I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I assumed I realized those people two counties. But of training course 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, operates a wonderful internet site, which I link to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church website page he has frequented 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a good deal of churches for two counties to share, and numerous of individuals churches are historical, flint created, round towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or something worth the effort and hard work of going to see or in search of out the keyholder to gain access.
What I indicate is that there is no way an individual who only had their possess motor vehicle until finally 1984, and had very little fascination 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 primary street, I was getting a quick minimize to be part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last excursion of the 12 months to lowestoft as Mother is now out of healthcare facility and in the treatment of district nurses in order to get set again on her feet.
So I saw the tower of St George from about 50 percent a mile away, and imagined I had adequate time to go above and see inside of if I could.
I parked at the end of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I wander up the bank to the gate into the churchyard, the clean up traces of the tower, effectively, towered over me.
In the porch I experimented with the doorway and discovered it locked, but the keyholder record designed it obvious that the closest just one, at Christmas Cottage, was just in excess of the highway. So, why not consider, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my aspects in a ledger, a sensible evaluate. But I showed by driving licence to show that I was who I claimed. Minor did I know the tiny village I lived in experienced been recognized. Extra of that in a moment.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the incredible pew finishes animals of all sorts, genuine and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only all those of clear human kind. One particular with the human body of a rooster but a clear human facial area had been left by itself, therefore is the insanity of the puritan’s mind.
I made the decision that I would history just about every pew finish figure, and lots of complete pew finishes so fantastic that they were being.
There is the feint define of a big wall painting, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most outstanding when freshly painted. There is also a fine set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes down below. It is alarmed, so you simply cannot seem at them way too carefully, sadly, but these types of is a indication of the periods.
I took the keys back, and the girl of the residence arrived to talk to me as she experienced been told by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is where her household is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor reside in Cliffe. For the moment there was in truth two Cliffs in Kent, just one on the Hoo Peninsular, in which her family is from, and one in close proximity to to Dover. Quite a few a long time in the past, Cliffe around to Dover was known as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further more north. I described this to her, but said St Helen in Cliffe is a person of my favourite Kent church buildings, developed of alternate layers of black and gentle flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
While St George right here in Stowlangtoft is a great church, it is in a weak point out of restore, and is owing to be produced redundant in the new year. Normally unfortunate when that occurs to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to keep it tidy when the outdated wardens and keyholders are much too aged.
Stowlangtoft is a fabulous church and so happy am I that I invested 40 minutes of my time to take a look at it. Go to see it now in advance of it is too late!
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In the summer time of 2003, this site became a six-component sequence on BBC Radio Suffolk. Anything I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a honest amount of money of correspondence. Referring to the way many churches had 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 precise furnishings and fittings are medieval, the full piece is however a Victorian conception.
People wrote to me and mentioned matters like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that nothing is as it to start with appears, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he did not, then he ought to have finished.
A key case in point of a church that assumes a continuity that might not essentially be the reality is right here in the flat fields amongst Woolpit and Ixworth. This component of Suffolk can be relatively bleak, specifically in late Oct, but England’s greatest summer season and autumn for a long time experienced still left the churchyard below verdant and golden, as beautiful a location as any I might seen that yr. The church is substantial, and sits on a mound that has been lower down on just one side by the road. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which by no means fails to transfer me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett suggests of it that it are not able to be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere head and sings to us of our further self.
Confused as you may well be by it, do not are unsuccessful to location the broken window tracery that has been utilized to construct the wall here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you will not know, is a person of the excellent Suffolk church buildings. Though it may possibly externally look a small serious, and is by no usually means as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure house of the medieval within. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in a person go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not but total of the ‘walls of glass’ self confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been fixed, and quite possibly even renewed, which might describe why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. However, it doesn’t get a lot to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it might be that the broken tracery is from the original church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall isn’t medieval, so exactly where experienced it been all those people decades?
A further survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some concerns. Unusually, it functions a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ getting on the westwards deal with. 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 commonly St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early yrs of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it surely just isn’t searching its greatest. But I imagine there is more heading on right here than satisfies the eye. Fonts were 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 think they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at minimum, this stonework seems weathered. I speculate if this font was taken out from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor reason right up until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is properly-documented. In 1832, as aspect of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was happy to locate that the church was at past undergoing repair service. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave employed for products and services. A new Rectory was remaining developed. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for nearly the center forty yrs of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a great buddy of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they often corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation buying of English church buildings. It is attention-grabbing to assume how, at this seminal moment, Rickards may have informed the believed of the Oxford Movement. Regrettably, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the system of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He got the good Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and total the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the exact same factor at Woolpit, a few miles away. Ringham’s operate is so excellent that it is from time to time tough for the inexperienced eye to detect it however, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals 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 amount – there are most likely 60 carvings – but also that there are various exclusive subjects you can see some of them beneath.
The carvings seem to be part of the same 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 equivalent carvings elsewhere. And then with any luck , that very little alarm bell in your read ought to start to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings in this article are evidently not from the similar group. It is really hard to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the same workshop, or even from the exact same ten years. The benches themselves are no clue it was popular observe in the 19th century to substitute medieval bench finishes on present day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern-day benches created out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards discovered some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the variety of individual to do a thing 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 just one that Rickards acquired following acquiring it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the terrific 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was masses of medieval junk lying close to, considerably of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the type of person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Very well, certainly he almost certainly was. Appear at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south side of the nave. The 4 evangelists are above and under two fantastic representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them beneath simply click on them to enlarge them. Unfortunately, they are not medieval at all, and it is commonly recognized that they have been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something related the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Definitely medieval is the huge St Christopher wall-portray still discernible on the north wall. It was probably a single of the very last to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of class, as is the high-quality 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 commission, and the work of William White. What can Rickards have been pondering of? But we phase through into the chancel, and suddenly the total detail moves up a gear. For below are some points that are certainly remarkable.
In a county famed for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Powering the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most entire established of return stalls. Most placing are the figures that variety finials to the stall finishes. They are contributors in the Mass, together with two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk should be one particular of the most effective medieval pictures in Suffolk Mortlock considered the stalls the greatest in England. I was right here with my buddy Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced formerly photographed and created about these carving a a few of many years back. But even he observed 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 things: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Involving 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 request next. How significantly of this is from this church at first? It all seems medieval get the job done, and there is no cause to consider it might not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open up to the elements. What evidence have we bought?
For starters, we ought to notice that the only other Suffolk church with this kind of a massive selection of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile absent, at Norton. I do not inquire you to see this as substantial, simply to observe it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does appear to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that back again on to the monitor seem to have been integrated into the greater composition of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
Nevertheless, if you glimpse intently at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche people. The Ashfield arms also show up on the rood monitor, and the Ashfields had been the important donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to consider that the higher component of the stall construction was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Properly, I really don’t know. But I imagine they have to be deemed as part of the exact same set as individuals at Norton. In which scenario they may perhaps have come from the similar church, which might have been this just one, but may possibly not have been. Nearly surely, the stalls at Norton did not appear from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been initially in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other outstanding factors in St George include things like FE Howard’s wonderful war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the same objective. It is as superior as his work at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Great Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of training course, most well-known for the Flemish carvings that flank the alternatively hefty altarpiece. They were being provided to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk store. They demonstrate images from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They day from the 1480s, and have been almost definitely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked in the course of the French Revolution. I experienced witnessed something similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a handful of months in advance of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these after were being, and piled up in a block instead than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches higher than them, are 19th century. My favourite illustrations or photos are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on the images below.
Just one chilly winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Absolutely nothing a lot more was seen or heard of them until eventually 1982, when they were learned on show in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they have been employed as stability for a personal loan which was defaulted upon. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings ended up fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They had been bought from his store, and taken to the museum, which instantly identified them as 15th century carvings. They set them on display, and a Dutch girl who had browse about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to end the new proprietor taking away them from the museum. The parish shed the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous legal monthly bill but the tale has a delighted ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their acquire from the proprietor, paid off the lawful costs, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at extensive price, but the businessman gave the gift in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Today, the carvings are mounted firmly in put and alarmed, so they will not be heading walkabout all over again. But a minimal aspect of me miracles if they seriously really should be listed here at all. Absolutely sure, they are medieval, but they were not here initially they weren’t even in England at first. Would not it be better if they had been exhibited somewhere safer, wherever persons could pay out to see them, and supply some cash flow for the maintenance of the church constructing? And then, whisper it, St George may even be retained open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high road. 3 keyholders are mentioned, two of them instantly opposite. I am instructed that Wednesday is not a great time to consider and get the critical – it is market day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:56
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , finishes , carved pew ends , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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