carving a a couple of yrs in the past. But even he located a 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 excellent matters: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Amongst the seats are strange oriental faces. Some of them are beneath click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to request next. How much of this is from this church originally? It all seems medieval function, and there is no rationale to believe that it could possibly not have been moved somewhere else in the church when the chancel was open up to the factors. What evidence have we got?
For starters, we should discover that the only other Suffolk church with these kinds of a large quantity of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I will not check with you to see this as important, just to notice it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does appear to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled with each other the stalls that again on to the display screen surface to have been integrated into the bigger composition of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south walls.
On the other hand, if you appear closely 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 surface on the rood display screen, and the Ashfields have been the major donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to think that the better element of the stall structure was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I really don’t know. But I think they have to be regarded as part of the very same established as all those at Norton. In which scenario they could have arrive from the identical church, which may perhaps have been this a single, but might not have been. Just about certainly, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other extraordinary factors in St George incorporate FE Howard’s beautiful war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s attractive St George, which serves the same intent. It is as very good as his perform at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Great Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most renowned for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather weighty altarpiece. They were offered to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk store. They show photos from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They day from the 1480s, and were being almost unquestionably the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked throughout the French Revolution. I experienced seen a little something comparable at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a several months in advance of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these once had been, 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 photographs are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the images underneath.
One particular cold winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Almost nothing extra was witnessed or listened to of them till 1982, when they ended up found on display screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted one particular taken to Holland, they were made use of as protection for a personal loan which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They have been purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which right away discovered them as 15th century carvings. They put them on show, and a Dutch lady who experienced examine about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to end the new owner eradicating them from the museum. The parish dropped the situation, leaving them with a monstrous authorized monthly bill but the story has a pleased ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their obtain from the operator, paid off the authorized expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at large charge, but the businessman gave the reward in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Today, the carvings are fixed firmly in spot and alarmed, so they will not likely be going walkabout once more. But a very little component of me miracles if they genuinely really should be here at all. Positive, they are medieval, but they were not listed here initially they weren’t even in England originally. Wouldn’t it be better if they had been displayed somewhere safer, where by folks could shell out to see them, and provide some profits for the upkeep of the church building? And then, whisper it, St George could even be held open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village significant road. 3 keyholders are listed, two of them instantly reverse. I am advised that Wednesday is not a great time to try out and get the critical – it is market working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.united kingdom/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:40
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , ends , carved pew ends , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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