I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I believed I knew all those two counties. But of program 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, runs a wonderful site, which I hyperlink to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church webpage he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a great deal of church buildings for two counties to share, and numerous of people church buildings are historical, flint created, round towered or have wall paintings, picket roof angels or a little something worth the work of heading to see or in search of out the keyholder to acquire obtain.
What I necessarily mean is that there is no way somebody who only experienced their possess motor vehicle until eventually 1984, and had minimal interest in church buildings or parishes could have read 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 short reduce to sign up for the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last trip of the calendar year to lowestoft as Mother is now out of medical center and in the treatment of district nurses in buy to get put back on her toes.
So I observed the tower of St George from about half a mile away, and thought I experienced ample time to go more than 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 financial institution to the gate into the churchyard, the clean up lines of the tower, effectively, towered above me.
In the porch I tried out the door and located it locked, but the keyholder record built it distinct that the closest just one, at Christmas Cottage, was just above the street. So, why not try, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my information in a ledger, a smart measure. But I confirmed by driving licence to verify that I was who I claimed. Tiny did I know the tiny village I lived in experienced been recognized. Additional of that in a minute.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the fantastic pew finishes animals of all sorts, actual and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only individuals of obvious human kind. A person with the overall body of a chicken but a very clear human deal with experienced been still left by itself, so is the madness of the puritan’s intellect.
I determined that I would history just about every pew end determine, and a lot of entire pew ends so excellent that they were.
There is the feint define of a substantial wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a fine set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes under. It is alarmed, so you are unable to seem at them too carefully, unfortunately, but this sort of is a signal of the moments.
I took the keys back again, and the girl of the dwelling arrived to speak to me as she experienced been advised by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is wherever her relatives is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor dwell in Cliffe. For after there was indeed two Cliffs in Kent, just one on the Hoo Peninsular, where by her household is from, and one particular close to to Dover. Numerous several years in the past, Cliffe close to to Dover was named WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake additional north. I discussed this to her, but explained St Helen in Cliffe is 1 of my favourite Kent church buildings, created of alternate layers of black and mild flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Whilst St George below in Stowlangtoft is a high-quality church, it is in a lousy point out of repair service, and is owing to be made redundant in the new calendar year. Often unhappy when that takes place to a parish church, but it is most likely to be taken in excess of by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to hold it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are as well previous.
Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church and so happy am I that I invested 40 minutes of my time to pay a visit to it. Go to see it now prior to it is much too late!
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In the summer time of 2003, this website became a six-part sequence on BBC Radio Suffolk. A thing I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a fair quantity of correspondence. Referring to the way lots of church buildings have been 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 actual furnishings and fittings are medieval, the entire piece is continue to a Victorian conception.
People wrote to me and mentioned things like “but in that circumstance, Simon, how do we know what was there at first and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “presume that absolutely nothing is as it first seems, as Sherlock Holmes claimed”. And if he did not, then he should have carried out.
A primary case in point of a church that assumes a continuity that may well not basically be the fact is right here in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This part of Suffolk can be instead bleak, in particular in late Oct, but England’s very best summer time and autumn for a long time had left the churchyard right here verdant and golden, as lovely a put as any I might found that year. The church is big, and sits on a mound that has been slice down on just one aspect by the street. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never fails to shift me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett says of it that it can’t be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere head and sings to us of our further self.
Overcome as you might be by it, really don’t are unsuccessful to spot the broken window tracery that has been utilised to build the wall below, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in scenario you don’t know, is one of the fantastic Suffolk church buildings. Though it might externally appear a very little critical, and is by no usually means as grand as Blythburgh, Long 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 a single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not however total of the ‘walls of glass’ confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been fixed, and quite possibly even renewed, which may possibly reveal why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Nevertheless, it doesn’t take a lot to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may well be that the broken tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall isn’t really medieval, so where had it been all these decades?
Yet another survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some inquiries. Unusually, it functions 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 familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and much less generally St George. The cult of St George was at its peak in the early decades of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it undoubtedly isn’t really hunting its ideal. But I consider there is far more heading on right here than satisfies the eye. Fonts had been plastered more than in Elizabethan moments, and only aid that stood happy 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 least, this stonework appears weathered. I wonder if this font was taken off from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors function until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as element of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was happy to come across that the church was at past going through restore. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave utilized for providers. A new Rectory was currently being created. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector right here for just about the middle forty decades of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good pal of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they usually corresponded on the topic of the pre-Reformation buying of English churches. It is exciting to imagine how, at this seminal minute, Rickards could have knowledgeable the believed of the Oxford Movement. Unfortunately, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
For the duration of the class of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the terrific Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and total the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the similar matter at Woolpit, a number of miles away. Ringham’s work is so excellent that it is occasionally tricky for the inexperienced eye to detect it on the other hand, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals listed here, and the wierder things is all medieval, and almost certainly dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer amount – there are perhaps 60 carvings – but also that there are quite a few one of a kind subjects you can see some of them beneath.
The carvings seem to be aspect of the exact team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull actively playing a harp, the hen with a man’s head, from related carvings somewhere else. And then hopefully that small alarm bell in your listened to must begin to go “Hmmmm…..” because some of the carvings in this article are evidently not from the similar team. It is tough to think that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the similar workshop, or even from the same ten years. The benches on their own are no clue it was popular exercise in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on contemporary benches, or on medieval benches, or even on contemporary benches designed out of medieval timber (as took place at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards identified some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the kind of man or woman to do a detail like that?
Effectively, certainly he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is 1 that Rickards acquired right after discovering it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the excellent 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was loads of medieval junk lying around, substantially of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Very well, of course he possibly was. Look at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south facet of the nave. The four evangelists are higher than and under two excellent representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below click on on them to enlarge them. Unfortunately, they are not medieval at all, and it is generally approved that they have been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something equivalent the other side of Bury at Hawstead.
Really medieval is the large St Christopher wall-painting nonetheless discernible on the north wall. It was most likely just one of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of study course, as is the high-quality rood-monitor 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 perform of William White. What can Rickards have been pondering of? But we phase by means of into the chancel, and instantly the entire matter moves up a equipment. For right here are some issues that are certainly remarkable.
In a county well known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Guiding the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most finish set of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that sort finials to the stall finishes. They are individuals in the Mass, including two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk need to be one of the greatest medieval photos in Suffolk Mortlock believed the stalls the very best in England. I was below with my good friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had beforehand photographed and written about these carving a a couple of a long time 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 encounter eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are great 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 unusual oriental faces. Some of them are beneath click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am going to inquire up coming. How considerably of this is from this church initially? It all seems medieval function, and there is no reason to believe that it could possibly not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open up to the components. What evidence have we got?
To start with, we should see that the only other Suffolk church with such a substantial number of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile away, at Norton. I do not ask you to see this as substantial, basically to see it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does glance to me as even though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that back again on to the display screen show up to have been integrated into the larger sized structure of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
Nevertheless, if you appear carefully 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 display, and the Ashfields have been the important donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to feel that the increased aspect of the stall framework was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Nicely, I don’t know. But I consider they have to be thought of as section of the exact established as people at Norton. In which situation they could have occur from the similar church, which may have been this one particular, but may possibly not have been. Pretty much certainly, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other outstanding items in St George involve FE Howard’s lovely war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s stunning St George, which serves the similar function. It is as excellent as his perform at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and obtained from, the Terrific Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most well known for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather hefty altarpiece. They were being supplied to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk store. They clearly show photos from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They date from the 1480s, and ended up just about surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked for the duration of the French Revolution. I had noticed one thing equivalent at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a handful of weeks right before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these when ended up, and piled up in a block somewhat than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches previously mentioned them, are 19th century. My favourite photographs are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on the illustrations or photos below.
A person cold winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of intruders broke into this locked church and stole them. Almost nothing extra was found or read of them right until 1982, when they have been identified on display screen in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted 1 taken to Holland, they were utilized as protection for a mortgage which was defaulted on. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They were acquired from his shop, and taken to the museum, which instantly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They place them on show, and a Dutch lady who had go through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to cease the new owner eradicating them from the museum. The parish shed the situation, leaving them with a monstrous legal invoice but the story has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their buy from the owner, paid out off the legal expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at huge value, but the businessman gave the gift in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Right now, the carvings are fixed firmly in put and alarmed, so they will not be going walkabout again. But a small aspect of me wonders if they really should be below at all. Guaranteed, they are medieval, but they weren’t right here initially they weren’t even in England initially. Would not it be improved if they ended up exhibited someplace safer, in which people could shell out to see them, and present some revenue for the servicing of the church creating? And then, whisper it, St George may well even be saved open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high avenue. A few keyholders are outlined, two of them straight away opposite. I am informed that Wednesday is not a excellent time to consider and get the vital – it is sector working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:45
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , finishes , carved pew ends , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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