I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I assumed I knew people 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 pal, Simon K, runs a incredible site, which I link to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church webpage he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a large amount of church buildings for two counties to share, and lots of of individuals churches are historical, flint built, round towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or something really worth the effort and hard work of going to see or in search of out the keyholder to achieve obtain.
What I imply is that there is no way an individual who only had their own motor vehicle until 1984, and had minor desire in churches or parishes could have listened to of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I observed St George from the principal street, I was having a limited slash to join the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last trip of the yr to lowestoft as Mom is now out of hospital and in the treatment of district nurses in purchase to get put back on her toes.
So I observed the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile away, and thought I had enough time to go around and see within if I could.
I parked at the conclude of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I stroll up the financial institution to the gate into the churchyard, the clean up traces of the tower, properly, towered above me.
In the porch I experimented with the doorway and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder listing made it very clear that the nearest just one, at Xmas Cottage, was just around the highway. So, why not check out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my facts in a ledger, a practical measure. But I showed by driving licence to show that I was who I claimed. Minimal did I know the little village I lived in experienced been found. Additional of that in a moment.
Inside St George, you eye is stolen by the magnificent pew ends animals of all types, authentic and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only individuals of apparent human variety. A person with the physique of a hen but a apparent human deal with had been still left alone, as a result is the madness of the puritan’s thoughts.
I determined that I would document just about every pew stop determine, and several full pew ends so excellent that they have been.
There is the feint outline of a huge wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most outstanding when freshly painted. There is also a great established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes below. It is alarmed, so you can’t search at them too closely, regrettably, but such is a sign of the instances.
I took the keys back again, and the lady of the home arrived to speak to me as she had been instructed by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is exactly where her household is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor live in Cliffe. For at the time there was in truth two Cliffs in Kent, a single on the Hoo Peninsular, the place her family is from, and just one around to Dover. Lots of years ago, Cliffe around to Dover was called WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake additional north. I discussed this to her, but claimed St Helen in Cliffe is 1 of my favourite Kent church buildings, crafted of alternate layers of black and light-weight flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Though St George below in Stowlangtoft is a great church, it is in a lousy state of repair, and is thanks to be manufactured redundant in the new year. Usually unhappy when that occurs to a parish church, but it is probable to be taken in excess of by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to continue to keep it tidy when the old wardens and keyholders are way too previous.
Stowlangtoft is a fantastic church and so happy am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to stop by it. Go to see it now right before it is too late!
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In the summer months of 2003, this web site grew to become a 6-component series on BBC Radio Suffolk. A little something I stated in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a truthful sum of correspondence. Referring to the way a lot of churches had been restored in the 19th century, I observed 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 complete piece is nevertheless a Victorian conception.
Persons wrote to me and claimed items like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that almost nothing is as it very first appears, as Sherlock Holmes reported”. And if he didn’t, then he really should have performed.
A prime example of a church that assumes a continuity that could not really be the real truth is in this article in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This component of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak, primarily in late October, but England’s best summer time and autumn for decades had still left the churchyard listed here verdant and golden, as stunning a put as any I might viewed that year. The church is substantial, and sits on a mound that has been slash down on just one aspect by the highway. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which hardly ever fails to move me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett says of it that it simply cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere head and sings to us of our further self.
Overwhelmed as you could be by it, don’t are unsuccessful to place the broken window tracery that has been employed to establish the wall here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in situation you will not know, is one particular of the terrific Suffolk church buildings. Despite the fact that it may externally appear a minimal extreme, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure house of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in one particular go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not but total of the ‘walls of glass’ confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and perhaps even renewed, which may well make clear why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. However, it won’t consider much 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 initial church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall is just not medieval, so where by experienced it been all individuals yrs?
A different survival from the earlier church is the font. It also asks some questions. Unusually, it capabilities a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ being on the westwards deal with. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it reveals are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and less frequently St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early yrs of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it certainly isn’t really seeking its finest. But I think there is a lot more likely on listed here than satisfies the eye. Fonts ended up plastered in excess of in Elizabethan periods, and only relief that stood happy 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 the very least, this stonework seems weathered. I speculate if this font was removed from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an outside goal until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is very well-documented. In 1832, as element of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was happy to come across that the church was at final undergoing maintenance. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave utilised for expert services. A new Rectory was remaining crafted. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector listed here for pretty much the center forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a fantastic friend of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is intriguing to consider how, at this seminal moment, Rickards could have educated the considered of the Oxford Movement. Regrettably, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Throughout the class of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He got the terrific Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and comprehensive the marvellous set of bench ends – Ringham did the exact same issue at Woolpit, a handful of miles absent. Ringham’s work is so great that it is at times difficult for the inexperienced eye to detect it however, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals below, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and in all probability dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer amount – there are perhaps 60 carvings – but also that there are a number of unique subjects you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings surface to be aspect of the similar team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull enjoying a harp, the fowl with a man’s head, from comparable carvings in other places. And then with any luck , that minimal alarm bell in your read ought to start out to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings right here are obviously not from the exact same team. It is tough to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for illustration, are from the same workshop, or even from the exact same ten years. The benches themselves are no clue it was widespread observe in the 19th century to exchange medieval bench finishes on fashionable benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern-day benches built out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards located some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the sort of individual to do a matter like that?
Well, indeed he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a single that Rickards obtained just after getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was masses of medieval junk lying all-around, a great deal of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Very well, sure he most likely was. Look at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south facet of the nave. The 4 evangelists are higher than and below two excellent representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them under click on them to enlarge them. Regrettably, they are not medieval at all, and it is commonly acknowledged that they ended up painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is a thing related the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Definitely medieval is the large St Christopher wall-portray however discernible on the north wall. It was most likely a single of the previous to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of study course, as is the fine rood-display screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the upper tracery of some of the windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the work of William White. What can Rickards have been contemplating of? But we action by way of into the chancel, and abruptly the whole thing moves up a equipment. For below are some items that are really impressive.
In a county well known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Guiding the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most finish established of return stalls. Most hanging are the figures that sort finials to the stall ends. They are participants in the Mass, which includes two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk should be 1 of the most effective medieval pictures in Suffolk Mortlock imagined the stalls the greatest in England. I was listed here with my close friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced earlier photographed and created about these carving a a pair of several years in the past. But even he observed 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 fantastic items: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. In between the seats are bizarre oriental faces. Some of them are down below click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to ask following. How significantly of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval do the job, and there is no explanation to think it could possibly not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the elements. What evidence have we bought?
Firstly, we must see that the only other Suffolk church with this kind of a large selection of medieval misericords of this excellent is just a mile away, at Norton. I don’t ask you to see this as major, simply to recognize it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does seem to me as while two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that again on to the screen seem to have been integrated into the larger structure of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
Having said that, if you seem 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 surface on the rood screen, and the Ashfields were the big donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to imagine that the greater component of the stall composition was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Nicely, I never know. But I believe they have to be regarded as as element of the identical established as all those at Norton. In which circumstance they might have occur from the similar church, which may possibly have been this a person, but could not have been. Just about certainly, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they have been initially in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other impressive items in St George involve FE Howard’s lovely war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the similar purpose. It is as great as his do the job at Elveden. Back 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 training course, most famous for the Flemish carvings that flank the instead weighty altarpiece. They had been given to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk shop. They demonstrate photographs from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They day from the 1480s, and had been nearly surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked through the French Revolution. I had viewed something similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a couple of weeks right before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these as soon as were being, and piled up in a block instead than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches earlier mentioned them, are 19th century. My favorite photos are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the illustrations or photos beneath.
1 chilly winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of robbers broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing at all additional was observed or heard of them right until 1982, when they ended up uncovered on exhibit in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they were being employed as safety for a bank loan which was defaulted upon. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings were fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They have been purchased from his shop, and taken to the museum, which right away recognized them as 15th century carvings. They put them on display screen, and a Dutch female who experienced go through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to halt the new owner eliminating them from the museum. The parish shed the situation, leaving them with a monstrous lawful monthly bill but the tale has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the proprietor, paid off the legal charges, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at large price, but the businessman gave the present in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Currently, the carvings are mounted firmly in put and alarmed, so they is not going to be likely walkabout once more. But a tiny aspect of me wonders if they truly should be below at all. Positive, they are medieval, but they were not right here originally they weren’t even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be improved if they were being displayed somewhere safer, exactly where persons could pay back to see them, and present some cash flow for the servicing of the church creating? And then, whisper it, St George may well even be kept open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village significant road. A few keyholders are detailed, two of them quickly reverse. I am explained to that Wednesday is not a fantastic time to try out and get the key – it is current market day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 11:53:01
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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