I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I imagined I realized people two counties. But of course there is extra 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 friend, Simon K, runs a magnificent web page, which I hyperlink to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church web site he has frequented 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a lot of churches for two counties to share, and quite a few of individuals churches are historical, flint developed, round towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or one thing really worth the work of going to see or seeking out the keyholder to achieve accessibility.
What I signify is that there is no way a person who only experienced their have motor vehicle until eventually 1984, and had tiny interest 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 noticed St George from the main road, I was taking a shorter lower to be a part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my very last journey of the year to lowestoft as Mom is now out of healthcare facility and in the care of district nurses in purchase to get put back on her feet.
So I saw the tower of St George from about half a mile away, and thought I had more than enough time to go around and see within 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 clean traces of the tower, well, towered around me.
In the porch I experimented with the doorway and located it locked, but the keyholder listing created it very clear that the nearest a single, at Christmas Cottage, was just in excess of the road. So, why not try out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my facts in a ledger, a reasonable evaluate. But I showed by driving licence to prove that I was who I claimed. Very little did I know the compact village I lived in experienced been discovered. Extra of that in a minute.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the fabulous pew finishes animals of all kinds, real and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only people of obvious human variety. One with the physique of a rooster but a obvious human experience experienced been left by yourself, thus is the madness of the puritan’s brain.
I determined that I would record each pew finish determine, and quite a few complete pew finishes so fantastic that they had been.
There is the feint define of a massive wall painting, Simon states it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most extraordinary when freshly painted. There is also a fantastic set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into detail Simon goes down below. It is alarmed, so you are not able to look at them much too intently, sadly, but these types of is a sign of the instances.
I took the keys back, and the woman of the dwelling arrived to talk to me as she experienced been advised by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is wherever her spouse and children is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor live in Cliffe. For after there was certainly two Cliffs in Kent, just one on the Hoo Peninsular, exactly where her relatives is from, and just one in close proximity to to Dover. Several a long time in the past, Cliffe near to Dover was termed WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake additional north. I stated this to her, but stated St Helen in Cliffe is 1 of my favourite Kent churches, crafted of alternate levels of black and gentle flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
While St George below in Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church, it is in a very poor point out of repair, and is due to be made redundant in the new year. Often unfortunate when that takes place to a parish church, but it is likely to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to maintain it tidy when the outdated wardens and keyholders are much too aged.
Stowlangtoft is a magnificent church and so glad am I that I expended 40 minutes of my time to go to it. Go to see it now in advance of it is too late!
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In the summer months of 2003, this website became a six-section series on BBC Radio Suffolk. A little something I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a reasonable total of correspondence. Referring to the way several churches have been 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 genuine furnishings and fittings are medieval, the complete piece is nevertheless a Victorian conception.
People today wrote to me and reported things like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that very little is as it initial appears, as Sherlock Holmes said”. And if he failed to, then he really should have performed.
A prime illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that may not in fact be the reality is in this article in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This part of Suffolk can be instead bleak, particularly in late October, but England’s best summertime and autumn for decades experienced left the churchyard right here verdant and golden, as wonderful a area as any I might witnessed that yr. The church is big, and sits on a mound that has been slice down on a single side by the street. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which by no means fails to go me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett suggests of it that it can not be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere intellect and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overwhelmed as you may well be by it, do not fall short to spot the broken window tracery that has been employed to build the wall below, for thus hangs a tale.
St George, in scenario you do not know, is a person of the great Suffolk church buildings. Though it may perhaps externally surface a minor extreme, and is by no usually means as grand as Blythburgh, Long Melford and the rest, it is a treasure house 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 home windows are not nonetheless complete of the ‘walls of glass’ confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and maybe even renewed, which may well clarify why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it isn’t going to consider significantly to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it could be that the broken tracery is from the unique church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall isn’t really medieval, so the place experienced it been all all those yrs?
One more survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some inquiries. Unusually, it attributes a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ remaining on the westwards facial area. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it shows are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and significantly less commonly St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early decades of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it unquestionably isn’t really wanting its ideal. But I assume there is additional going on in this article than satisfies the eye. Fonts have been 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 imagine they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at the very least, this stonework appears weathered. I surprise if this font was taken off from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor goal right up until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as component of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was pleased to locate that the church was at final undergoing fix. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave applied for services. A new Rectory was currently being developed. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for practically the center forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good buddy of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they usually corresponded on the subject matter of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is intriguing to consider how, at this seminal instant, Rickards might have informed the believed of the Oxford Motion. Sadly, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the class of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He bought the terrific Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and complete the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the exact same thing at Woolpit, a few miles absent. Ringham’s get the job done is so great that it is often difficult for the inexperienced eye to detect it on the other hand, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals right here, and the wierder 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 quantity – there are maybe 60 carvings – but also that there are quite a few exclusive subjects you can see some of them under.
The carvings show up to be element of the exact same group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull participating in a harp, the chicken with a man’s head, from very similar carvings in other places. And then with any luck , that minimal alarm bell in your heard need to begin to go “Hmmmm…..” mainly because some of the carvings right here are clearly not from the similar group. It is challenging to feel that the mermaid and the owl, for instance, are from the exact workshop, or even from the very same ten years. The benches by themselves are no clue it was prevalent apply in the 19th century to switch medieval bench ends on contemporary benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern day benches designed out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards uncovered some of these bench finishes elsewhere? Could he have been the kind of particular person to do a factor like that?
Properly, sure he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is just one that Rickards acquired following finding it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was masses of medieval junk lying all-around, substantially of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the form of person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Very well, certainly he almost certainly was. Seem at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The four evangelists are higher than and beneath two outstanding representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below click on them to enlarge them. However, they are not medieval at all, and it is generally acknowledged that they had been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is a thing comparable the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Certainly medieval is the broad St Christopher wall-portray even now discernible on the north wall. It was in all probability a single of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of training course, as is the great rood-display dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the upper tracery of some of the home windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s fee, and the get the job done of William White. What can Rickards have been pondering of? But we step by way of into the chancel, and instantly the whole factor moves up a gear. For in this article are some items that are certainly outstanding.
In a county famous for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are spectacular, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most total set of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that form finials to the stall ends. They are participants in the Mass, like two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk should be 1 of the greatest medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock considered the stalls the best in England. I was below with my friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced formerly photographed and prepared about these carving a a few of yrs in the past. But even he located one thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that facial area eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are excellent points: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Involving the seats are bizarre oriental faces. Some of them are beneath simply click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to ask next. How a lot of this is from this church originally? It all seems medieval perform, and there is no purpose to imagine it could possibly not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the aspects. What proof have we bought?
To start with, we need to see that the only other Suffolk church with these types of a significant amount of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I don’t ask you to see this as considerable, merely to recognize it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does glance to me as while two sets of furnishings have been cobbled jointly the stalls that again on to the display show up to have been integrated into the bigger framework of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
However, if you search intently 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 surface on the rood display screen, and the Ashfields had been the key donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to think that the bigger component of the stall composition was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Effectively, I never know. But I assume they have to be thought of as component of the exact same established as all those at Norton. In which situation they may perhaps have come from the same church, which may perhaps have been this 1, but may well not have been. Just about undoubtedly, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they have been originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other extraordinary factors in St George contain FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s attractive St George, which serves the very same goal. It is as excellent as his perform at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Good Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of training course, most popular for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather major altarpiece. They were being supplied to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk shop. They clearly show images from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They date from the 1480s, and were being pretty much surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked through the French Revolution. I experienced observed anything comparable at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a couple months prior to. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these when had been, and piled up in a block rather than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches higher than them, are 19th century. My favorite pictures are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Simply click on the pictures under.
One particular chilly winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Absolutely nothing far more was viewed or read of them until eventually 1982, when they ended up learned on show in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they had been utilised as stability for a loan which was defaulted upon. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings had been fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They have been purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which quickly determined them as 15th century carvings. They put them on display, and a Dutch girl who experienced go through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to stop the new proprietor eradicating them from the museum. The parish shed the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous authorized invoice but the tale has a joyful ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their buy from the proprietor, paid out off the lawful payments, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at broad expense, but the businessman gave the present in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Now, the carvings are fastened firmly in area and alarmed, so they would not be likely walkabout once again. But a minimal part of me miracles if they genuinely really should be in this article at all. Confident, they are medieval, but they weren’t listed here at first they weren’t even in England initially. Would not it be improved if they were being exhibited somewhere safer, where persons could pay to see them, and present some money for the routine maintenance of the church developing? And then, whisper it, St George may even be saved open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high avenue. Three keyholders are shown, two of them straight away reverse. I am informed that Wednesday is not a excellent time to consider and get the important – it is industry working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.united kingdom/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:34
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , ends , carved pew finishes , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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