St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk
Specified that our parish churches practically with out exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it should be obvious that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian vision of the medieval. Even when the true furnishings and fittings are medieval, the total piece is even now a Victorian conception.
Inevitably, the question arises of what was there prior to the restoration and what was not. The obvious response is that we ought to assume that very little is as it initial seems.
A primary illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that could not really be the fact is listed here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This element of Suffolk can be rather bleak in winter, but in summer season the churchyard right here is verdant and golden, as attractive a position as any in the county. The church is substantial, and nonetheless unusually slender. It sits on a mound that has been lower down on one side by the road. In the churchyard you will locate the effectively-known memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a car 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. While it could externally show up a minimal extreme, and is by no indicates as grand as Blythburgh, Long Melford and the rest, it is a treasure residence of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in a person go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not however comprehensive of the ‘walls of glass’ self esteem that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and perhaps even renewed, which might explain the tracery in the churchyard wall. Nonetheless, it would not acquire considerably to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it may perhaps be that the broken tracery is from the unique church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall by itself isn’t medieval, so where experienced it been all those people many years? Is it attainable that the present-day window tracery is not medieval at all?
Stowlangtoft church featured in Simon Jenkins’ reserve England’s Thousand Ideal Churches, which sends a great deal of guests to its locked door, and may help stave off the unavoidable for a though, for there is no serious congregation below any additional and the church is moribund. Common companies are held across the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only used on special instances. The essential is held across the road, where the pretty wonderful girl explained to me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It appears very likely that care of it will be conveyed into the palms of the Churches Conservation Belief.
You action in by means of the chancel doorway (the lock here is really awkward, but do persevere) and if you are nearly anything like me you will head straight down to the west conclude in which you will find the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some concerns. Unusually, it features a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ remaining on the westwards confront. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it demonstrates are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and a lot less usually St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it certainly just isn’t wanting its finest. But I think there is more going on listed here than fulfills the eye. Fonts were plastered above in Elizabethan instances, and only reduction that stood very pleased 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 least, this stonework seems weathered. I ponder if this font was eradicated from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor purpose until finally it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is properly-documented. In 1832, as portion of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was pleased to find that the church was at final undergoing repair service. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave applied for products and services. A new Rectory was staying crafted. Who was the catalyst driving all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for pretty much the center forty several years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good close friend of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation buying of English churches. It is exciting to feel how, at this seminal moment, Rickards could possibly have knowledgeable the considered of the Oxford Motion. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He received the terrific Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and full the marvellous set of bench ends – Ringham did the similar detail at Woolpit, a couple miles away. Ringham’s perform is so excellent that it is sometimes hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it. Having said that, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals here, 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 quantity – there are potentially 60 carvings – but also that there are various unique subjects.
The carvings appear to be portion of the similar 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 similar carvings elsewhere. And then hopefully that little alarm bell in your read need to commence to go “Hmmmm…..” for the reason that some of the carvings here are plainly not from the identical group. It is tricky to think that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the similar workshop, or even from the exact decade. The benches themselves are no clue, as it was widespread apply in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on fashionable benches, or on medieval benches, or even on fashionable benches built out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards identified some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the sort of person to do a factor like that?
Very well, sure he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, 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 person of the Ipswich church buildings. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was loads of medieval junk lying about, much of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Very well, indeed he almost certainly was. The faux-medieval roundels in the windows of the nave are obviously not medieval at all, but were being in reality the get the job done of the young Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are evidently to the youthful girl’s structure, and Pevsner notes that other folks are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, though the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at the very least are really shut copies of the Flemish roundels of the exact topics in Nowton church on the other side of Bury St Edmunds.
Actually medieval is the vast St Christopher wall-portray still discernible on the north wall. It was likely one particular of the last to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of class, as is the fantastic rood-screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval determine glass in the higher tracery of some of the home windows, which include St Agnes keeping a lamb and four Outdated Testament prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s fee, and the do the job of William White. What can Rickards have been thinking of? But we phase by way of into the chancel, and instantly the complete matter moves up a equipment. For below are some things that are truly remarkable.
In a county famous for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are spectacular, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most complete established of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that variety finials to the stall ends. They are contributors in the Mass, together with two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk must be just one of the greatest medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk, and Mortlock thought the stalls the finest in England.
The benches that encounter eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are amazing points: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Between the seats are unusual oriental faces.
Now, you know what I am likely to talk to up coming. How much of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval get the job done, and there is no motive to feel it may not have been moved somewhere else in the church when the chancel was open up to the components. What proof have we obtained?
To begin with, we must observe that the only other Suffolk church with this sort of a massive range of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile away, at Norton. I really don’t request you to see this as important, simply to see it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does seem to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled jointly the stalls that back on to the monitor appear to have been integrated into the greater construction of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
Nonetheless, if you search 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 display screen, and the Ashfields have been the main donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to assume that the higher component of the stall composition was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Nicely, I do not know. But I believe they have to be viewed as as aspect of the very same established as those people at Norton. In which circumstance they may perhaps have appear from the exact church, which may possibly have been this a person, but may well not have been. Virtually absolutely, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been originally in the quire of Bury Abbey.
Other outstanding matters in St George contain FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s unexpectedly magnificent St George, which serves the similar goal. He is not an artist I typically admire, but it is as great as his do the job at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Good Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most popular for the Flemish carvings that flank the fairly major altarpiece. They ended up provided 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 recommend. They day from the 1480s, and ended up almost unquestionably the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked all through the French Revolution. The carvings were being after brightly painted, and piled up in a block rather than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches previously mentioned them, are 19th century.
One particular cold winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing at all much more was witnessed or read of them till 1982, when they had been identified on show in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one particular. Taken to Holland, they have been used as protection for a mortgage which was defaulted upon. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They ended up acquired from his store, and taken to the museum, which quickly identified them as 15th century carvings. They put them on display, and a Dutch girl who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them back again. An injunction was taken out to quit the new proprietor getting rid of them from the museum. The parish shed the situation, leaving them with a monstrous lawful invoice, but the story has a delighted ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their acquire from the proprietor, paid out off the authorized expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at large expense, but the businessman gave the reward in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Currently, the carvings are mounted firmly in spot and alarmed, so they would not be heading walkabout once again. But a very little part of me miracles if they seriously should be right here at all. Absolutely sure, they are medieval, but they were not here initially, and they were not even in England initially. Would not it be much better if they were being displayed somewhere safer, where individuals could pay to see them, and supply some earnings for the routine maintenance of the church creating? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they could even be in a position to depart it open.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-13 17:26:13
Tagged: , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , east anglia , church
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