St George in Stowlangtoft will have the distinction of obtaining the album with the most photographs, help you save for Canterbury Cathedral. It was a remarkable church, and a person I beloved visiting.
I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I assumed I understood all those two counties. But of program 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 magnificent web-site, which I website link to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church website page he has visited 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a great deal of churches for two counties to share, and lots of of those church buildings are historical, flint constructed, spherical towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or some thing truly worth the energy of likely to see or trying to find out the keyholder to achieve entry.
What I suggest is that there is no way anyone who only experienced their personal car right up until 1984, and experienced little desire in church buildings or parishes could have listened to of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I saw St George from the main highway, I was having a quick minimize to be a part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last excursion of the calendar year to lowestoft as Mom is now out of hospital and in the care of district nurses in get to get put again on her feet.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile away, and assumed I experienced plenty of time to go over and see within if I could.
I parked at the conclude of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I wander up the lender to the gate into the churchyard, the clean up traces of the tower, well, towered more than me.
In the porch I attempted the door and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder record built it clear that the nearest one particular, at Christmas Cottage, was just around the road. So, why not test, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my specifics in a ledger, a smart measure. But I showed by driving licence to verify that I was who I claimed. Small did I know the smaller village I lived in had been recognized. More of that in a moment.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the amazing pew finishes animals of all kinds, real and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only these of clear human sort. 1 with the physique of a hen but a very clear human facial area experienced been left on your own, hence is the madness of the puritan’s intellect.
I made a decision that I would document every pew stop figure, and numerous whole pew ends so fantastic that they were.
There is the feint define of a huge wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a high-quality established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes below. It is alarmed, so you can’t appear at them far too closely, regrettably, but these is a indicator of the periods.
I took the keys back again, and the girl of the house arrived to discuss to me as she experienced been instructed by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is the place her household is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor are living in Cliffe. For once there was without a doubt two Cliffs in Kent, a person on the Hoo Peninsular, in which her family members is from, and one in close proximity to to Dover. Numerous decades in the past, Cliffe in the vicinity of to Dover was termed WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further more north. I explained this to her, but explained St Helen in Cliffe is a person of my favorite Kent churches, developed of alternate layers of black and light flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Whilst St George below in Stowlangtoft is a fine church, it is in a bad point out of repair service, and is due to be produced redundant in the new year. Often unfortunate when that takes place to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to continue to keep it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are also old.
Stowlangtoft is a fantastic church and so happy am I that I put in 40 minutes of my time to check out it. Go to see it now in advance of it is way too late!
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In the summer of 2003, this site turned a six-aspect collection on BBC Radio Suffolk. A little something I said in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a fair volume of correspondence. Referring to the way a lot of church buildings were being restored in the 19th century, I noticed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian vision of the medieval even when the precise furnishings and fittings are medieval, the entire piece is continue to a Victorian conception.
Individuals wrote to me and claimed items like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “believe that absolutely nothing is as it to start with seems, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he did not, then he must have finished.
A prime case in point of a church that assumes a continuity that may possibly not in fact be the fact is here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This section of Suffolk can be rather bleak, particularly in late October, but England’s very best summertime and autumn for a long time experienced still left the churchyard right here verdant and golden, as stunning a put as any I might noticed that yr. The church is massive, and sits on a mound that has been cut down on one side by the street. I walked up the slope, previous 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 not be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the types of the mere thoughts and sings to us of our deeper self.
Confused as you could be by it, really don’t fall short to location the damaged window tracery that has been applied to build the wall listed here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you do not know, is just one of the wonderful Suffolk church buildings. Even though it could externally appear a minor serious, and is by no usually means as grand as Blythburgh, Extensive 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 just one go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not however comprehensive of the ‘walls of glass’ assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and probably even renewed, which could reveal why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Even so, it will not choose considerably to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it may be that the broken tracery is from the authentic church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall just isn’t medieval, so the place had it been all those many years?
An additional survival from the earlier church is the font. It also asks some issues. Unusually, it features 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 displays are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and less generally St George. The cult of St George was at its peak in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it unquestionably just isn’t on the lookout its most effective. But I consider there is additional going on in this article than meets the eye. Fonts ended up plastered above in Elizabethan periods, and only aid that stood proud of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not consider they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at minimum, this stonework seems weathered. I wonder if this font was taken out from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors goal till it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is effectively-documented. In 1832, as part of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was pleased to locate that the church was at last going through maintenance. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave employed for companies. A new Rectory was staying constructed. Who was the catalyst driving all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for just about the center forty years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a superior mate of John Henry Newman, the long run Cardinal, and they generally corresponded on the issue of the pre-Reformation buying of English churches. It is interesting to imagine how, at this seminal minute, Rickards may well have educated the thought of the Oxford Movement. Sadly, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
During the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He got the great Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and finish the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the same issue at Woolpit, a several miles absent. Ringham’s do the job is so superior that it is often difficult for the inexperienced eye to detect it nevertheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals right here, and the wierder things is all medieval, and likely 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 a number of unique subjects you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings surface to be component of the very same team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull enjoying a harp, the bird with a man’s head, from very similar carvings in other places. And then hopefully that tiny alarm bell in your listened to should start off to go “Hmmmm…..” for the reason that some of the carvings right here are evidently not from the exact team. It is really hard to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the identical workshop, or even from the very same 10 years. The benches by themselves are no clue it was typical observe in the 19th century to switch medieval bench ends on contemporary benches, or on medieval benches, or even on present day benches made out of medieval timber (as transpired at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards discovered some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the sort of human being to do a thing like that?
Nicely, certainly he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a person that Rickards obtained just after getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the excellent 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was hundreds of medieval junk lying all around, a lot of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the type of particular person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Very well, yes he possibly was. Look at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The 4 evangelists are previously mentioned and beneath two superb representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them down below click on on them to enlarge them. Regrettably, they are not medieval at all, and it is frequently approved that they have been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is one thing comparable the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Definitely medieval is the huge St Christopher wall-painting nevertheless discernible on the north wall. It was likely a person of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of system, as is the fantastic rood-display dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the upper tracery of some of the home windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s fee, and the function of William White. What can Rickards have been pondering of? But we step as a result of into the chancel, and quickly the complete matter moves up a equipment. For right here are some matters that are really remarkable.
In a county famed for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. At the rear of the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive set of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that sort finials to the stall finishes. They are members in the Mass, such as two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk will have to be a single of the best medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock assumed the stalls the greatest in England. I was in this article with my good friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had formerly photographed and created about these carving a a couple of many years in the past. But even he observed some thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that encounter eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are fantastic issues: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Between the seats are odd oriental faces. Some of them are down below simply click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am going to request subsequent. How substantially of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval get the job done, and there is no reason to feel it could possibly not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the things. What evidence have we obtained?
First of all, we ought to observe that the only other Suffolk church with this sort of a huge selection of medieval misericords of this quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I don’t inquire you to see this as significant, merely to discover it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does glimpse to me as even though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that back again on to the display screen seem to have been built-in into the more substantial framework of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
Even so, if you glimpse closely 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 seem on the rood display, and the Ashfields have been the main donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to believe that the increased element of the stall construction was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Nicely, I don’t know. But I assume they have to be viewed as as portion of the similar established as those people at Norton. In which scenario they may well have appear from the exact same church, which may possibly have been this one, but may not have been. Virtually certainly, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were being at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other exceptional things in St George involve FE Howard’s beautiful war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the exact same function. It is as good as his operate at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of program, most famous for the Flemish carvings that flank the fairly heavy altarpiece. They were being offered to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk shop. They show photos from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides counsel. They date from the 1480s, and had been virtually surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked during the French Revolution. I experienced viewed a thing comparable at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a handful of months right before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these when ended up, and piled up in a block fairly than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches over them, are 19th century. My favorite pictures are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the illustrations or photos below.
A single cold winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing extra was found or listened to of them right up until 1982, when they have been found on screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they were used as protection for a bank loan which was defaulted upon. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings were being fenced to an Amsterdam junk seller. They ended up acquired from his store, and taken to the museum, which right away recognized them as 15th century carvings. They place them on screen, and a Dutch lady who had go through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to cease the new owner getting rid of them from the museum. The parish lost the scenario, leaving them with a monstrous authorized invoice but the story has a satisfied ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their buy from the operator, paid off the legal charges, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at extensive price tag, but the businessman gave the present in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Today, the carvings are fastened firmly in position and alarmed, so they will not be likely walkabout again. But a little section of me wonders if they truly should really be listed here at all. Certain, they are medieval, but they were not here originally they weren’t even in England at first. Wouldn’t it be improved if they had been displayed someplace safer, wherever individuals could pay to see them, and provide some earnings for the routine maintenance of the church constructing? And then, whisper it, St George could possibly even be saved open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village large road. A few keyholders are detailed, two of them promptly opposite. I am instructed that Wednesday is not a excellent time to try out and get the essential – it is sector working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.united kingdom/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-19 06:16:24
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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