I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I considered I understood people two counties. But of system there is far 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 good friend, Simon K, runs a incredible website, which I hyperlink to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church page he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a good deal of church buildings for two counties to share, and numerous of individuals church buildings are historic, flint crafted, spherical towered or have wall paintings, picket roof angels or one thing really worth the energy of heading to see or trying to get out the keyholder to gain entry.
What I imply is that there is no way a person who only experienced their personal vehicle until finally 1984, and had small interest in churches or parishes could have read of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I observed St George from the most important highway, I was using a short slice 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 calendar year to lowestoft as Mother is now out of healthcare facility and in the care of district nurses in purchase to get set back on her feet.
So I saw the tower of St George from about half a mile absent, and considered I experienced plenty of time to go more than and see inside of 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 up strains of the tower, effectively, towered more than me.
In the porch I tried using the doorway and found it locked, but the keyholder list designed it clear that the closest 1, at Christmas Cottage, was just around the highway. So, why not attempt, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my facts in a ledger, a practical evaluate. But I showed by driving licence to demonstrate that I was who I claimed. Minimal did I know the tiny village I lived in experienced been noticed. A lot more of that in a moment.
Inside St George, you eye is stolen by the wonderful pew finishes animals of all sorts, actual and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only all those of apparent human sort. A single with the system of a rooster but a obvious human confront experienced been left by itself, so is the insanity of the puritan’s thoughts.
I determined that I would history every pew stop determine, and several whole pew finishes so wonderful that they have been.
There is the feint define of a large wall painting, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most remarkable when freshly painted. There is also a wonderful set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes underneath. It is alarmed, so you can not glance at them too carefully, sadly, but these types of is a sign of the times.
I took the keys back again, and the lady of the household arrived to talk to me as she had been instructed by her partner that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is the place her family members is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor are living in Cliffe. For at the time there was certainly two Cliffs in Kent, 1 on the Hoo Peninsular, exactly where her household is from, and one particular close to to Dover. Numerous decades in the past, Cliffe in close proximity to to Dover was termed WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake additional north. I defined this to her, but reported St Helen in Cliffe is 1 of my favourite Kent church buildings, developed of alternate layers of black and mild flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Even though St George in this article in Stowlangtoft is a fantastic church, it is in a lousy state of maintenance, and is owing to be built redundant in the new calendar year. Usually unfortunate when that happens to a parish church, but it is most likely to be taken more than by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to retain it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are way too previous.
Stowlangtoft is a magnificent church and so glad am I that I invested 40 minutes of my time to take a look at it. Go to see it now right before it is as well late!
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In the summer months of 2003, this web site grew to become a 6-component collection on BBC Radio Suffolk. One thing I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a reasonable quantity of correspondence. Referring to the way quite a few church buildings were 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 genuine furnishings and fittings are medieval, the total piece is even now a Victorian conception.
People wrote to me and mentioned points like “but in that scenario, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that almost nothing is as it initially appears, as Sherlock Holmes stated”. And if he failed to, then he should have carried out.
A primary illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that may possibly not basically be the truth is listed here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be somewhat bleak, specifically in late October, but England’s greatest summer months and autumn for a long time experienced left the churchyard in this article verdant and golden, as attractive a spot as any I’d seen that yr. The church is huge, and sits on a mound that has been cut down on a single side by the road. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which under no circumstances fails to move me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett claims of it that it can’t be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the types of the mere thoughts and sings to us of our further self.
Confused as you might be by it, don’t fall short to spot the damaged window tracery that has been used to create the wall below, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in case you never know, is a person of the excellent Suffolk churches. Though it might externally look a small intense, and is by no 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 still complete of the ‘walls of glass’ self-assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and perhaps even renewed, which may perhaps reveal why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Nevertheless, it would not take considerably to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it may well be that the broken tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall is not medieval, so in which experienced it been all those years?
Yet another survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some questions. Unusually, it capabilities a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ currently being on the westwards confront. 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 significantly less typically 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 unquestionably isn’t wanting its greatest. But I feel there is extra heading on in this article than fulfills the eye. Fonts ended up plastered around in Elizabethan periods, and only reduction that stood proud 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 surprise if this font was eradicated from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors intent right until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as section of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was happy to uncover that the church was at very last going through repair. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave employed for products and services. A new Rectory was staying developed. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for almost the middle forty several years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good buddy of John Henry Newman, the potential Cardinal, and they usually corresponded on the issue of the pre-Reformation ordering of English church buildings. It is intriguing to feel how, at this seminal instant, Rickards might have informed the imagined of the Oxford Motion. Unfortunately, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
All through the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and entire the marvellous set of bench ends – Ringham did the identical point at Woolpit, a couple miles absent. Ringham’s do the job is so good that it is in some cases tricky for the inexperienced eye to detect it nonetheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals here, and the wierder things is all medieval, and probably dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer amount – there are potentially 60 carvings – but also that there are many distinctive subjects you can see some of them under.
The carvings surface to be portion of the identical team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull playing a harp, the bird with a man’s head, from comparable carvings in other places. And then with any luck , that minimal alarm bell in your heard should start off to go “Hmmmm…..” due to the fact some of the carvings in this article are plainly not from the same group. It is difficult to consider that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the identical workshop, or even from the same 10 years. The benches themselves are no clue it was frequent apply in the 19th century to substitute medieval bench finishes on contemporary benches, or on medieval benches, or even on present day benches created out of medieval timber (as transpired at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards found some of these bench finishes somewhere else? Could he have been the form of person to do a detail like that?
Very well, of course he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is 1 that Rickards obtained following locating 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, a lot of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Well, sure he in all probability was. Seem at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south aspect of the nave. The 4 evangelists are above and beneath two outstanding representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below click on on them to enlarge them. Regretably, they are not medieval at all, and it is normally approved that they had been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something similar the other side of Bury at Hawstead.
Genuinely medieval is the wide St Christopher wall-painting even now discernible on the north wall. It was probably one of the past to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of training course, as is the fantastic rood-display 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 fee, and the operate of William White. What can Rickards have been considering of? But we phase by means of into the chancel, and all of a sudden the whole detail moves up a equipment. For here are some factors that are certainly remarkable.
In a county renowned for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most full set of return stalls. Most placing are the figures that variety finials to the stall ends. They are members in the Mass, together with two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk have to be one of the very best medieval images in Suffolk Mortlock thought the stalls the finest in England. I was in this article with my mate Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced previously photographed and published about these carving a a pair of several years ago. But even he found a little something 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 superb matters: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Concerning the seats are strange oriental faces. Some of them are down below click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to request upcoming. How significantly of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval get the job done, and there is no cause to imagine it may not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the components. What proof have we obtained?
To begin with, we really should discover that the only other Suffolk church with these kinds of a large selection of medieval misericords of this good quality is just a mile absent, at Norton. I don’t question you to see this as important, basically to recognize it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as even though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that back on to the display show up to have been integrated into the much larger framework of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
Even so, if you glance intently at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche households. The Ashfield arms also look on the rood monitor, and the Ashfields ended up the significant donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on harmony I am inclined to believe that the greater component of the stall structure was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Properly, I really don’t know. But I consider they have to be deemed as portion of the exact same set as individuals at Norton. In which case they may perhaps have come from the similar church, which may perhaps have been this a single, but could not have been. Practically unquestionably, the stalls at Norton did not appear from Norton church, and folklore has it that they ended up at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other impressive factors in St George contain FE Howard’s lovely 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 reason. It is as fantastic as his do the job at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most well-known for the Flemish carvings that flank the alternatively weighty altarpiece. They were being given to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk store. They exhibit visuals from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They date from the 1480s, and were pretty much unquestionably the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked all through the French Revolution. I had observed a little something comparable at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a several months ahead of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these when ended up, and piled up in a block alternatively than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches over them, are 19th century. My favorite photos are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the illustrations or photos underneath.
Just one cold winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing much more was viewed or read of them right until 1982, when they have been found out on display in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted a single taken to Holland, they ended up applied as safety for a mortgage which was defaulted upon. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings ended up fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They had been acquired from his store, and taken to the museum, which promptly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They place them on show, and a Dutch girl who experienced examine about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to halt the new operator eliminating them from the museum. The parish misplaced the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous lawful bill but the tale has a pleased ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their obtain from the operator, paid out off the legal expenses, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at huge cost, 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 preset firmly in location and alarmed, so they would not be likely walkabout once more. But a very little aspect of me miracles if they genuinely ought to be right here at all. Confident, they are medieval, but they were not in this article originally they were not even in England at first. Would not it be much better if they were being exhibited someplace safer, exactly where men and women could pay back to see them, and present some revenue for the servicing of the church setting up? And then, whisper it, St George may possibly even be stored open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village significant street. Three keyholders are shown, two of them immediately opposite. I am explained to that Wednesday is not a excellent time to check out and get the essential – it is market place day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.united kingdom/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2020-05-05 05:06:28
Tagged: , Carved picket pew finishes , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltecks , Jelltex
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