I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I knew individuals 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 friend, Simon K, operates a amazing internet site, which I website link to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church web site he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a large amount of church buildings for two counties to share, and lots of of these church buildings are ancient, flint crafted, spherical towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or something truly worth the energy of heading to see or trying to find out the keyholder to gain access.
What I indicate is that there is no way someone who only had their own car right until 1984, and had 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 principal road, I was having a short slice to sign up for the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my previous journey of the yr to lowestoft as Mother is now out of clinic and in the care of district nurses in buy to get place back on her feet.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about 50 percent a mile absent, and considered I experienced adequate time to go above and see inside of if I could.
I parked at the close of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I stroll up the lender to the gate into the churchyard, the thoroughly clean strains of the tower, nicely, towered in excess of me.
In the porch I experimented with the door and observed it locked, but the keyholder list built it clear that the nearest a person, at Xmas Cottage, was just above the street. So, why not check out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my details in a ledger, a smart evaluate. But I showed by driving licence to show that I was who I claimed. Small did I know the compact village I lived in had been discovered. Much more of that in a minute.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the wonderful pew ends animals of all varieties, actual and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only those people of apparent human kind. A single with the system of a hen but a distinct human encounter had been left by yourself, hence is the madness of the puritan’s mind.
I made a decision that I would document each individual pew conclude determine, and a lot of whole pew ends so wonderful that they were.
There is the feint outline of a big wall painting, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most extraordinary when freshly painted. There is also a good established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into detail Simon goes beneath. It is alarmed, so you can not seem at them also intently, regrettably, but such is a indicator of the periods.
I took the keys back, and the woman of the home arrived to communicate to me as she experienced been told by her partner that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is exactly where her loved ones is from. Unfortunately, I am not from, nor are living in Cliffe. For as soon as there was in truth two Cliffs in Kent, 1 on the Hoo Peninsular, in which her relatives is from, and a single in close proximity to to Dover. Several yrs in the past, Cliffe close to to Dover was identified as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further north. I described this to her, but claimed St Helen in Cliffe is one particular of my favourite Kent churches, built of alternate levels of black and light-weight flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Even though St George listed here in Stowlangtoft is a fantastic church, it is in a very poor state of mend, and is due to be built redundant in the new year. Always unfortunate when that takes place to a parish church, but it is probable to be taken in excess of by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to continue to keep it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are much too outdated.
Stowlangtoft is a fabulous church and so happy am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to take a look at it. Go to see it now prior to it is way too late!
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In the summer season of 2003, this web-site turned a six-part series on BBC Radio Suffolk. One thing I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a reasonable quantity of correspondence. Referring to the way many church buildings have been restored in the 19th century, I noticed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian vision of the medieval even when the actual furnishings and fittings are medieval, the entire piece is however a Victorian conception.
People wrote to me and claimed factors like “but in that circumstance, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “suppose that nothing at all is as it 1st appears, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he failed to, then he must have done.
A prime case in point of a church that assumes a continuity that could not basically be the real truth is listed here in the flat fields in between Woolpit and Ixworth. This part of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak, especially in late October, but England’s finest summer and autumn for a long time had remaining the churchyard here verdant and golden, as beautiful a spot as any I might observed that yr. The church is substantial, and sits on a mound that has been slice down on 1 aspect by the street. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which under no circumstances fails to go me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett states of it that it simply cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the types of the mere head and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overcome as you may possibly be by it, really don’t are unsuccessful to location the damaged window tracery that has been made use of to establish the wall right here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you do not know, is 1 of the wonderful Suffolk church buildings. Although it may externally seem a very little severe, and is by no signifies as grand as Blythburgh, Long Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure dwelling of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in a single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not but entire of the ‘walls of glass’ self confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and possibly even renewed, which could demonstrate why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it will not get considerably to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it could be that the broken tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall isn’t medieval, so the place had it been all all those many years?
A further survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some concerns. Unusually, it options a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ becoming on the westwards experience. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it shows are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and considerably less frequently St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early a long time of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it absolutely isn’t really looking its finest. But I think there is far more heading on below than fulfills the eye. Fonts have been plastered over in Elizabethan periods, and only relief 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 least, this stonework appears weathered. I ponder if this font was taken off from the church, most likely in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors reason right until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is very well-documented. In 1832, as section of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was happy to uncover that the church was at previous going through repair service. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave made use of for providers. A new Rectory was becoming created. Who was the catalyst powering all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for virtually the middle forty many years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a superior pal of John Henry Newman, the long run Cardinal, and they often corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English churches. It is appealing to assume how, at this seminal second, Rickards may well have knowledgeable the believed of the Oxford Motion. Regrettably, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
For the duration of the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He received the great Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and entire the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the similar matter at Woolpit, a several miles absent. Ringham’s work is so very good that it is in some cases tough for the inexperienced eye to detect it however, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals below, and the wierder things 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 probably 60 carvings – but also that there are a number of exceptional subjects you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings seem to be part of the very same group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull playing a harp, the fowl with a man’s head, from related carvings elsewhere. And then ideally that little alarm bell in your heard must start out to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings in this article are clearly not from the exact same team. It is tough to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the very same workshop, or even from the similar ten years. The benches on their own are no clue it was common observe in the 19th century to swap medieval bench ends on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on fashionable benches produced out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards found some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the kind of human being to do a detail like that?
Properly, indeed he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is 1 that Rickards acquired immediately after finding it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the terrific 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was masses of medieval junk lying close to, considerably of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of man or woman to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Effectively, certainly he likely was. Appear at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south facet of the nave. The four evangelists are previously mentioned and under two fantastic representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below click on on them to enlarge them. Sad to say, they are not medieval at all, and it is generally approved that they were being painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is a thing equivalent the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Really medieval is the vast St Christopher wall-painting continue to discernible on the north wall. It was almost certainly one of the past to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of training course, as is the great rood-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 fee, and the operate of William White. What can Rickards have been considering of? But we action through into the chancel, and quickly the total thing moves up a equipment. For right here are some items that are certainly impressive.
In a county famous for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Guiding the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most finish established of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that form finials to the stall ends. They are individuals in the Mass, which include two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk have to be 1 of the ideal medieval images in Suffolk Mortlock believed the stalls the finest in England. I was in this article with my buddy Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had previously photographed and written about these carving a a few of several years back. But even he found anything 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 fantastic issues: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Between the seats are bizarre oriental faces. Some of them are underneath click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to ask up coming. How a great deal of this is from this church originally? It all appears medieval do the job, and there is no cause to consider it may well not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the factors. What evidence have we got?
To begin with, we must recognize that the only other Suffolk church with this sort of a significant variety of medieval misericords of this quality is just a mile absent, at Norton. I really don’t inquire you to see this as important, simply to detect it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does appear to me as while two sets of furnishings have been cobbled with each other the stalls that again on to the monitor seem to have been built-in into the much larger framework of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
On the other hand, if you glance closely 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 show up on the rood screen, and the Ashfields have been the major donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on harmony I am inclined to consider that the larger section of the stall framework was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Perfectly, I you should not know. But I consider they have to be considered as portion of the identical set as those at Norton. In which circumstance they may possibly have come from the exact same church, which may have been this 1, but could not have been. Almost certainly, the stalls at Norton did not appear from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other exceptional points in St George include FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s magnificent St George, which serves the identical intent. It is as great as his perform at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Great Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of class, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the somewhat significant altarpiece. They have been offered to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk store. They exhibit pictures from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides recommend. They day from the 1480s, and had been nearly undoubtedly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked through the French Revolution. I experienced observed a thing similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a couple of weeks before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these when were being, and piled up in a block somewhat than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches above them, are 19th century. My favorite pictures are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on the photos beneath.
Just one cold winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of intruders broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing at all much more was noticed or listened to of them until finally 1982, when they ended up discovered on display in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they were being utilised as safety for a financial loan which was defaulted upon. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings have been fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They were bought from his shop, and taken to the museum, which right away discovered them as 15th century carvings. They place them on screen, and a Dutch lady who experienced browse about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to cease the new owner removing them from the museum. The parish shed the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous lawful monthly bill but the tale has a content ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their buy from the owner, paid out off the lawful bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at huge value, but the businessman gave the reward in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Now, the carvings are mounted firmly in put and alarmed, so they would not be heading walkabout once more. But a very little aspect of me miracles if they really should really be right here at all. Certain, they are medieval, but they weren’t right here initially they weren’t even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be far better if they were exhibited someplace safer, exactly where persons could shell out to see them, and provide some earnings for the servicing of the church creating? And then, whisper it, St George might even be stored open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high avenue. A few keyholders are outlined, two of them quickly opposite. I am explained to that Wednesday is not a fantastic time to consider and get the crucial – it is industry day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:09
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , finishes , carved pew ends , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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