I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I imagined I knew those two counties. But of study course there is much more 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 friend, Simon K, operates a fabulous website, which I backlink to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church web page he has frequented 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a large amount of church buildings for two counties to share, and lots of of those people church buildings are historic, flint created, spherical towered or have wall paintings, picket roof angels or a little something truly worth the exertion of heading to see or seeking out the keyholder to obtain accessibility.
What I signify is that there is no way someone who only experienced their individual auto until 1984, and experienced minimal desire in church buildings or parishes could have read of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I saw St George from the principal highway, I was getting a quick cut to be part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last vacation of the yr to lowestoft as Mom is now out of healthcare facility and in the care of district nurses in buy to get set again on her toes.
So I observed the tower of St George from about 50 % a mile away, and assumed I had sufficient time to go in excess of and see within if I could.
I parked at the finish of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the lender to the gate into the churchyard, the clear traces of the tower, perfectly, towered more than me.
In the porch I tried the door and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder checklist produced it apparent that the nearest just one, at Christmas Cottage, was just around the road. So, why not attempt, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my details in a ledger, a smart measure. But I confirmed by driving licence to establish that I was who I claimed. Small did I know the smaller village I lived in experienced been recognized. Much more of that in a moment.
Inside St George, you eye is stolen by the amazing pew ends animals of all forms, serious and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only those of obvious human sort. 1 with the system of a chicken but a clear human face had been remaining alone, therefore is the insanity of the puritan’s thoughts.
I made the decision that I would document just about every pew stop determine, and a lot of complete pew finishes so superb that they ended up.
There is the feint define of a huge wall portray, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a wonderful established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes beneath. It is alarmed, so you are unable to look at them also intently, sadly, but these kinds of is a indication of the times.
I took the keys back, and the girl of the house came to speak to me as she experienced been told by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is where her loved ones is from. Unfortunately, I am not from, nor reside in Cliffe. For the moment there was without a doubt two Cliffs in Kent, 1 on the Hoo Peninsular, wherever her family members is from, and a single close to to Dover. Several many years ago, Cliffe around to Dover was identified as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake even more north. I discussed this to her, but claimed St Helen in Cliffe is one of my favorite Kent churches, crafted of alternate layers of black and light-weight flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Though St George in this article in Stowlangtoft is a great church, it is in a poor condition of fix, and is thanks to be produced redundant in the new 12 months. Constantly unfortunate when that takes place to a parish church, but it is very likely to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to preserve it tidy when the outdated wardens and keyholders are far too previous.
Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church and so happy am I that I put in 40 minutes of my time to visit it. Go to see it now prior to it is way too late!
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In the summer time of 2003, this web site became a six-section sequence on BBC Radio Suffolk. Something I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, created a good volume of correspondence. Referring to the way quite a few church buildings were restored in the 19th century, I noticed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval even when the genuine furnishings and fittings are medieval, the entire piece is even now a Victorian conception.
Individuals wrote to me and explained issues like “but in that scenario, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “believe that very little is as it initially appears, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he failed to, then he ought to have accomplished.
A prime case in point of a church that assumes a continuity that may perhaps not in fact be the fact is below in the flat fields in between Woolpit and Ixworth. This part of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak, specially in late Oct, but England’s very best summer months and autumn for many years experienced remaining the churchyard in this article verdant and golden, as gorgeous a put as any I’d found that calendar year. The church is large, and sits on a mound that has been reduce down on just one aspect by the highway. I walked up the slope, past the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which in no way 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 mind and sings to us of our further self.
Overwhelmed as you may well be by it, you should not are unsuccessful to location the damaged window tracery that has been applied to construct the wall in this article, for thus hangs a tale.
St George, in scenario you will not know, is just one of the great Suffolk churches. While it may well externally look a minor severe, and is by no indicates as grand as Blythburgh, Extensive Melford and the rest, it is a treasure property 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 windows are not but complete of the ‘walls of glass’ assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and potentially even renewed, which might explain why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it doesn’t acquire considerably to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it could be that the damaged tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall isn’t medieval, so where by experienced it been all those a long time?
One more survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some concerns. Unusually, it characteristics a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ remaining on the westwards encounter. 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 less normally St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early a long time of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it unquestionably just isn’t hunting its very best. But I feel there is more going on listed here than satisfies the eye. Fonts were being plastered around 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 the very least, this stonework appears weathered. I question if this font was removed from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an outside intent right up until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as component of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was pleased to uncover that the church was at very last going through maintenance. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave utilised for expert services. A new Rectory was staying built. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for practically the center forty several years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a fantastic friend of John Henry Newman, the long term Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is interesting to believe how, at this seminal moment, Rickards could have knowledgeable the considered of the Oxford Motion. Sadly, when Newman turned a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
In the course of the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He obtained the good Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and complete the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the similar detail at Woolpit, a few miles away. Ringham’s perform is so great that it is often tough for the inexperienced eye to detect it nevertheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals below, and the wierder stuff 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 maybe 60 carvings – but also that there are numerous special subjects you can see some of them beneath.
The carvings look to be part of the identical group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull participating in a harp, the fowl with a man’s head, from comparable carvings somewhere else. And then hopefully that minimal alarm bell in your listened to ought to get started to go “Hmmmm…..” mainly because some of the carvings in this article are plainly not from the identical group. It is hard to feel that the mermaid and the owl, for instance, are from the similar workshop, or even from the very same decade. The benches on their own are no clue it was popular observe in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern day benches manufactured out of medieval timber (as transpired at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards uncovered some of these bench ends in other places? Could he have been the form of particular person to do a point like that?
Nicely, certainly 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 acquired right after acquiring it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the excellent 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was loads of medieval junk lying all-around, a lot of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the type of particular person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Effectively, yes he probably was. Seem at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south aspect of the nave. The 4 evangelists are over and below two superb representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them underneath click on on them to enlarge them. Regretably, they are not medieval at all, and it is commonly recognized that they ended up painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is anything identical the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Actually medieval is the extensive St Christopher wall-portray even now discernible on the north wall. It was probably one particular of the very last to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of course, as is the fine rood-display screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the higher tracery of some of the windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the function of William White. What can Rickards have been wondering of? But we phase as a result of into the chancel, and quickly the complete factor moves up a equipment. For right here are some issues that are really amazing.
In a county well known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood screen dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive set of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that sort finials to the stall finishes. They are contributors in the Mass, which includes two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk need to be 1 of the ideal medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock thought the stalls the very best in England. I was here with my friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced formerly photographed and composed about these carving a a couple of decades back. But even he found 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 amazing items: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Among the seats are weird oriental faces. Some of them are down below click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am heading to check with upcoming. How a great deal of this is from this church initially? It all appears medieval perform, and there is no reason to think it could not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the factors. What proof have we bought?
For starters, we ought to see that the only other Suffolk church with these a huge quantity of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile absent, at Norton. I will not check with you to see this as important, just to observe it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does seem to me as although two sets of furnishings have been cobbled collectively the stalls that again on to the screen appear to have been integrated into the larger structure of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
Having said that, if you glimpse carefully 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 show up on the rood display screen, and the Ashfields were the big donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to assume that the better aspect of the stall framework was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Well, I do not know. But I consider they have to be thought of as aspect of the very same set as those people at Norton. In which situation they may perhaps have arrive from the identical church, which might have been this one particular, but may possibly not have been. Virtually unquestionably, 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. Hmm….
Other impressive items in St George contain FE Howard’s wonderful war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s stunning St George, which serves the similar objective. It is as very good as his work at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and obtained from, the Good Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of study course, most well known for the Flemish carvings that flank the relatively large altarpiece. They were provided to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk shop. They demonstrate illustrations or photos from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They day from the 1480s, and ended up just about undoubtedly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked through the French Revolution. I experienced witnessed something identical at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a couple of months prior to. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these at the time have been, and piled up in a block somewhat 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 pictures underneath.
A person cold winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Practically nothing extra was noticed or heard of them right up until 1982, when they ended up uncovered on screen in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted a single taken to Holland, they had been utilized as stability for a loan which was defaulted upon. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings ended up fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They ended up purchased from his shop, and taken to the museum, which instantly determined them as 15th century carvings. They place them on show, and a Dutch woman who experienced read through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to cease the new proprietor eradicating them from the museum. The parish dropped the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous lawful invoice but the tale has a pleased ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their acquire from the owner, paid out off the authorized costs, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at broad charge, but the businessman gave the gift in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Now, the carvings are fastened firmly in location and alarmed, so they will never be likely walkabout once more. But a minor part of me wonders if they genuinely really should be here at all. Absolutely sure, they are medieval, but they were not in this article at first they were not even in England initially. Would not it be superior if they were being shown somewhere safer, in which folks could pay out to see them, and provide some cash flow for the maintenance of the church creating? And then, whisper it, St George could possibly even be saved open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high street. A few keyholders are detailed, two of them straight away opposite. I am advised that Wednesday is not a fantastic time to attempt and get the vital – it is marketplace day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.united kingdom/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 19:12:31
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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