I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I thought I knew individuals two counties. But of program 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 close friend, Simon K, operates a wonderful website, which I connection to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church webpage he has frequented 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a great deal of church buildings for two counties to share, and several of people churches are ancient, flint designed, spherical towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or something well worth the effort of heading to see or in search of out the keyholder to gain access.
What I necessarily mean is that there is no way a person who only experienced their own car right up until 1984, and experienced very little 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 noticed St George from the main street, I was taking a shorter minimize to join the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my previous excursion of the yr to lowestoft as Mom is now out of healthcare facility and in the care of district nurses in purchase to get place again on her feet.
So I saw the tower of St George from about 50 % a mile away, and imagined I experienced sufficient time to go about 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 lender to the gate into the churchyard, the clean traces of the tower, properly, towered about me.
In the porch I tried the doorway and identified it locked, but the keyholder checklist manufactured it apparent that the nearest just one, at Xmas Cottage, was just above the highway. So, why not consider, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my particulars in a ledger, a smart measure. But I confirmed by driving licence to demonstrate that I was who I claimed. Very little did I know the modest village I lived in had been found. A lot more of that in a minute.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the fabulous pew ends animals of all types, serious and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only those people of clear human kind. A single with the physique of a rooster but a obvious human encounter experienced been left alone, as a result is the madness of the puritan’s mind.
I made the decision that I would history each individual pew stop figure, and a lot of total pew finishes so wonderful that they were.
There is the feint outline of a huge wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing 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 cannot look at them as well intently, sadly, but this kind of is a indication of the situations.
I took the keys back, and the woman of the property came to speak to me as she experienced been advised by her partner that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is where by her loved ones is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor are living in Cliffe. For as soon as there was certainly two Cliffs in Kent, a single on the Hoo Peninsular, where her family is from, and one particular around to Dover. Numerous yrs in the past, Cliffe close to to Dover was known as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further more north. I stated this to her, but reported St Helen in Cliffe is one of my favourite Kent churches, constructed of alternate levels of black and light-weight flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Despite the fact that St George here in Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church, it is in a weak state of repair, and is owing to be made redundant in the new calendar year. Constantly unfortunate when that takes place to a parish church, but it is most likely to be taken above by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to keep it tidy when the outdated wardens and keyholders are too outdated.
Stowlangtoft is a fabulous church and so happy am I that I expended 40 minutes of my time to stop by it. Go to see it now before it is far too late!
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In the summer season of 2003, this internet site turned a 6-element series on BBC Radio Suffolk. A thing I claimed in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a good amount of money of correspondence. Referring to the way many churches ended up 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 full piece is nonetheless a Victorian conception.
Men and women wrote to me and reported items 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 “assume that absolutely nothing is as it initial appears, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he failed to, then he should have carried out.
A prime case in point of a church that assumes a continuity that may possibly not truly be the reality is here in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This element of Suffolk can be relatively bleak, primarily in late October, but England’s finest summer months and autumn for a long time experienced remaining the churchyard below verdant and golden, as beautiful a put as any I’d seen that calendar year. The church is large, and sits on a mound that has been minimize down on a single 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 go 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 intellect and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overwhelmed as you may perhaps be by it, do not fail to spot the damaged window tracery that has been utilised to construct the wall listed here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in scenario you do not know, is one particular of the fantastic Suffolk churches. Though it could externally look a little intense, and is by no indicates as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure home of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in just one go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not nonetheless total of the ‘walls of glass’ self-confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and potentially even renewed, which may well clarify why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Even so, it would not just take much to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may be that the damaged tracery is from the unique church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall isn’t medieval, so the place experienced it been all people many years?
One more survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some questions. Unusually, it functions a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ becoming on the westwards confront. 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 considerably less frequently St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it unquestionably isn’t looking its most effective. But I think there is extra likely on listed here than meets the eye. Fonts were plastered around in Elizabethan instances, and only reduction that stood happy of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not feel they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at minimum, this stonework appears weathered. I marvel if this font was taken off from the church, most likely in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor function until it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is well-documented. In 1832, as part of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was pleased to obtain that the church was at very last going through repair. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave used for providers. A new Rectory was currently being crafted. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector right here for nearly the center forty several years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a fantastic pal of John Henry Newman, the potential Cardinal, and they normally corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English church buildings. It is interesting to imagine how, at this seminal instant, Rickards may possibly have informed the considered of the Oxford Motion. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
In the course of the program of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He bought the great Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and entire the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the same detail at Woolpit, a couple miles away. Ringham’s get the job done is so great that it is at times really hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it having said that, 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 ends is partly the sheer amount – there are potentially 60 carvings – but also that there are many special subjects you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings appear to be aspect of the same group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull playing a harp, the chicken with a man’s head, from similar carvings somewhere else. And then ideally that minor alarm bell in your read should commence to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings listed here are evidently not from the exact same group. It is difficult to think that the mermaid and the owl, for instance, are from the exact workshop, or even from the very same ten years. The benches on their own are no clue it was common practice in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on present day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on fashionable benches designed out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards uncovered some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the form of person to do a factor like that?
Nicely, indeed he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is one particular that Rickards obtained following discovering it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the great 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was masses of medieval junk lying all around, considerably of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the kind of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Properly, sure he almost certainly was. Search at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south facet of the nave. The 4 evangelists are higher than 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. Regrettably, they are not medieval at all, and it is commonly acknowledged that they had been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is one thing identical the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Genuinely medieval is the vast St Christopher wall-portray nonetheless discernible on the north wall. It was most likely a person of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of program, as is the great rood-screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the upper tracery of some of the home windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the get the job done of William White. What can Rickards have been contemplating of? But we stage by means of into the chancel, and instantly the full factor moves up a equipment. For right here are some matters that are certainly extraordinary.
In a county renowned for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most full established of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that variety finials to the stall finishes. They are contributors in the Mass, which includes two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk should be one of the very best medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock imagined the stalls the very best in England. I was right here with my friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced beforehand photographed and prepared about these carving a a few of many years back. But even he uncovered something 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 great matters: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Amongst the seats are strange oriental faces. Some of them are down below click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am heading to request upcoming. How substantially of this is from this church initially? It all seems medieval get the job done, and there is no motive to imagine it might not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open up to the elements. What evidence have we got?
For starters, we must observe that the only other Suffolk church with this sort of a big variety of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I really don’t talk to you to see this as considerable, just to notice it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that again on to the monitor look to have been built-in into the much larger composition of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
Having said that, if you look 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 look 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 feel that the bigger component of the stall construction was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Effectively, I will not know. But I think they have to be considered as section of the exact same established as people at Norton. In which scenario they may possibly have appear from the similar church, which may perhaps have been this one particular, but may perhaps not have been. Just about certainly, the stalls at Norton did not appear from Norton church, and folklore has it that they have been originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other outstanding things in St George involve FE Howard’s stunning war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s stunning St George, which serves the exact objective. It is as good as his perform at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Terrific Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of program, most popular for the Flemish carvings that flank the alternatively major altarpiece. They were being offered to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk shop. They demonstrate images from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They day from the 1480s, and have been nearly absolutely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked throughout the French Revolution. I experienced noticed some thing identical 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, and piled up in a block fairly than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches above them, are 19th century. My favourite pictures are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on the photographs down below.
One chilly winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of intruders broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing far more was found or read of them until finally 1982, when they have been identified on display screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted a single taken to Holland, they were being made use of as stability for a personal loan which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They have been purchased from his shop, and taken to the museum, which instantly discovered them as 15th century carvings. They place them on display, and a Dutch female who experienced study about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to stop the new owner eliminating them from the museum. The parish dropped the scenario, leaving them with a monstrous legal invoice but the tale has a content ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the proprietor, compensated off the legal costs, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at vast value, but the businessman gave the reward in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Right now, the carvings are set firmly in area and alarmed, so they is not going to be going walkabout all over again. But a minimal section of me miracles if they actually should be in this article at all. Sure, they are medieval, but they weren’t in this article initially they were not even in England initially. Would not it be much better if they have been shown somewhere safer, wherever people could pay out to see them, and present some income for the upkeep of the church building? And then, whisper it, St George could even be held open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high avenue. A few keyholders are mentioned, two of them promptly reverse. I am instructed that Wednesday is not a very good time to try out and get the crucial – it is market place working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:59
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , ends , carved pew finishes , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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