I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I believed I realized all those two counties. But of study course there is 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 web site, which I hyperlink to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church page he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a ton of churches for two counties to share, and many of these churches are historical, flint crafted, round towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or a little something truly worth the exertion of heading to see or searching for out the keyholder to achieve access.
What I signify is that there is no way someone who only experienced their own automobile right up until 1984, and experienced 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 saw St George from the primary road, I was getting a short minimize to be part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my previous vacation of the yr to lowestoft as Mom is now out of medical center and in the treatment of district nurses in purchase to get put again on her feet.
So I saw the tower of St George from about 50 % a mile away, and considered I had sufficient time to go in excess of and see inside if I could.
I parked at the conclusion of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I wander up the financial institution to the gate into the churchyard, the thoroughly clean strains of the tower, very well, towered more than me.
In the porch I tried out the doorway and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder checklist designed it very clear that the closest just one, at Xmas Cottage, was just more than the street. So, why not try out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my information in a ledger, a practical evaluate. But I confirmed by driving licence to establish that I was who I claimed. Minor did I know the smaller village I lived in had been observed. Much more of that in a moment.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the fantastic pew ends animals of all types, serious and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only those people of noticeable human sort. A single with the physique of a chicken but a distinct human face had been remaining alone, hence is the insanity of the puritan’s head.
I made the decision that I would history just about every pew conclusion figure, and several complete pew finishes so great that they ended up.
There is the feint define of a substantial wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most remarkable when freshly painted. There is also a good set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes underneath. It is alarmed, so you are unable to appear at them as well intently, unfortunately, but such is a indicator of the situations.
I took the keys back again, and the girl of the dwelling came to talk to me as she experienced been told by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is exactly where her family members is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor are living in Cliffe. For as soon as there was in truth two Cliffs in Kent, one particular on the Hoo Peninsular, exactly where her household is from, and a single in the vicinity of to Dover. Many a long time ago, Cliffe close to to Dover was identified as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake additional north. I explained this to her, but said St Helen in Cliffe is a single of my favorite Kent church buildings, constructed of alternate levels of black and mild flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Although St George here in Stowlangtoft is a fantastic church, it is in a weak point out of repair, and is thanks to be built redundant in the new year. Usually sad when that comes about to a parish church, but it is most likely to be taken over by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to maintain it tidy when the old wardens and keyholders are too old.
Stowlangtoft is a magnificent church and so happy am I that I used 40 minutes of my time to stop by it. Go to see it now just before it is also late!
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In the summer season of 2003, this site turned a six-portion collection on BBC Radio Suffolk. Something I said in the fourth programme, about Hessett, created a good amount of money of correspondence. Referring to the way quite a few 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 real furnishings and fittings are medieval, the whole piece is however a Victorian conception.
People wrote to me and said issues like “but in that case, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “presume that very little is as it initial appears, as Sherlock Holmes said”. And if he didn’t, then he should really have accomplished.
A prime example of a church that assumes a continuity that may not truly be the reality is right here in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This component of Suffolk can be fairly bleak, primarily in late Oct, but England’s very best summertime and autumn for decades had still left the churchyard below verdant and golden, as wonderful a spot as any I might viewed that 12 months. The church is substantial, and sits on a mound that has been slice down on one aspect by the highway. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which under no circumstances fails to transfer 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 types of the mere intellect and sings to us of our further self.
Overcome as you might be by it, don’t fall short to spot the damaged window tracery that has been utilized to develop the wall below, for thus hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you don’t know, is a single of the great Suffolk churches. Whilst it may possibly externally look a minor critical, and is by no suggests as grand as Blythburgh, Extensive Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure household of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in 1 go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not still entire of the ‘walls of glass’ confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and perhaps even renewed, which could make clear why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. However, it does not consider significantly 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 original church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall is just not medieval, so exactly where experienced it been all people years?
One more survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some concerns. Unusually, it characteristics a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ currently being on the westwards facial area. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it displays are acquainted cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and a lot 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 definitely is just not wanting its greatest. But I consider there is a lot more likely on right here than fulfills the eye. Fonts ended up plastered about in Elizabethan situations, and only relief that stood very pleased 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 the very least, this stonework seems weathered. I wonder if this font was removed from the church, probably in the mid-17th century, and served an outside intent till it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is effectively-documented. In 1832, as aspect of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was happy to find that the church was at last going through fix. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave made use of for providers. A new Rectory was getting crafted. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector right here for just about the center forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good close friend of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they generally corresponded on the subject matter of the pre-Reformation buying of English church buildings. It is exciting to believe how, at this seminal moment, Rickards could have knowledgeable the thought of the Oxford Movement. Regrettably, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the training course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He obtained the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and finish the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the same thing at Woolpit, a couple of miles away. Ringham’s operate is so good that it is at times hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it even so, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals listed here, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and in all probability dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer quantity – there are possibly 60 carvings – but also that there are quite a few one of a kind topics you can see some of them beneath.
The carvings surface to be component of the exact group 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 comparable carvings elsewhere. And then hopefully that little alarm bell in your heard should really get started to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings in this article are obviously not from the identical group. It is tricky to imagine that the mermaid and the owl, for illustration, are from the very same workshop, or even from the identical decade. The benches them selves are no clue it was prevalent exercise in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on modern-day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on contemporary benches manufactured out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards located some of these bench ends in other places? Could he have been the variety of particular person to do a thing like that?
Nicely, indeed he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is one particular that Rickards obtained soon after acquiring it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the excellent 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was masses of medieval junk lying all over, significantly of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the form of man or woman to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Perfectly, yes he in all probability was. Look at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south side of the nave. The four evangelists are higher than and beneath two outstanding representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them underneath simply click on them to enlarge them. Sadly, they are not medieval at all, and it is typically acknowledged that they had been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something very similar the other side of Bury at Hawstead.
Certainly medieval is the large St Christopher wall-painting even now discernible on the north wall. It was probably a person of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of course, as is the great rood-screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the higher tracery of some of the home windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the do the job of William White. What can Rickards have been contemplating of? But we action by way of into the chancel, and instantly the total point moves up a equipment. For listed here are some issues that are certainly remarkable.
In a county well-known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Powering the rood screen dado is Suffolk’s most entire established of return stalls. Most placing are the figures that kind 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 will have to be a person of the very best medieval images in Suffolk Mortlock thought the stalls the greatest in England. I was listed here with my friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced beforehand photographed and written about these carving a a few of many years back. But even he uncovered one thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that confront eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are amazing issues: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Among the seats are odd oriental faces. Some of them are underneath simply click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am going to check with subsequent. How significantly of this is from this church originally? It all appears medieval do the job, and there is no motive to think it could not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the things. What evidence have we bought?
To start with, we should detect that the only other Suffolk church with these types of a significant amount of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile absent, at Norton. I will not request you to see this as sizeable, basically to detect it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does search to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled jointly the stalls that back again on to the monitor look to have been built-in into the bigger construction of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south walls.
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 families. The Ashfield arms also show up on the rood monitor, and the Ashfields ended up the big donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on harmony I am inclined to think that the larger component of the stall framework was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Nicely, I do not know. But I imagine they have to be regarded as portion of the similar set as those people at Norton. In which scenario they may well have come from the exact same church, which may perhaps have been this one, but might not have been. Pretty much unquestionably, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other outstanding factors in St George contain FE Howard’s beautiful war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s lovely St George, which serves the exact same function. It is as very good as his function at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Fantastic Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of study course, most renowned for the Flemish carvings that flank the somewhat hefty altarpiece. They had been offered to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk shop. They clearly show photos from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They day from the 1480s, and were practically unquestionably the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked all through the French Revolution. I had observed a little something very similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a few months in advance of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these after have been, and piled up in a block rather than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches earlier mentioned them, are 19th century. My favorite images are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the images beneath.
A person cold winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Practically nothing much more was observed or read of them till 1982, when they had been uncovered on show in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one particular taken to Holland, they have been employed as stability for a loan which was defaulted on. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings had been fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They had been purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which immediately recognized them as 15th century carvings. They place them on display screen, and a Dutch female who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to cease the new owner eliminating them from the museum. The parish lost the situation, leaving them with a monstrous authorized monthly bill but the story has a content ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their order from the operator, paid off the lawful expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at vast price, but the businessman gave the reward in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Now, the carvings are set firmly in position and alarmed, so they will never be going walkabout once again. But a minimal component of me wonders if they really need to be below at all. Absolutely sure, they are medieval, but they were not in this article at first they weren’t even in England at first. Wouldn’t it be much better if they had been shown somewhere safer, in which persons could pay to see them, and offer some money for the upkeep of the church building? And then, whisper it, St George could even be kept open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village superior avenue. Three keyholders are detailed, two of them quickly opposite. I am told that Wednesday is not a good time to try out and get the essential – it is current market working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:34
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , ends , carved pew ends , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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