St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk
Presented that our parish church buildings nearly without having exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it really should be evident 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 nevertheless a Victorian conception.
Inevitably, the problem occurs of what was there just before the restoration and what was not. The noticeable respond to is that we have to suppose that absolutely nothing is as it to start with appears.
A prime instance of a church that assumes a continuity that may well not truly be the truth is below in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be somewhat bleak in winter, but in summer season the churchyard right here is verdant and golden, as beautiful a put as any in the county. The church is significant, and still unusually narrow. It sits on a mound that has been lower down on one side by the road. In the churchyard you can uncover the very well-recognized memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a automobile crash in 1990.
In the churchyard wall there is what appears to be broken medieval window tracery, which is truly worth noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.
St George is just one of the fantastic Suffolk churches. Even though it might externally surface a minor intense, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Lengthy Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure dwelling of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in one particular go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not nonetheless complete of the ‘walls of glass’ self esteem that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and potentially even renewed, which may well explain the tracery in the churchyard wall. Nonetheless, it isn’t going to choose a lot to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it may perhaps be that the damaged tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall itself just isn’t medieval, so the place had it been all individuals years? Is it achievable that the recent window tracery is not medieval at all?
Stowlangtoft church featured in Simon Jenkins’ ebook England’s Thousand Greatest Church buildings, which sends lots of readers to its locked doorway, and might assist stave off the unavoidable for a though, for there is no authentic congregation here any far more and the church is moribund. Normal companies are held across the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only applied on specific occasions. The critical is held throughout the street, the place the extremely nice girl explained to me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It appears to be probably that treatment of it will be conveyed into the fingers of the Churches Conservation Have confidence in.
You action in via the chancel door (the lock below is pretty uncomfortable, but do persevere) and if you are everything like me you will head straight down to the west finish exactly where you will find the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some queries. Unusually, it functions a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ becoming on the westwards face. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it demonstrates are acquainted cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and less normally St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early yrs of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it unquestionably just isn’t seeking its very best. But I imagine there is extra going on here than fulfills the eye. Fonts have been plastered more than in Elizabethan occasions, and only relief that stood proud 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 removed from the church, in all probability in the mid-17th century, and served an outside intent until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is perfectly-documented. In 1832, as portion of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was delighted to find that the church was at very last going through restore. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave used for expert services. A new Rectory was staying designed. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for pretty much the center forty yrs of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a superior mate of John Henry Newman, the upcoming Cardinal, and they usually corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English church buildings. It is attention-grabbing to think how, at this seminal moment, Rickards may well have knowledgeable the believed of the Oxford Motion. Regrettably, when Newman grew to become a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
For the duration of the system of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He bought the good Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and complete the marvellous set of bench ends – Ringham did the very same issue at Woolpit, a number of miles away. Ringham’s function is so very good that it is occasionally tough for the inexperienced eye to detect it. Nonetheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals in this article, and the weirder stuff is all medieval, and probably dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer amount – there are maybe 60 carvings – but also that there are several one of a kind topics.
The carvings show up to be element of the identical group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull taking part in a harp, the chicken with a man’s head, from related carvings somewhere else. And then hopefully that little alarm bell in your read ought to start off to go “Hmmmm…..” since some of the carvings listed here are obviously not from the same group. It is really hard to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for illustration, are from the very same workshop, or even from the exact same decade. The benches themselves are no clue, as it was prevalent exercise in the 19th century to exchange medieval bench finishes on contemporary benches, or on medieval benches, or even on present day benches created out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards found some of these bench finishes in other places? Could he have been the form of person to do a matter like that?
Perfectly, sure he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is East Anglian. Rickards obtained it just after locating it in storage in Ipswich docks. It presumably arrived from a single of the Ipswich churches. In the ferment of the wonderful 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was masses of medieval junk lying about, significantly of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Very well, certainly he possibly was. The faux-medieval roundels in the windows of the nave are clearly not medieval at all, but ended up in fact the operate of the youthful Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are clearly to the young girl’s design, and Pevsner notes that other folks are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, although the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at the very least are quite shut copies of the Flemish roundels of the similar subjects in Nowton church on the other aspect of Bury St Edmunds.
Genuinely medieval is the wide St Christopher wall-portray nonetheless discernible on the north wall. It was almost certainly a single of the very last to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of program, as is the fantastic rood-display dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval determine glass in the higher tracery of some of the windows, including St Agnes holding a lamb and 4 Outdated Testomony prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the do the job of William White. What can Rickards have been imagining of? But we phase as a result of into the chancel, and abruptly the full factor moves up a equipment. For below are some things that are really amazing.
In a county renowned for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Guiding the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most entire set of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that sort finials to the stall finishes. They are members in the Mass, which include two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk must be a person of the finest medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk, and Mortlock believed the stalls the very best in England.
The benches that deal with eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are fantastic matters: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Among the seats are weird oriental faces.
Now, you know what I am likely to inquire upcoming. How a great deal of this is from this church initially? It all appears medieval work, and there is no cause to consider it may not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the aspects. What proof have we received?
For starters, we should detect that the only other Suffolk church with these a significant range of medieval misericords of this quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I will not check with you to see this as major, simply to recognize it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does search to me as although two sets of furnishings have been cobbled with each other the stalls that again on to the display surface to have been integrated into the larger sized framework of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
Even so, if you appear carefully at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche households. The Ashfield arms also look on the rood display, and the Ashfields were being the significant donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to believe that the increased section of the stall framework was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Effectively, I really don’t know. But I imagine they have to be viewed as as part of the exact established as those people at Norton. In which circumstance they may have arrive from the exact same church, which may possibly have been this one particular, but may possibly not have been. Pretty much absolutely, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were at first in the quire of Bury Abbey.
Other amazing issues 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 unexpectedly gorgeous St George, which serves the exact same objective. He is not an artist I normally admire, but it is as very good as his perform at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Good Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of study course, most popular for the Flemish carvings that flank the somewhat major altarpiece. They were specified to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk store. They exhibit images from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They date from the 1480s, and ended up pretty much undoubtedly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked during the French Revolution. The carvings had been as soon as brightly painted, and piled up in a block relatively than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches previously mentioned them, are 19th century.
Just one cold winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Almost nothing far more was seen or listened to of them until finally 1982, when they have been uncovered on screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted one particular. Taken to Holland, they had been applied as stability for a personal loan which was defaulted on. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings have been fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They ended up purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which straight away determined them as 15th century carvings. They put them on screen, and a Dutch girl who had browse about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them back. An injunction was taken out to cease the new operator taking away them from the museum. The parish missing the case, leaving them with a monstrous authorized monthly bill, but the story has a pleased ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their order from the operator, compensated off the lawful bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at broad charge, but the businessman gave the present in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Currently, the carvings are fixed firmly in location and alarmed, so they won’t be likely walkabout all over again. But a tiny part of me wonders if they actually should be listed here at all. Sure, they are medieval, but they weren’t in this article originally, and they were not even in England originally. Wouldn’t it be far better if they ended up exhibited somewhere safer, exactly where people today could pay out to see them, and give some income for the routine maintenance of the church setting up? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they may possibly even be ready to leave it open up.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-13 10:33:31
Tagged: , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , east Anglia
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