I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I imagined I understood all those two counties. But of system there is a lot 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, runs a fabulous website, which I link to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church web site he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a great deal of churches for two counties to share, and lots of of people churches are historical, flint designed, spherical towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or one thing truly worth the energy of heading to see or searching for out the keyholder to obtain access.
What I suggest is that there is no way an individual who only experienced their possess motor vehicle right until 1984, and had little 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 principal road, I was taking a short minimize to be a part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my past journey of the 12 months to lowestoft as Mother is now out of medical center and in the treatment of district nurses in order to get set back on her toes.
So I saw the tower of St George from about half a mile away, and believed I experienced adequate time to go around 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 lender to the gate into the churchyard, the clean up traces of the tower, very well, towered about me.
In the porch I tried out the doorway and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder checklist built it obvious that the nearest one, at Christmas Cottage, was just over the highway. So, why not consider, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my details in a ledger, a reasonable measure. But I showed by driving licence to show that I was who I claimed. Very little did I know the small village I lived in experienced been found. Much more of that in a moment.
Inside St George, you eye is stolen by the fabulous pew finishes animals of all varieties, authentic and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only all those of noticeable human type. A person with the physique of a chicken but a apparent human confront had been still left by itself, as a result is the insanity of the puritan’s intellect.
I resolved that I would history each and every pew conclusion figure, and numerous complete pew ends so fantastic that they were being.
There is the feint define of a large wall portray, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most extraordinary when freshly painted. There is also a good set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into element Simon goes under. It is alarmed, so you are not able to glimpse at them also carefully, unfortunately, but these kinds of is a signal of the instances.
I took the keys again, and the girl of the residence came to speak to me as she had been advised by her partner that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is wherever her relatives is from. Sadly, I am not from, nor are living in Cliffe. For once there was without a doubt two Cliffs in Kent, one on the Hoo Peninsular, exactly where her spouse and children is from, and just one close to to Dover. Many many years back, Cliffe close to to Dover was called WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake more north. I explained this to her, but stated St Helen in Cliffe is a person of my favorite Kent church buildings, created of alternate layers of black and mild flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Whilst St George in this article in Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church, it is in a inadequate condition of repair, and is because of to be created redundant in the new calendar year. Usually sad when that comes about to a parish church, but it is probably to be taken over by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to maintain it tidy when the aged wardens and keyholders are as well previous.
Stowlangtoft is a magnificent church and so happy am I that I expended 40 minutes of my time to visit it. Go to see it now just before it is too late!
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In the summer months of 2003, this web-site grew to become a six-component series on BBC Radio Suffolk. One thing I reported in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a truthful total of correspondence. Referring to the way many 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 true furnishings and fittings are medieval, the total piece is even now a Victorian conception.
Individuals wrote to me and explained factors like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that very little is as it 1st seems, as Sherlock Holmes explained”. And if he didn’t, then he need to have finished.
A key instance of a church that assumes a continuity that may well not actually be the truth is right here in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be instead bleak, especially in late October, but England’s greatest summer months and autumn for many years had left the churchyard here verdant and golden, as gorgeous a location as any I’d witnessed that calendar year. The church is significant, and sits on a mound that has been minimize down on a single aspect by the street. I walked up the slope, past the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which in no way fails to transfer me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett suggests of it that it can not be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the classes of the mere mind and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overcome as you may be by it, don’t are unsuccessful to spot the damaged window tracery that has been used to develop the wall in this article, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in case you don’t know, is a single of the great Suffolk church buildings. Despite the fact that it may well externally appear a tiny critical, and is by no indicates as grand as Blythburgh, Lengthy Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure property of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in a single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not yet total of the ‘walls of glass’ confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and potentially even renewed, which may well explain why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Having said that, it does not get considerably to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. 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 the place experienced it been all these decades?
One more survival from the earlier church is the font. It also asks some questions. Unusually, it attributes a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ getting on the westwards deal with. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it exhibits are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and much less frequently St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early several years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it definitely isn’t looking its very best. But I consider there is more likely on listed here than satisfies the eye. Fonts had been plastered above in Elizabethan times, and only reduction that stood happy of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not think they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at minimum, this stonework appears 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 reason right up until 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 happy to find that the church was at final undergoing maintenance. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave made use of for expert services. A new Rectory was staying designed. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector below for almost the center forty yrs of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good good friend of John Henry Newman, the upcoming Cardinal, and they often corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is intriguing to believe how, at this seminal instant, Rickards could possibly have educated the believed of the Oxford Motion. Unfortunately, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
All through the training course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards remodeled Stowlangtoft church. He acquired the terrific Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and comprehensive the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the similar point at Woolpit, a handful of miles absent. Ringham’s perform is so superior that it is in some cases difficult for the inexperienced eye to detect it on the other hand, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals right 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 potentially 60 carvings – but also that there are many exceptional topics you can see some of them down below.
The carvings show up to be part of the 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 similar carvings in other places. And then hopefully that small alarm bell in your listened to must begin to go “Hmmmm…..” since some of the carvings listed here are obviously not from the exact team. It is tough to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the exact workshop, or even from the exact same 10 years. The benches by themselves are no clue it was widespread practice in the 19th century to exchange medieval bench ends on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on fashionable benches made out of medieval timber (as took place at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards identified some of these bench finishes elsewhere? Could he have been the type of particular person to do a matter like that?
Effectively, of course he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is one particular that Rickards acquired immediately after acquiring it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the terrific 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was hundreds of medieval junk lying all-around, much of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of particular person to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Effectively, yes he probably was. Appear at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south aspect of the nave. The four evangelists are over and under two wonderful representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them beneath click on on them to enlarge them. However, they are not medieval at all, and it is usually accepted that they were painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is anything related the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Really medieval is the broad St Christopher wall-portray continue to discernible on the north wall. It was most likely a single of the past to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of course, as is the wonderful rood-display 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 perform of William White. What can Rickards have been thinking of? But we stage via into the chancel, and quickly the complete detail moves up a equipment. For right here are some issues that are really extraordinary.
In a county famed for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are spectacular, even awe-inspiring. Driving the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive established of return stalls. Most putting are the figures that kind finials to the stall ends. They are members in the Mass, which includes two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk will have to be 1 of the ideal medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock believed the stalls the greatest in England. I was in this article with my pal Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced formerly photographed and penned about these carving a a few of many years ago. But even he discovered a little something new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that encounter eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are amazing points: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Amongst the seats are unusual oriental faces. Some of them are beneath click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to inquire subsequent. How considerably of this is from this church initially? It all appears medieval get the job done, and there is no cause to think it may not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open up to the aspects. What evidence have we bought?
To start with, we should really discover that the only other Suffolk church with these types of a huge number of medieval misericords of this top quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I you should not talk to you to see this as sizeable, basically to detect it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does search to me as however two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that back on to the display screen appear to have been built-in into the bigger structure of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south partitions.
However, if you look closely at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche people. The Ashfield arms also seem on the rood screen, and the Ashfields have been the key donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on equilibrium I am inclined to feel that the better aspect of the stall framework was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Nicely, I you should not know. But I feel they have to be deemed as component of the identical set as these at Norton. In which circumstance they may perhaps have arrive from the very same church, which may have been this one, but might not have been. Almost absolutely, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other exceptional items in St George contain FE Howard’s attractive war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the exact same purpose. It is as excellent as his do the job at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a pleasant painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Terrific Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most renowned for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather major altarpiece. They have been provided to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly observed them in an Ixworth junk shop. They show visuals from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They date from the 1480s, and had been pretty much undoubtedly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked during the French Revolution. I had seen a little something identical at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a handful of months ahead of. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these at the time were being, and piled up in a block relatively than unfold out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches higher than them, are 19th century. My favourite pictures are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the images beneath.
Just one chilly winter’s night time in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Absolutely nothing more was noticed or listened to of them until 1982, when they ended up uncovered on display screen in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted a person taken to Holland, they were being used as stability for a personal loan which was defaulted upon. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings ended up fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They have been bought from his store, and taken to the museum, which instantly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They place them on exhibit, and a Dutch female who experienced read through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to stop the new owner removing them from the museum. The parish missing the situation, leaving them with a monstrous authorized bill but the story has a pleased ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the owner, paid out off the lawful bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at vast cost, but the businessman gave the gift in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Right now, the carvings are fastened firmly in put and alarmed, so they won’t be likely walkabout again. But a minor element of me wonders if they seriously should be in this article at all. Confident, they are medieval, but they weren’t listed here originally they weren’t even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be far better if they had been exhibited someplace safer, wherever persons could pay out to see them, and provide some money for the servicing of the church setting up? And then, whisper it, St George may well even be saved open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village high street. A few keyholders are listed, two of them instantly reverse. I am informed that Wednesday is not a great time to test and get the vital – it is market place day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 20:59:02
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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