St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk
Offered that our parish churches virtually with out exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it need to be clear that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval. Even when the true furnishings and fittings are medieval, the total piece is even now a Victorian conception.
Inevitably, the problem arises of what was there prior to the restoration and what was not. The noticeable remedy is that we must think that very little is as it 1st seems.
A primary case in point of a church that assumes a continuity that may not essentially be the fact is in this article in the flat fields in between Woolpit and Ixworth. This portion of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak in winter, but in summer time the churchyard right here is verdant and golden, as lovely a area as any in the county. The church is large, and nonetheless unusually slim. It sits on a mound that has been minimize down on 1 aspect by the street. In the churchyard you are going to discover the well-recognised memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a car or truck crash in 1990.
In the churchyard wall there is what seems to be damaged medieval window tracery, which is worth noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.
St George is 1 of the great Suffolk church buildings. Whilst it could externally look a minor intense, and is by no implies as grand as Blythburgh, Prolonged Melford and the rest, it is a treasure dwelling of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in a single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not still comprehensive of the ‘walls of glass’ self confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been fixed, and quite possibly even renewed, which may describe the tracery in the churchyard wall. Nonetheless, it doesn’t acquire considerably to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may perhaps be that the damaged tracery is from the unique church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall alone isn’t really medieval, so where by had it been all people years? Is it possible that the latest window tracery is not medieval at all?
Stowlangtoft church showcased in Simon Jenkins’ e-book England’s Thousand Most effective Churches, which sends a good deal of visitors to its locked door, and may help stave off the inevitable for a even though, for there is no actual congregation right here any more and the church is moribund. Common services are held across the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only utilised on specific events. The important is held across the highway, where by the incredibly wonderful lady explained to me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It appears likely that care of it will be conveyed into the fingers of the Churches Conservation Have confidence in.
You action in by way of the chancel door (the lock right here is incredibly uncomfortable, but do persevere) and if you are anything at all like me you will head straight down to the west conclude in which you will obtain the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some issues. Unusually, it functions a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ becoming on the westwards experience. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it displays are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and a lot less frequently 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 definitely just isn’t on the lookout its finest. But I assume there is more heading on listed here than fulfills the eye. Fonts ended up plastered over in Elizabethan instances, and only relief 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 seems weathered. I marvel if this font was removed from the church, most likely in the mid-17th century, and served an outside reason until finally it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as part of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was delighted to uncover that the church was at final undergoing mend. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave made use of for services. A new Rectory was currently being built. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for pretty much the middle forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good close friend of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they frequently corresponded on the subject matter of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is fascinating to imagine how, at this seminal minute, Rickards may possibly have informed the believed of the Oxford Motion. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
All through the program of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the fantastic Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and entire the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the exact point at Woolpit, a number of miles absent. Ringham’s work is so excellent that it is in some cases tricky for the inexperienced eye to detect it. Even so, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals in this article, and the weirder things is all medieval, and likely dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer amount – there are perhaps 60 carvings – but also that there are numerous special subjects.
The carvings show up to be section of the exact team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull playing a harp, the bird with a man’s head, from very similar carvings in other places. And then hopefully that minimal alarm bell in your listened to ought to start to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings in this article are clearly not from the same team. It is tough to feel that the mermaid and the owl, for instance, are from the exact workshop, or even from the exact same 10 years. The benches themselves are no clue, as it was popular apply in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on contemporary benches designed out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards discovered some of these bench finishes in other places? Could he have been the variety of particular person to do a issue like that?
Perfectly, 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 acquired it just after obtaining it in storage in Ipswich docks. It presumably came from one particular of the Ipswich church buildings. In the ferment of the terrific 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was masses of medieval junk lying all around, considerably of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Perfectly, indeed he likely was. The fake-medieval roundels in the home windows of the nave are evidently not medieval at all, but ended up in fact the perform of the youthful Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are obviously to the young girl’s design and style, and Pevsner notes that some others are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, though the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at minimum are really close copies of the Flemish roundels of the identical subjects in Nowton church on the other side of Bury St Edmunds.
Definitely medieval is the wide St Christopher wall-painting continue to discernible on the north wall. It was probably a single of the last to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of training course, as is the great rood-display screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval figure glass in the higher tracery of some of the home windows, together with St Agnes keeping a lamb and 4 Previous Testament prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s fee, and the get the job done of William White. What can Rickards have been pondering of? But we phase through into the chancel, and all of a sudden the complete matter moves up a gear. For right here are some issues that are really outstanding.
In a county well known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are spectacular, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive set of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that type finials to the stall ends. They are contributors in the Mass, which includes two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk need to be one of the most effective medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk, and Mortlock thought the stalls the finest in England.
The benches that face eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are fantastic points: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Concerning the seats are odd oriental faces.
Now, you know what I am heading to question up coming. How much of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval function, and there is no cause to think it may not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the elements. What evidence have we obtained?
To start with, we ought to see that the only other Suffolk church with these kinds of a massive amount of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile absent, at Norton. I really don’t question you to see this as important, simply to discover it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does appear to me as while two sets of furnishings have been cobbled jointly the stalls that back again on to the monitor seem to have been built-in into the greater construction of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
Nevertheless, if you look intently 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 monitor, and the Ashfields had been the key donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to consider that the greater section of the stall construction was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Perfectly, I you should not know. But I feel they have to be viewed as as element of the exact established as people at Norton. In which scenario they may perhaps have come from the exact church, which may perhaps have been this just one, but may well not have been. Pretty much surely, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been initially in the quire of Bury Abbey.
Other outstanding issues in St George involve FE Howard’s stunning war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s unexpectedly lovely St George, which serves the identical intent. He’s not an artist I normally admire, but it is as great as his work at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and obtained from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of training course, most well-known for the Flemish carvings that flank the fairly heavy altarpiece. They were being provided to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk shop. They demonstrate photos from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They day from the 1480s, and have been practically absolutely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked through the French Revolution. The carvings were when brightly painted, and piled up in a block fairly than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches previously mentioned them, are 19th century.
A single chilly winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Very little additional was seen or heard of them until 1982, when they ended up identified on show in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted 1. Taken to Holland, they were being utilised as stability for a mortgage which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They were purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which promptly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They place them on display, and a Dutch lady who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them again. An injunction was taken out to end the new proprietor eradicating them from the museum. The parish missing the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous lawful invoice, but the story has a joyful ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their obtain from the operator, compensated off the legal expenses, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at huge cost, but the businessman gave the gift in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
These days, the carvings are mounted firmly in position and alarmed, so they would not be going walkabout again. But a small portion of me wonders if they seriously ought to be in this article at all. Positive, they are medieval, but they weren’t in this article at first, and they weren’t even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be greater if they were being displayed somewhere safer, in which men and women could pay to see them, and supply some profits for the routine maintenance of the church building? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they may even be ready to depart it open up.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-13 18:01:36
Tagged: , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , east Anglia
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