St George in Stowlangtoft will have the distinction of acquiring the album with the most images, help save for Canterbury Cathedral. It was a extraordinary church, and 1 I beloved visiting.
I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I believed I realized individuals two counties. But of system 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 buddy, Simon K, operates a magnificent web page, which I connection to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church website page he has frequented 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a ton of church buildings for two counties to share, and numerous of all those church buildings are ancient, flint designed, round towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or a thing well worth the effort of going to see or seeking out the keyholder to gain accessibility.
What I imply is that there is no way another person who only had their personal automobile until eventually 1984, and had small curiosity 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 primary street, I was taking a small minimize to sign up for the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last journey of the year to lowestoft as Mom is now out of healthcare facility and in the treatment of district nurses in get to get place back again on her ft.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile absent, and imagined I had adequate time to go in excess of 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 lender to the gate into the churchyard, the clean up strains of the tower, nicely, towered above me.
In the porch I tried using the door and observed it locked, but the keyholder record made it crystal clear that the nearest 1, at Xmas Cottage, was just above the road. So, why not try, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my facts in a ledger, a reasonable evaluate. But I confirmed by driving licence to confirm that I was who I claimed. Small did I know the smaller village I lived in had been found. Far more of that in a moment.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the amazing pew ends animals of all sorts, actual and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only those of noticeable human type. One with the overall body of a rooster but a apparent human encounter had been remaining by yourself, so is the madness of the puritan’s brain.
I resolved that I would document each pew conclusion determine, and numerous full pew ends so amazing that they were being.
There is the feint outline of a enormous wall portray, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most spectacular when freshly painted. There is also a wonderful set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into detail Simon goes below. It is alarmed, so you simply cannot search at them way too closely, sadly, but such is a signal of the moments.
I took the keys again, and the lady of the house came to talk to me as she experienced been informed by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is in which her family is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor reside in Cliffe. For at the time there was certainly two Cliffs in Kent, a person on the Hoo Peninsular, in which her relatives is from, and a single in close proximity to to Dover. Numerous a long time back, Cliffe in the vicinity of to Dover was referred to as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake additional north. I spelled out this to her, but stated St Helen in Cliffe is a single of my favourite Kent churches, created of alternate layers of black and light-weight flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Whilst St George here in Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church, it is in a bad point out of mend, and is thanks to be produced redundant in the new yr. Always unhappy when that occurs to a parish church, but it is likely to be taken more than by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to preserve it tidy when the old wardens and keyholders are too old.
Stowlangtoft is a incredible church and so happy am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to stop by it. Go to see it now ahead of it is as well late!
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In the summer time of 2003, this internet site became a 6-part collection on BBC Radio Suffolk. Anything I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a truthful total of correspondence. Referring to the way numerous churches were 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 genuine furnishings and fittings are medieval, the entire piece is nonetheless a Victorian conception.
Men and women wrote to me and explained factors like “but in that case, Simon, how do we know what was there at first and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “believe that very little is as it to start with seems, as Sherlock Holmes explained”. And if he didn’t, then he should really have performed.
A key illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that may not in fact be the truth is right here in the flat fields involving Woolpit and Ixworth. This section of Suffolk can be relatively bleak, primarily in late October, but England’s best summer season and autumn for a long time experienced remaining the churchyard below verdant and golden, as wonderful a spot as any I would witnessed that calendar year. The church is huge, and sits on a mound that has been lower down on one facet by the street. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which in no way fails to move me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett claims of it that it simply cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the classes of the mere head and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overwhelmed as you may perhaps be by it, never fall short to spot the damaged window tracery that has been applied to establish the wall right here, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you you should not know, is one particular of the good Suffolk churches. Whilst it may well externally look a little extreme, and is by no suggests as grand as Blythburgh, Prolonged Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure home of the medieval inside of. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in one particular go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not nonetheless entire of the ‘walls of glass’ confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and perhaps even renewed, which might demonstrate why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Even so, it would not acquire substantially to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may perhaps be that the broken tracery is from the primary church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall just isn’t medieval, so where by had it been all people decades?
Yet another survival from the earlier church is the font. It also asks some concerns. Unusually, it functions a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ becoming on the westwards confront. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it reveals are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and considerably less usually St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early many years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it definitely isn’t seeking its most effective. But I think there is far more likely on right here than satisfies the eye. Fonts ended up plastered more than in Elizabethan occasions, and only relief that stood very pleased 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 the very least, this stonework appears weathered. I speculate if this font was eradicated from the church, in all probability in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors goal until finally it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is well-documented. In 1832, as section of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was delighted to find that the church was at past undergoing maintenance. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave utilised for expert services. A new Rectory was staying designed. Who was the catalyst powering all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for practically the center forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a superior pal of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they typically corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English churches. It is appealing to assume how, at this seminal moment, Rickards may have educated the considered of the Oxford Movement. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
For the duration of the class of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the fantastic Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and comprehensive the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the exact detail at Woolpit, a couple of miles absent. Ringham’s function is so excellent that it is from time to time difficult for the inexperienced eye to detect it nevertheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals here, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and most likely dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer quantity – there are perhaps 60 carvings – but also that there are a number of distinctive topics you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings appear to be part of the same team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull taking part in a harp, the hen with a man’s head, from comparable carvings elsewhere. And then with any luck , that minor alarm bell in your heard really should start off to go “Hmmmm…..” because some of the carvings below are evidently not from the identical group. It is really hard to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the exact same workshop, or even from the exact 10 years. The benches themselves are no clue it was typical practice in the 19th century to swap medieval bench finishes on present day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern-day benches designed out of medieval timber (as transpired at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards observed some of these bench finishes somewhere else? Could he have been the kind of individual to do a thing 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 just one that Rickards acquired immediately after acquiring it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the terrific 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 variety of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Well, sure he possibly was. Search at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south side of the nave. The 4 evangelists are earlier mentioned and down below two exceptional representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them down below click on them to enlarge them. Unfortunately, they are not medieval at all, and it is typically approved that they ended up painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something similar the other side of Bury at Hawstead.
Genuinely medieval is the extensive St Christopher wall-painting nonetheless discernible on the north wall. It was most likely a single of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of program, as is the wonderful rood-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 fee, and the get the job done of William White. What can Rickards have been considering of? But we move as a result of into the chancel, and suddenly the complete matter moves up a gear. For here are some factors that are definitely impressive.
In a county famed for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Guiding the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most total set of return stalls. Most placing are the figures that sort finials to the stall finishes. They are contributors in the Mass, together with two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk need to be one particular of the ideal medieval images in Suffolk Mortlock imagined the stalls the finest in England. I was below with my friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had beforehand photographed and composed about these carving a a pair of many years back. But even he observed some thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that deal with 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. In between the seats are unusual oriental faces. Some of them are beneath click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am going to inquire future. How considerably of this is from this church initially? It all seems medieval perform, and there is no rationale to feel it might not have been moved somewhere else in the church when the chancel was open up to the elements. What proof have we got?
To start with, we must recognize that the only other Suffolk church with this sort of a big number of medieval misericords of this good quality is just a mile absent, at Norton. I will not talk to you to see this as significant, merely to discover it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does glimpse to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that back on to the display appear to have been built-in into the much larger framework of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
On the other hand, if you seem carefully 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 surface on the rood display, and the Ashfields were being the key donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to assume that the better component of the stall composition was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Properly, I never know. But I believe they have to be regarded as portion of the exact same set as these at Norton. In which circumstance they could have occur from the similar church, which may possibly have been this a person, but may well not have been. Almost absolutely, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other exceptional issues in St George incorporate FE Howard’s lovely war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s stunning St George, which serves the exact goal. It is as fantastic as his operate at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and obtained from, the Great Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of training course, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the somewhat heavy altarpiece. They have been supplied to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly discovered them in an Ixworth junk shop. They present visuals from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They date from the 1480s, and were nearly surely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked for the duration of the French Revolution. I experienced noticed one thing very similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a handful of months prior to. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these as soon as were, and piled up in a block relatively than unfold 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. Simply click on the visuals beneath.
A person chilly winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Almost nothing far more was found or read of them right up until 1982, when they have been identified on screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted 1 taken to Holland, they ended up used as security for a personal loan which was defaulted upon. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings had been fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They have been bought from his shop, and taken to the museum, which straight away determined them as 15th century carvings. They place them on display, and a Dutch female who had study about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to prevent the new owner getting rid of them from the museum. The parish missing the case, leaving them with a monstrous authorized bill but the story has a satisfied ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their buy from the operator, compensated off the lawful payments, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at large expense, but the businessman gave the reward in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Right now, the carvings are preset firmly in place and alarmed, so they is not going to be likely walkabout once more. But a tiny aspect of me wonders if they seriously need to be below at all. Guaranteed, they are medieval, but they weren’t right here at first they weren’t even in England originally. Wouldn’t it be superior if they were being displayed somewhere safer, exactly where people could pay out to see them, and deliver some money for the maintenance of the church making? And then, whisper it, St George might even be kept open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high avenue. 3 keyholders are detailed, two of them instantly opposite. I am told that Wednesday is not a very good time to test and get the vital – it is current market day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-18 20:11:53
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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