I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I imagined I realized those people two counties. But of training 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, operates a amazing website, which I website link to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church webpage he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a good deal of church buildings for two counties to share, and a lot of of those church buildings are ancient, flint crafted, round towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or some thing worthy of the work of heading to see or searching for out the keyholder to achieve entry.
What I imply is that there is no way a person who only experienced their personal car right up until 1984, and had minimal interest in churches or parishes could have heard of most of the parishes in the two counties, and so a parish church like St George.
I observed St George from the most important street, I was having a brief reduce to sign up for the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last excursion of the 12 months to lowestoft as Mother is now out of healthcare facility and in the care of district nurses in buy to get place back on her ft.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile absent, and thought I experienced adequate time to go about and see within if I could.
I parked at the stop of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I wander up the bank to the gate into the churchyard, the clear lines of the tower, effectively, towered in excess of me.
In the porch I experimented with the door and discovered it locked, but the keyholder listing built it very clear that the nearest a person, at Xmas Cottage, was just over the road. So, why not check out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my information in a ledger, a sensible evaluate. But I showed by driving licence to show that I was who I claimed. Tiny did I know the small village I lived in experienced been discovered. Extra of that in a moment.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the fabulous pew finishes animals of all varieties, true and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only those people of noticeable human form. One particular with the body of a rooster but a crystal clear human facial area had been left by yourself, as a result is the madness of the puritan’s brain.
I made the decision that I would record each pew conclusion figure, and a lot of total pew finishes so superb that they had been.
There is the feint define of a massive wall portray, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most amazing when freshly painted. There is also a fantastic established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes down below. It is alarmed, so you are unable to appear at them also carefully, unfortunately, but this sort of is a indicator of the times.
I took the keys again, and the girl of the property arrived to talk to me as she had been told by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is where by her family members is from. Unfortunately, I am not from, nor stay in Cliffe. For as soon as there was without a doubt two Cliffs in Kent, one particular on the Hoo Peninsular, where her household is from, and a single in the vicinity of to Dover. A lot of a long time ago, Cliffe in the vicinity of to Dover was named WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake even further north. I spelled out this to her, but mentioned St Helen in Cliffe is just one of my favorite Kent church buildings, crafted of alternate levels of black and mild flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Although St George listed here in Stowlangtoft is a fantastic church, it is in a bad condition of repair service, and is due to be built redundant in the new year. Usually unfortunate when that happens to a parish church, but it is probable to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to preserve it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are way too old.
Stowlangtoft is a magnificent church and so happy am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to pay a visit to it. Go to see it now ahead of it is too late!
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In the summer months of 2003, this web site became a 6-aspect sequence on BBC Radio Suffolk. Anything I said in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a reasonable sum of correspondence. Referring to the way many church buildings were 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 genuine furnishings and fittings are medieval, the entire piece is even now a Victorian conception.
Individuals wrote to me and explained items 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 “suppose that absolutely nothing is as it 1st appears, as Sherlock Holmes explained”. And if he did not, then he should have completed.
A prime example of a church that assumes a continuity that could not in fact be the truth of the matter is in this article in the flat fields involving Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be instead bleak, specially in late October, but England’s greatest summer and autumn for many years had left the churchyard below verdant and golden, as attractive a location as any I would observed that calendar year. The church is big, and sits on a mound that has been reduce down on one particular facet by the street. I walked up the slope, past the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never fails to transfer 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 types of the mere head and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overcome as you may be by it, you should not are unsuccessful to place the broken window tracery that has been utilized to build the wall listed here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in case you never know, is a person of the excellent Suffolk church buildings. While it may possibly externally look a minor critical, and is by no suggests as grand as Blythburgh, Extensive Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure residence of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in a person go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not yet full of the ‘walls of glass’ self-assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and possibly even renewed, which may possibly explain why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. However, it will not take much to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it might be that the broken tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall is just not medieval, so where by experienced it been all people several years?
A different survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some queries. Unusually, it capabilities a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ staying on the westwards encounter. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it displays are acquainted cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and significantly less frequently St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early decades of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it undoubtedly isn’t really seeking its greatest. But I think there is more heading on listed here than fulfills the eye. Fonts had been plastered over in Elizabethan periods, and only reduction that stood proud of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not assume they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at least, this stonework seems weathered. I surprise if this font was eradicated from the church, most likely in the mid-17th century, and served an out of doors purpose until finally it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is perfectly-documented. In 1832, as part of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy frequented, and was pleased to come across that the church was at very last undergoing repair. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave applied for providers. A new Rectory was getting crafted. Who was the catalyst driving all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for almost the middle forty yrs of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a excellent friend of John Henry Newman, the upcoming Cardinal, and they normally corresponded on the topic of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English church buildings. It is intriguing to consider how, at this seminal minute, Rickards may possibly have educated the thought of the Oxford Motion. Regrettably, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Through the class of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He got the good Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and complete the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the exact thing at Woolpit, a several miles away. Ringham’s operate is so superior that it is sometimes hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it nonetheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals in this article, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and almost certainly dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench ends is partly the sheer quantity – there are probably 60 carvings – but also that there are various exceptional topics you can see some of them below.
The carvings look to be part of the very same group 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 identical carvings somewhere else. And then hopefully that tiny alarm bell in your read should really start off to go “Hmmmm…..” due to the fact some of the carvings below are clearly not from the exact group. It is tricky to feel that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the same workshop, or even from the very same decade. The benches by themselves are no clue it was common apply in the 19th century to substitute medieval bench ends on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern day benches built out of medieval timber (as transpired at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards found some of these bench finishes in other places? Could he have been the sort of man or woman to do a thing like that?
Very well, sure 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 obtained immediately after getting 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 over, significantly of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of particular person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Properly, yes he most likely was. Glimpse at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south aspect of the nave. The 4 evangelists are earlier mentioned and underneath 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. Sadly, they are not medieval at all, and it is normally approved that they were painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is some thing similar the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Truly medieval is the huge St Christopher wall-painting even now discernible on the north wall. It was probably a single of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of course, as is the great rood-screen 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 perform of William White. What can Rickards have been wondering of? But we action by into the chancel, and out of the blue the full factor moves up a gear. For in this article are some items that are definitely extraordinary.
In a county famed for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Powering the rood display dado is Suffolk’s most total established of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that variety finials to the stall ends. They are contributors in the Mass, which include two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk ought to be just one of the best medieval visuals in Suffolk Mortlock imagined the stalls the very best in England. I was below with my friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced previously photographed and written about these carving a a few of decades ago. But even he uncovered something new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that confront eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are excellent issues: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Between the seats are odd oriental faces. Some of them are under simply click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to ask subsequent. How a great deal of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval function, 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 up to the elements. What proof have we bought?
To begin with, we must discover that the only other Suffolk church with these types of a significant number 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, basically to notice it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does glance to me as nevertheless two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that back again on to the display show up to have been built-in into the larger sized structure of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
Nonetheless, if you glimpse closely 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 seem on the rood screen, and the Ashfields had been the big donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on harmony I am inclined to feel that the bigger section of the stall composition was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Properly, I will not know. But I consider they have to be thought of as component of the similar established as those people at Norton. In which case they may possibly have arrive from the exact same church, which may possibly have been this one particular, but may possibly not have been. Practically 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 extraordinary issues in St George include things like FE Howard’s lovely war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s attractive St George, which serves the identical intent. It is as excellent as his do the job at Elveden. Back again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Good Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most well known for the Flemish carvings that flank the somewhat major altarpiece. They were provided to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly uncovered them in an Ixworth junk store. They show illustrations or photos from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They date from the 1480s, and were practically unquestionably the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked during the French Revolution. I experienced viewed one thing very similar at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a couple of months just before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these when were being, and piled up in a block rather than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches earlier mentioned them, are 19th century. My favourite photos are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the images beneath.
Just one cold winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Almost nothing additional was noticed or listened to of them until eventually 1982, when they had been found on screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they had been used as safety for a mortgage which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings have been fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They had been bought from his store, and taken to the museum, which immediately discovered them as 15th century carvings. They set them on exhibit, and a Dutch girl who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to halt the new owner taking away them from the museum. The parish missing the scenario, leaving them with a monstrous lawful monthly bill but the story has a delighted ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their acquire from the proprietor, paid out off the legal bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at wide cost, but the businessman gave the present in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Now, the carvings are mounted firmly in location and alarmed, so they will never be going walkabout yet again. But a small part of me miracles if they actually ought to be listed here at all. Absolutely sure, they are medieval, but they weren’t here initially they were not even in England at first. Would not it be much better if they have been displayed someplace safer, exactly where individuals could shell out to see them, and supply some money for the maintenance of the church setting up? And then, whisper it, St George could even be stored open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village substantial street. A few keyholders are shown, two of them right away opposite. I am informed that Wednesday is not a very good time to try out and get the vital – it is sector day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-18 05:47:35
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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