I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I assumed I knew those two counties. But of course there is more 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 mate, Simon K, operates a incredible web page, which I link to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church website page he has visited 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a whole lot of churches for two counties to share, and lots of of individuals churches are ancient, flint crafted, spherical towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or some thing truly worth the effort of going to see or searching for out the keyholder to acquire accessibility.
What I mean is that there is no way an individual who only had their have car or truck till 1984, and experienced tiny curiosity in churches or parishes could have listened to of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I observed St George from the key highway, I was using a short reduce to join the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my very last trip of the yr to lowestoft as Mom is now out of healthcare facility and in the care of district nurses in order to get place back again on her toes.
So I observed the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile absent, and assumed I had ample time to go in excess of and see inside if I could.
I parked at the stop of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the bank to the gate into the churchyard, the clean lines of the tower, very well, towered over me.
In the porch I experimented with the door and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder listing manufactured it apparent that the closest 1, at Xmas Cottage, was just over the road. So, why not consider, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my facts in a ledger, a reasonable evaluate. But I confirmed by driving licence to confirm that I was who I claimed. Minimal did I know the little village I lived in had been noticed. More of that in a minute.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the amazing pew ends animals of all kinds, authentic and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only individuals of noticeable human form. Just one with the overall body of a rooster but a apparent human encounter experienced been still left by itself, hence is the madness of the puritan’s mind.
I made a decision that I would document each and every pew conclude determine, and numerous full pew finishes so fantastic that they have been.
There is the feint define of a large wall painting, Simon claims it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a great set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes underneath. It is alarmed, so you can’t search at them far too closely, regrettably, but these types of is a indicator of the moments.
I took the keys back, and the girl of the dwelling came to speak to me as she had been told by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is in which her loved ones is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor stay in Cliffe. For when there was in fact two Cliffs in Kent, one on the Hoo Peninsular, in which her spouse and children is from, and 1 around to Dover. Numerous yrs back, Cliffe near to Dover was called WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake even further north. I explained this to her, but mentioned St Helen in Cliffe is one particular of my favourite Kent churches, built of alternate layers of black and mild flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Though St George right here in Stowlangtoft is a fine church, it is in a poor condition of restore, and is owing to be built redundant in the new calendar year. Always sad when that happens to a parish church, but it is possible to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to preserve it tidy when the outdated wardens and keyholders are far too old.
Stowlangtoft is a fabulous church and so glad am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to check out it. Go to see it now before it is far too late!
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In the summer months of 2003, this website turned a six-section collection on BBC Radio Suffolk. One thing I reported in the fourth programme, about Hessett, created a good amount of money of correspondence. Referring to the way a lot of church buildings ended up restored in the 19th century, I noticed 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 complete piece is even now a Victorian conception.
People today wrote to me and reported points like “but in that scenario, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “believe that nothing at all is as it very first appears, as Sherlock Holmes said”. And if he did not, then he should have accomplished.
A primary instance of a church that assumes a continuity that may possibly not actually be the reality is in this article in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be instead bleak, particularly in late October, but England’s greatest summer and autumn for many years experienced left the churchyard listed here verdant and golden, as beautiful a spot as any I would seen that 12 months. The church is big, and sits on a mound that has been slash down on one particular aspect by the highway. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which in no way fails to move me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett suggests of it that it can’t be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the categories of the mere brain and sings to us of our further self.
Overcome as you could be by it, really don’t are unsuccessful to place the damaged window tracery that has been utilized to develop the wall below, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in case you do not know, is one particular of the fantastic Suffolk church buildings. While it may externally surface a minimal significant, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Prolonged Melford and the rest, it is a treasure residence of the medieval within. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in 1 go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not but whole of the ‘walls of glass’ confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and quite possibly even renewed, which may possibly clarify why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. However, it will not just take a great deal to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it may possibly be that the damaged tracery is from the primary church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall just isn’t medieval, so where experienced it been all those years?
Yet another survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some thoughts. Unusually, it options a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ staying on the westwards face. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it reveals 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 peak in the early a long time of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it definitely is not on the lookout its most effective. But I consider there is more going on in this article than satisfies the eye. Fonts were being plastered over in Elizabethan occasions, and only reduction that stood happy 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 minimum, this stonework appears weathered. I ponder if this font was eradicated from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors purpose till it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as portion of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was happy to uncover that the church was at very last undergoing fix. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave made use of for solutions. A new Rectory was being developed. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector listed here for almost the center forty decades of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good close friend of John Henry Newman, the upcoming Cardinal, and they frequently corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation buying of English churches. It is attention-grabbing to believe how, at this seminal second, Rickards may well have knowledgeable the assumed of the Oxford Movement. Unfortunately, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
For the duration of the class of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and full the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the identical matter at Woolpit, a several miles away. Ringham’s get the job done is so fantastic that it is at times hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it nonetheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals listed here, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and likely dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer quantity – there are probably 60 carvings – but also that there are several exceptional subjects you can see some of them below.
The carvings seem to be aspect of the identical group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull enjoying a harp, the chook with a man’s head, from identical carvings elsewhere. And then hopefully that small alarm bell in your read ought to begin to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings right here are clearly not from the identical team. It is difficult to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the exact same workshop, or even from the exact same 10 years. The benches by themselves are no clue it was typical practice in the 19th century to switch medieval bench finishes on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern benches manufactured out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards discovered some of these bench finishes somewhere else? Could he have been the kind of individual to do a thing like that?
Very well, sure he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a person that Rickards acquired after obtaining it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the wonderful 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was masses of medieval junk lying close to, substantially of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the kind of particular person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Properly, yes he likely was. Appear at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south side of the nave. The four evangelists are earlier mentioned and below two superb representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them down below simply click on them to enlarge them. Sad to say, they are not medieval at all, and it is typically acknowledged that they ended up painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is a thing similar the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Really medieval is the wide St Christopher wall-portray even now discernible on the north wall. It was in all probability a person of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of course, as is the fine rood-display screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the upper tracery of some of the windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the function of William White. What can Rickards have been wondering of? But we move by into the chancel, and quickly the entire detail moves up a gear. For below are some points that are really amazing.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most finish established of return stalls. Most placing are the figures that type finials to the stall finishes. They are participants in the Mass, including two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk have to be 1 of the best medieval pictures in Suffolk Mortlock believed the stalls the very best in England. I was in this article with my good friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had previously photographed and published about these carving a a couple of several years ago. But even he uncovered 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 superb items: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Amongst the seats are unusual oriental faces. Some of them are under simply click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to check with up coming. How much of this is from this church initially? It all appears medieval function, and there is no cause to believe it could not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open up to the elements. What proof have we got?
To start with, we should really see that the only other Suffolk church with these a big number of medieval misericords of this quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I really don’t request you to see this as important, basically to observe it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does seem to me as even though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that again on to the display screen appear to have been integrated into the larger sized construction 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 appear on the rood display screen, and the Ashfields had been the big donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to assume that the higher portion of the stall composition was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I will not know. But I think they have to be considered as component of the identical set as people at Norton. In which scenario they could have come from the similar church, which may perhaps have been this a person, but may well not have been. Practically certainly, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they have been initially in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other amazing things in St George involve FE Howard’s wonderful war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s lovely St George, which serves the same reason. It is as very good as his work at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and obtained from, the Great Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of system, most famous for the Flemish carvings that flank the somewhat major altarpiece. They were being specified to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk store. They demonstrate photos from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They day from the 1480s, and ended up nearly definitely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked in the course of the French Revolution. I experienced witnessed a little something very similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a handful of months in advance of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these the moment had been, and piled up in a block alternatively than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches previously mentioned them, are 19th century. My favorite photographs are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Simply click on the photographs below.
A person cold winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of intruders broke into this locked church and stole them. Very little much more was noticed or read of them until finally 1982, when they ended up uncovered on exhibit in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted just one taken to Holland, they were employed as protection for a bank loan which was defaulted on. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings had been fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They had been acquired from his shop, and taken to the museum, which right away identified them as 15th century carvings. They set them on screen, and a Dutch lady who experienced read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to prevent the new owner removing them from the museum. The parish lost the situation, leaving them with a monstrous legal monthly bill but the tale has a joyful ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their acquire from the proprietor, compensated off the legal charges, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at huge expense, but the businessman gave the reward in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Nowadays, the carvings are preset firmly in location and alarmed, so they is not going to be heading walkabout again. But a very little element of me miracles if they really need to be in this article at all. Positive, they are medieval, but they weren’t listed here originally they weren’t even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be superior if they were being displayed somewhere safer, where people today could fork out to see them, and supply some revenue for the routine maintenance of the church building? And then, whisper it, St George could possibly even be retained open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village superior street. A few keyholders are shown, two of them promptly reverse. I am told that Wednesday is not a very good time to check out and get the important – it is market day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:30
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , finishes , carved pew finishes , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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