St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk
Given that our parish churches practically with out exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it should really be apparent that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval. Even when the precise furnishings and fittings are medieval, the complete piece is nevertheless a Victorian conception.
Inevitably, the query arises of what was there before the restoration and what was not. The obvious respond to is that we ought to think that practically nothing is as it very first appears.
A key illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that may perhaps not in fact be the truth is right here in the flat fields involving Woolpit and Ixworth. This section of Suffolk can be rather bleak in winter season, but in summer the churchyard right here is verdant and golden, as stunning a position as any in the county. The church is big, and yet unusually slim. It sits on a mound that has been slice down on 1 aspect by the highway. In the churchyard you can expect to locate the perfectly-acknowledged memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a vehicle crash in 1990.
In the churchyard wall there is what seems to be broken medieval window tracery, which is truly worth noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.
St George is a person of the great Suffolk church buildings. Although it could externally look a very little serious, and is by no implies as grand as Blythburgh, Long Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure property of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in a single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not nevertheless complete of the ‘walls of glass’ self confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and probably even renewed, which may reveal the tracery in the churchyard wall. Nonetheless, it isn’t going to get significantly to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may well be that the broken tracery is from the first church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall alone isn’t medieval, so where by had it been all all those several years? Is it doable that the present window tracery is not medieval at all?
Stowlangtoft church showcased in Simon Jenkins’ e-book England’s Thousand Finest Church buildings, which sends a lot of visitors to its locked door, and could aid stave off the inevitable for a while, for there is no genuine congregation in this article any additional and the church is moribund. Regular expert services are held across the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only used on particular instances. The vital is retained throughout the highway, where the really wonderful lady advised me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It would seem most likely that care of it will be conveyed into the hands of the Churches Conservation Trust.
You move in through the chancel doorway (the lock in this article is very awkward, but do persevere) and if you are nearly anything like me you will head straight down to the west end the place you will come across the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some concerns. Unusually, it options 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 demonstrates are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and significantly less commonly 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 unquestionably isn’t wanting its finest. But I feel there is more going on below than satisfies the eye. Fonts were being plastered about in Elizabethan times, and only aid that stood proud of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not imagine they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at minimum, this stonework appears weathered. I speculate if this font was taken out from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors objective until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as part of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was happy to find that the church was at past going through repair. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave employed for providers. A new Rectory was remaining developed. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for almost the middle forty many years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good friend of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the topic of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is intriguing to consider how, at this seminal moment, Rickards could have informed the considered of the Oxford Movement. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
For the duration of the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He got the fantastic Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and comprehensive the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the exact same factor at Woolpit, a couple of miles absent. Ringham’s do the job is so good that it is from time to time really 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 in all probability dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer quantity – there are probably 60 carvings – but also that there are various exclusive topics.
The carvings surface to be portion of the exact same 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 equivalent carvings elsewhere. And then hopefully that small alarm bell in your heard should get started to go “Hmmmm…..” for the reason that some of the carvings listed here are evidently not from the exact same group. It is challenging to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for instance, are from the same workshop, or even from the similar decade. The benches them selves are no clue, as it was typical follow in the 19th century to swap medieval bench ends on modern-day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on present day benches built out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards discovered some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the type of man or woman to do a detail like that?
Effectively, indeed he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is East Anglian. Rickards acquired it just after getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. It presumably came from 1 of the Ipswich church buildings. In the ferment of the great 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was loads of medieval junk lying all-around, considerably of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Nicely, certainly he possibly was. The faux-medieval roundels in the home windows of the nave are clearly not medieval at all, but were in simple fact the function of the younger Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are clearly to the young girl’s style, and Pevsner notes that other people are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, whilst the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at the very least are very near copies of the Flemish roundels of the same topics in Nowton church on the other facet of Bury St Edmunds.
Really medieval is the extensive St Christopher wall-portray even now discernible on the north wall. It was in all probability a single of the previous to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of program, as is the fine rood-display screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval determine glass in the upper 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 function of William White. What can Rickards have been thinking of? But we stage as a result of into the chancel, and suddenly the entire matter moves up a gear. For in this article are some issues that are actually remarkable.
In a county renowned for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are spectacular, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood screen dado is Suffolk’s most finish set of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that form finials to the stall finishes. They are participants in the Mass, which include two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk have to be one particular of the finest medieval visuals in Suffolk, and Mortlock assumed the stalls the very best in England.
The benches that encounter eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are amazing items: 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.
Now, you know what I am going to request upcoming. How a lot of this is from this church originally? It all appears medieval work, and there is no purpose to believe that it may well not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the aspects. What proof have we acquired?
Firstly, we ought to see that the only other Suffolk church with these types of a substantial selection of medieval misericords of this good quality is just a mile absent, at Norton. I don’t talk to you to see this as major, merely to observe it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does search to me as while two sets of furnishings have been cobbled jointly the stalls that again on to the screen look to have been integrated into the larger sized framework of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
On the other hand, if you glance carefully at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche people. The Ashfield arms also surface on the rood monitor, and the Ashfields had been the big donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to think that the larger element of the stall structure was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I don’t know. But I consider they have to be regarded as component of the identical set as those at Norton. In which circumstance they may possibly have arrive from the similar church, which may have been this one, but may well not have been. Virtually certainly, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they ended up originally in the quire of Bury Abbey.
Other remarkable things in St George consist of FE Howard’s attractive war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s unexpectedly attractive St George, which serves the exact goal. He’s not an artist I usually admire, but it is as very good as his work at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Wonderful Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of system, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the somewhat large altarpiece. They ended up presented to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk shop. They display photographs from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They day from the 1480s, and had been almost certainly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked during the French Revolution. The carvings have been when brightly painted, and piled up in a block alternatively than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches higher than them, are 19th century.
1 cold winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of intruders broke into this locked church and stole them. Very little more was observed or heard of them until 1982, when they have been uncovered on display screen in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted 1. Taken to Holland, they were utilised as safety for a bank loan which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They had been purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which immediately determined them as 15th century carvings. They set them on exhibit, and a Dutch female who had examine about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back again. An injunction was taken out to cease the new operator eradicating them from the museum. The parish lost the scenario, leaving them with a monstrous legal invoice, but the story has a content ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the owner, compensated off the authorized expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at huge expense, but the businessman gave the reward in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Nowadays, the carvings are set firmly in location and alarmed, so they will never be heading walkabout once again. But a minor section of me wonders if they genuinely ought to be right here at all. Positive, they are medieval, but they weren’t in this article initially, and they were not even in England initially. Would not it be far better if they were being shown somewhere safer, the place people today could spend to see them, and give some income for the maintenance of the church building? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they could even be in a position to depart it open up.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-13 10:33:26
Tagged: , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , east Anglia
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