I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I realized these two counties. But of study 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 pal, Simon K, runs a magnificent web page, which I website link to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church site he has visited 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a good deal of church buildings for two counties to share, and quite a few of these churches are historic, flint created, spherical towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or a thing worthy of the work of likely to see or in search of out the keyholder to acquire accessibility.
What I imply is that there is no way anyone who only had their personal car or truck right up until 1984, and experienced small desire 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 observed St George from the major road, I was taking a brief minimize to join the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my very last trip 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 ft.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about 50 % a mile away, and considered I experienced adequate time to go around and see inside of if I could.
I parked at the stop of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I stroll up the lender to the gate into the churchyard, the clean up traces of the tower, perfectly, towered above me.
In the porch I tried the door and identified it locked, but the keyholder listing made it crystal clear that the nearest just one, at Christmas Cottage, was just about the street. So, why not test, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my particulars in a ledger, a reasonable measure. But I confirmed by driving licence to establish that I was who I claimed. Little did I know the little village I lived in experienced been noticed. Much more of that in a minute.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the magnificent pew finishes animals of all kinds, actual and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only individuals of noticeable human form. 1 with the body of a chicken but a obvious human deal with had been remaining on your own, so is the insanity of the puritan’s brain.
I made a decision that I would report every single pew conclude figure, and numerous entire pew ends so wonderful that they had been.
There is the feint outline of a massive wall portray, Simon states 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 detail Simon goes underneath. It is alarmed, so you simply cannot seem at them much too intently, unfortunately, but these is a sign of the situations.
I took the keys back again, and the woman of the house arrived to communicate to me as she had been instructed by her partner that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is where by her family members is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor stay in Cliffe. For as soon as there was certainly two Cliffs in Kent, a person on the Hoo Peninsular, in which her household is from, and 1 close to to Dover. A lot of several years back, Cliffe around to Dover was known as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further north. I discussed this to her, but claimed St Helen in Cliffe is a person of my favourite Kent church buildings, crafted of alternate layers of black and light flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Though St George in this article in Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church, it is in a inadequate state of mend, and is due to be designed redundant in the new calendar year. Always sad when that transpires to a parish church, but it is very likely to be taken in excess of by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to retain it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are far too outdated.
Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church and so happy am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to pay a visit to it. Go to see it now ahead of it is as well late!
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In the summer months of 2003, this internet site grew to become a six-element series on BBC Radio Suffolk. A little something I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a good total of correspondence. Referring to the way many churches 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 real furnishings and fittings are medieval, the full piece is nonetheless a Victorian conception.
Individuals wrote to me and claimed matters like “but in that scenario, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “presume that nothing is as it to start with seems, as Sherlock Holmes reported”. And if he didn’t, then he ought to have carried out.
A prime instance of a church that assumes a continuity that might not truly be the real truth is below in the flat fields in between Woolpit and Ixworth. This element of Suffolk can be fairly bleak, especially in late October, but England’s very best summer months and autumn for many years experienced left the churchyard right here verdant and golden, as gorgeous a put as any I might found that 12 months. The church is significant, and sits on a mound that has been reduce down on 1 facet by the road. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never ever fails to shift me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett says of it that it are not able to be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the categories of the mere head and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overcome as you may well be by it, don’t fall short to location the damaged window tracery that has been utilised to construct the wall below, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in situation you will not know, is just one of the fantastic Suffolk churches. While it may externally show up a minimal extreme, and is by no suggests as grand as Blythburgh, Lengthy Melford and the rest, it is a treasure residence of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in a single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not yet whole of the ‘walls of glass’ self-confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and maybe even renewed, which might describe why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Nonetheless, it won’t acquire substantially 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 is not medieval, so exactly where had it been all all those several years?
A further survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some issues. Unusually, it attributes a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ staying on the westwards deal with. 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 fewer generally St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early many years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it definitely is just not looking its very best. But I feel there is a lot more heading on right here than meets the eye. Fonts have been plastered in excess of in Elizabethan moments, and only aid that stood proud 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 minimum, this stonework appears weathered. I wonder if this font was removed 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 story of this church in the 19th century is perfectly-documented. In 1832, as section of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was delighted to find that the church was at past undergoing mend. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave employed for providers. A new Rectory was staying crafted. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for nearly the middle forty many years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a fantastic pal of John Henry Newman, the long term Cardinal, and they normally corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English church buildings. It is fascinating to consider how, at this seminal moment, Rickards may have educated the imagined of the Oxford Motion. Regrettably, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He obtained the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and total the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the same point at Woolpit, a handful of miles away. Ringham’s perform is so fantastic that it is occasionally challenging for the inexperienced eye to detect it nonetheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals in this article, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and most likely dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer quantity – there are potentially 60 carvings – but also that there are numerous exceptional topics you can see some of them down below.
The carvings show up to be portion of the same group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull participating in a harp, the hen with a man’s head, from comparable carvings somewhere else. And then with any luck , that small alarm bell in your read must commence to go “Hmmmm…..” since some of the carvings below are plainly not from the exact same group. It is difficult to imagine that the mermaid and the owl, for illustration, are from the similar workshop, or even from the very same ten years. The benches themselves are no clue it was frequent practice in the 19th century to substitute medieval bench ends on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on present day benches made out of medieval timber (as took place at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards identified some of these bench finishes somewhere else? Could he have been the variety of human being to do a matter like that?
Properly, indeed he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a person that Rickards obtained following finding it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was loads of medieval junk lying all around, a lot of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the type of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Well, sure he in all probability was. Glimpse at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The four evangelists are above and under two fantastic representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below click on them to enlarge them. Regretably, they are not medieval at all, and it is generally accepted that they were painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something very similar the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Definitely medieval is the wide St Christopher wall-portray nevertheless discernible on the north wall. It was possibly a person of the final to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of program, as is the high-quality rood-display screen 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 fee, and the perform of William White. What can Rickards have been considering of? But we move as a result of into the chancel, and abruptly the full thing moves up a gear. For here are some items that are really impressive.
In a county well-known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most total set of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that form finials to the stall finishes. They are members in the Mass, together with two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk need to be a single of the most effective medieval visuals in Suffolk Mortlock considered the stalls the very best in England. I was below with my pal Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had beforehand photographed and prepared about these carving a a pair of years ago. But even he uncovered some 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 topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Amongst the seats are unusual oriental faces. Some of them are beneath click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am going to check with up coming. How a great deal of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval perform, and there is no rationale to consider it may well not have been moved somewhere else in the church when the chancel was open to the features. What proof have we got?
To start with, we really should see that the only other Suffolk church with such a big amount of medieval misericords of this good quality is just a mile absent, at Norton. I do not check with you to see this as sizeable, basically to detect it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled with each other the stalls that again on to the display show up to have been built-in into the more substantial composition of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
Even so, if you appear 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 seem on the rood monitor, and the Ashfields have been the main donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to assume that the better component of the stall structure was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Effectively, I you should not know. But I think they have to be considered as portion of the exact same set as people at Norton. In which situation they may well have occur from the exact same church, which may possibly have been this 1, but may well not have been. Nearly surely, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they have been originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other impressive matters in St George contain FE Howard’s attractive war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the very same purpose. It is as superior as his get the job done at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and acquired from, the Good Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of training course, most renowned for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather heavy altarpiece. They ended up given to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk store. They display illustrations or photos from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides recommend. They date from the 1480s, and were being virtually unquestionably the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked all through the French Revolution. I had witnessed a thing related at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a several months prior to. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these after were being, and piled up in a block somewhat than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches over them, are 19th century. My favourite images are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Simply click on the illustrations or photos down below.
One particular chilly winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Very little a lot more was witnessed or listened to of them right until 1982, when they ended up uncovered on screen in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted one particular taken to Holland, they were being applied as protection for a mortgage which was defaulted upon. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk seller. They ended up acquired from his shop, and taken to the museum, which promptly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They place them on display, and a Dutch girl who experienced study about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to quit the new operator eliminating them from the museum. The parish shed the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous lawful bill but the tale has a content ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their acquire from the operator, paid off the legal costs, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at large price, but the businessman gave the reward in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
These days, the carvings are set firmly in location and alarmed, so they would not be likely walkabout all over again. But a minimal section of me wonders if they really should be below at all. Positive, they are medieval, but they were not here originally they weren’t even in England originally. Wouldn’t it be improved if they ended up displayed someplace safer, in which people could fork out to see them, and supply some cash flow for the upkeep of the church setting up? And then, whisper it, St George could even be stored open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village superior avenue. A few keyholders are detailed, two of them straight away opposite. I am informed that Wednesday is not a good time to check out and get the crucial – it is sector day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:57
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , ends , carved pew finishes , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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