I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I believed I knew individuals two counties. But of training course there is 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 good friend, Simon K, runs a fabulous web site, which I url to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church web site 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 quite a few of individuals churches are historical, flint developed, spherical towered or have wall paintings, picket roof angels or something well worth the effort of likely to see or in search of out the keyholder to attain entry.
What I mean is that there is no way someone who only experienced their own auto until 1984, and had tiny fascination in churches or parishes could have read of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I noticed St George from the main highway, I was getting a quick slash to be part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last vacation of the 12 months to lowestoft as Mom is now out of clinic and in the treatment of district nurses in buy to get set again on her toes.
So I saw the tower of St George from about half a mile away, and considered I experienced ample time to go over and see within if I could.
I parked at the end of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the financial institution to the gate into the churchyard, the clean up lines of the tower, effectively, towered around me.
In the porch I tried using the door and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder record built it obvious that the closest a person, at Xmas Cottage, was just over the street. So, why not try, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my particulars in a ledger, a sensible evaluate. But I confirmed by driving licence to establish that I was who I claimed. Very little did I know the compact village I lived in experienced been found. Additional of that in a minute.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the amazing pew ends animals of all kinds, serious and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only these of obvious human sort. Just one with the overall body of a hen but a very clear human encounter experienced been left by itself, consequently is the insanity of the puritan’s head.
I determined that I would history just about every pew close determine, and several full pew finishes so fantastic that they have been.
There is the feint define of a substantial wall portray, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a good set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes underneath. It is alarmed, so you can’t appear at them as well closely, regrettably, but these is a sign of the situations.
I took the keys back, and the lady of the dwelling arrived to discuss to me as she had been told by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is exactly where her family members is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor reside in Cliffe. For the moment there was certainly two Cliffs in Kent, 1 on the Hoo Peninsular, where by her family members is from, and 1 near to Dover. Numerous decades ago, Cliffe near to Dover was termed WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake more north. I spelled out this to her, but stated St Helen in Cliffe is one particular of my favourite Kent church buildings, built of alternate layers of black and mild flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Though St George here in Stowlangtoft is a great church, it is in a bad point out of mend, and is thanks to be manufactured redundant in the new year. Generally unfortunate when that takes place to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken above by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to keep it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are also previous.
Stowlangtoft is a magnificent church and so happy am I that I used 40 minutes of my time to take a look at it. Go to see it now just before it is too late!
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In the summer months of 2003, this internet site grew to become a 6-part series on BBC Radio Suffolk. One thing I claimed in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a good volume of correspondence. Referring to the way numerous church buildings were being restored in the 19th century, I observed 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 complete piece is nevertheless a Victorian conception.
Folks wrote to me and claimed factors like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there at first and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “think that nothing is as it initially appears, as Sherlock Holmes reported”. And if he did not, then he ought to have finished.
A key illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that may well not basically be the real truth is listed here in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This part of Suffolk can be relatively bleak, especially in late October, but England’s very best summer months and autumn for many years experienced left the churchyard listed here verdant and golden, as wonderful a area as any I might witnessed that year. The church is massive, and sits on a mound that has been slash down on one aspect by the road. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which hardly ever fails to shift me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett says of it that it are unable to be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere intellect and sings to us of our further self.
Confused as you might be by it, really don’t fail to place the broken window tracery that has been utilised to make the wall in this article, for thus hangs a tale.
St George, in case you never know, is one of the wonderful Suffolk churches. Whilst it may externally look a minimal significant, and is by no signifies as grand as Blythburgh, Prolonged Melford and the rest, it is a treasure residence of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in a single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not yet total of the ‘walls of glass’ self-assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and possibly even renewed, which may perhaps demonstrate why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it does not just take a great deal to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it might be that the broken tracery is from the original church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall is not medieval, so the place experienced it been all these years?
A further survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some inquiries. Unusually, it features a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ remaining on the westwards experience. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it demonstrates are acquainted cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and much less generally St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early several years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it absolutely is not searching its very best. But I imagine there is far more likely on in this article than fulfills the eye. Fonts have been plastered in excess of in Elizabethan periods, and only reduction that stood happy of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not believe they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at least, this stonework appears weathered. I wonder if this font was removed from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors function until eventually it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is perfectly-documented. In 1832, as section of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was happy to locate that the church was at final going through restore. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave used for services. A new Rectory was being crafted. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for virtually the center forty many years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a great close friend of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they normally corresponded on the topic of the pre-Reformation ordering of English church buildings. It is attention-grabbing to consider how, at this seminal second, Rickards might have knowledgeable the believed of the Oxford Movement. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
All through the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He received the excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and complete the marvellous established of bench ends – Ringham did the same point at Woolpit, a couple miles absent. Ringham’s operate is so good that it is often hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it on the other hand, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals here, and the wierder things is all medieval, and probably dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer amount – there are probably 60 carvings – but also that there are quite a few special topics you can see some of them under.
The carvings appear to be component of the very same group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull playing a harp, the fowl with a man’s head, from comparable carvings elsewhere. And then hopefully that little alarm bell in your heard should really begin to go “Hmmmm…..” for the reason that some of the carvings listed here are clearly not from the very same team. It is hard to feel that the mermaid and the owl, for instance, are from the identical workshop, or even from the similar ten years. The benches themselves are no clue it was prevalent practice in the 19th century to switch medieval bench ends on modern benches, or on medieval benches, or even on fashionable benches designed out of medieval timber (as transpired at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards located some of these bench finishes somewhere else? Could he have been the type of man or woman to do a matter like that?
Nicely, certainly he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is one that Rickards acquired immediately after getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the terrific 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was masses of medieval junk lying all over, substantially of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the form of person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Nicely, sure he almost certainly was. Glimpse at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The four evangelists are higher than and beneath two fantastic representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them beneath click on on them to enlarge them. Sadly, they are not medieval at all, and it is frequently accepted that they have been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is a thing related the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Actually medieval is the huge St Christopher wall-painting nonetheless discernible on the north wall. It was possibly one of the previous to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of program, as is the fine rood-monitor 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 commission, and the do the job of William White. What can Rickards have been thinking of? But we stage through into the chancel, and all of a sudden the entire matter moves up a gear. For below are some issues that are actually remarkable.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are spectacular, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most full set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that form finials to the stall finishes. They are participants in the Mass, together with two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk need to be just one of the best medieval photos in Suffolk Mortlock considered the stalls the finest in England. I was below with my pal Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had beforehand photographed and published about these carving a a pair of years in the past. But even he observed a little something new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that experience eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are great factors: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Concerning the seats are strange oriental faces. Some of them are underneath simply click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to talk to subsequent. How a lot of this is from this church at first? It all seems medieval get the job done, and there is no purpose to feel it could possibly not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the components. What proof have we acquired?
Firstly, we must discover that the only other Suffolk church with these a big quantity of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I really don’t check with you to see this as important, just to recognize it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does appear to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that back on to the display screen appear to have been built-in into the larger sized construction of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south walls.
Nevertheless, if you seem intently at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche families. The Ashfield arms also seem on the rood display screen, and the Ashfields have been the key donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to assume that the larger element of the stall construction was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I never know. But I feel they have to be regarded as part of the very same established as all those at Norton. In which situation they may have appear from the exact church, which might have been this just one, but might not have been. Practically 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 points in St George consist of FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the similar objective. It is as fantastic as his perform at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most well known for the Flemish carvings that flank the alternatively weighty altarpiece. They had been presented to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk shop. They present photos from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They date from the 1480s, and were virtually undoubtedly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked in the course of the French Revolution. I experienced witnessed one thing related at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a several weeks just before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these the moment had been, and piled up in a block somewhat than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches earlier mentioned them, are 19th century. My favourite illustrations or photos are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Simply click on the pictures down below.
Just one cold winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Almost nothing more was viewed or listened to of them until eventually 1982, when they were being identified on exhibit in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted a single taken to Holland, they had been used as security for a personal loan which was defaulted on. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings ended up fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They were acquired from his store, and taken to the museum, which straight away recognized them as 15th century carvings. They set them on display screen, and a Dutch lady who experienced browse about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to halt the new proprietor taking away them from the museum. The parish shed the scenario, leaving them with a monstrous authorized monthly bill but the story has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their acquire from the operator, compensated off the lawful expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at vast value, but the businessman gave the gift in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Today, the carvings are set firmly in location and alarmed, so they won’t be likely walkabout once again. But a minor section of me miracles if they definitely need to be below at all. Certain, they are medieval, but they were not here originally they were not even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be superior if they were displayed someplace safer, wherever folks could pay back to see them, and deliver some profits for the upkeep of the church building? And then, whisper it, St George might even be held open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village large avenue. A few keyholders are mentioned, two of them straight away reverse. I am advised that Wednesday is not a very good time to consider and get the key – it is current market working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 11:52:59
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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