I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I imagined I understood all those 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 close friend, Simon K, runs a incredible web-site, which I hyperlink to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church webpage he has frequented 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a whole lot of churches for two counties to share, and several of those churches are ancient, flint developed, round towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or some thing worthy of the effort of likely to see or seeking out the keyholder to acquire obtain.
What I mean is that there is no way somebody who only experienced their very own car or truck until eventually 1984, and had little 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 saw St George from the key highway, I was having a quick minimize to be part of the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my past vacation of the year to lowestoft as Mom is now out of healthcare facility and in the treatment of district nurses in order to get place again on her feet.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about half a mile away, and considered I had more than enough time to go above and see inside if I could.
I parked at the close of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the bank to the gate into the churchyard, the clean up lines of the tower, effectively, towered around me.
In the porch I tried using the doorway and uncovered it locked, but the keyholder checklist built it distinct that the closest just one, at Xmas Cottage, was just about the highway. 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 wise measure. But I showed by driving licence to verify that I was who I claimed. Little did I know the small village I lived in experienced been noticed. Much more of that in a moment.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the incredible pew finishes animals of all types, serious and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only individuals of clear human variety. 1 with the human body of a rooster but a very clear human experience experienced been remaining on your own, so is the madness of the puritan’s brain.
I determined that I would history just about every pew end figure, and many complete pew ends so wonderful that they ended up.
There is the feint outline of a massive wall painting, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most impressive when freshly painted. There is also a high-quality set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into detail Simon goes underneath. It is alarmed, so you can not search at them also closely, unfortunately, but these types of is a indicator of the moments.
I took the keys again, and the girl of the dwelling arrived to converse to me as she had been instructed by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is where her family is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor live in Cliffe. For as soon as there was indeed two Cliffs in Kent, one particular on the Hoo Peninsular, the place her family is from, and a single in the vicinity of to Dover. Lots of years back, Cliffe close to to Dover was called WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further more north. I defined this to her, but claimed St Helen in Cliffe is a single of my favourite Kent church buildings, created of alternate layers of black and gentle flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Despite the fact that St George in this article in Stowlangtoft is a high-quality church, it is in a inadequate state of mend, and is because of to be created redundant in the new calendar year. Generally sad when that occurs to a parish church, but it is very likely to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to preserve it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are far too outdated.
Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church and so glad am I that I invested 40 minutes of my time to visit it. Go to see it now ahead of it is way too late!
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In the summer of 2003, this web page turned a six-component collection on BBC Radio Suffolk. Something I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, produced a truthful total of correspondence. Referring to the way numerous churches were being 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 precise furnishings and fittings are medieval, the whole piece is still a Victorian conception.
Individuals wrote to me and reported points like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that very little is as it 1st seems, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he did not, then he really should have performed.
A primary illustration of a church that assumes a continuity that may possibly not basically be the fact is right here in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This part of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak, in particular in late Oct, but England’s very best summer time and autumn for decades had still left the churchyard in this article verdant and golden, as gorgeous a location as any I might seen that year. The church is substantial, and sits on a mound that has been slash down on a person aspect by the road. I walked up the slope, past the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which hardly ever fails to transfer me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett suggests of it that it simply cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere intellect and sings to us of our deeper self.
Overwhelmed as you may possibly be by it, never fail to spot the broken window tracery that has been utilised to build the wall right here, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you will not know, is 1 of the good Suffolk churches. Whilst it may externally look a small extreme, and is by no usually means as grand as Blythburgh, Lengthy Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure home of the medieval within. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in a single go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not nevertheless whole of the ‘walls of glass’ self esteem that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and possibly even renewed, which may perhaps explain why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it won’t choose much to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it may perhaps be that the damaged tracery is from the unique church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall is not medieval, so where by experienced it been all those a long time?
A further survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some questions. Unusually, it features a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ currently being on the westwards encounter. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it displays are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and significantly less usually St George. The cult of St George was at its top in the early a long time of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it certainly just isn’t seeking its best. But I imagine there is far more heading on in this article than fulfills the eye. Fonts had been plastered about in Elizabethan instances, and only aid that stood very pleased of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not consider they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at the very least, this stonework seems weathered. I marvel 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 frequented, and was delighted to come across that the church was at final going through repair service. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave employed for providers. A new Rectory was becoming created. Who was the catalyst driving all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector right here for virtually the center forty yrs of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a very good buddy of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they frequently corresponded on the issue of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is fascinating to imagine how, at this seminal minute, Rickards might have educated the assumed of the Oxford Movement. Sadly, 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 excellent Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and comprehensive the marvellous set of bench ends – Ringham did the very same thing at Woolpit, a handful of miles away. Ringham’s operate is so fantastic that it is sometimes hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it nevertheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals in this article, and the wierder stuff is all medieval, and possibly 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 a number of one of a kind topics you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings look to be section of the very same team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull taking part in a harp, the bird with a man’s head, from very similar carvings elsewhere. And then with any luck , that minimal alarm bell in your listened to ought to start to go “Hmmmm…..” due to the fact some of the carvings here are clearly not from the similar group. It is difficult to imagine that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the same workshop, or even from the exact decade. The benches on their own are no clue it was popular observe in the 19th century to replace medieval bench ends on present day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on contemporary benches designed out of medieval timber (as took place at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards observed some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the kind of particular person to do a issue like that?
Well, of course he could. As Roy Tricker remembers, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a person that Rickards obtained after obtaining it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the wonderful 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was masses of medieval junk lying all around, significantly of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the kind of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Perfectly, sure he possibly was. Appear at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south aspect of the nave. The 4 evangelists are previously mentioned and under two superb representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below simply click on them to enlarge them. Sadly, they are not medieval at all, and it is usually acknowledged that they ended up painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is a little something identical the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Genuinely medieval is the vast St Christopher wall-painting continue to discernible on the north wall. It was almost certainly one of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of class, as is the fantastic rood-display 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 imagining of? But we action by means of into the chancel, and instantly the full thing moves up a gear. For here are some issues that are really exceptional.
In a county well-known for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. At the rear of the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most complete established of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that form finials to the stall ends. They are participants in the Mass, which includes two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk have to be a single of the greatest medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock assumed the stalls the very best in England. I was here with my buddy Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced formerly photographed and written about these carving a a couple of a long time back. But even he observed some thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that face eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are superb issues: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Involving the seats are unusual oriental faces. Some of them are below click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to talk to next. How a great deal of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval work, and there is no rationale to feel it may well not have been moved somewhere else in the church when the chancel was open up to the features. What proof have we obtained?
First of all, we should really recognize that the only other Suffolk church with these kinds of a significant quantity of medieval misericords of this high-quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I never ask you to see this as sizeable, simply to see it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does search to me as though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled with each other the stalls that again on to the monitor surface to have been built-in into the more substantial framework of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
On the other hand, if you look closely at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche households. The Ashfield arms also seem on the rood screen, and the Ashfields ended up the important donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to believe that the bigger component of the stall construction was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Effectively, I will not know. But I believe they have to be deemed as component of the very same established as individuals at Norton. In which situation they could have arrive from the exact same church, which may have been this just one, but may possibly not have been. Nearly absolutely, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they had been originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other amazing issues in St George include things like FE Howard’s lovely war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s attractive St George, which serves the identical objective. It is as superior as his function at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and obtained from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of program, most famous for the Flemish carvings that flank the relatively large altarpiece. They were being given to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk store. They present pictures from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They date from the 1480s, and ended up nearly certainly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked all through the French Revolution. I had noticed one thing equivalent at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a couple of weeks right before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these the moment were, and piled up in a block somewhat than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches earlier mentioned them, are 19th century. My favorite pictures are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the pictures underneath.
Just one cold winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing at all extra was found or read of them right until 1982, when they have been found on display in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted one particular taken to Holland, they have been employed as safety for a personal loan which was defaulted upon. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings had been fenced to an Amsterdam junk supplier. They have been acquired from his store, and taken to the museum, which quickly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They set them on display screen, and a Dutch lady who had study about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to stop the new owner eradicating them from the museum. The parish shed the situation, leaving them with a monstrous lawful invoice but the tale has a joyful ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the proprietor, paid out off the authorized expenses, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently 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 fastened firmly in location and alarmed, so they would not be going walkabout yet again. But a very little element of me wonders if they seriously should be below at all. Absolutely sure, they are medieval, but they weren’t listed here at first they were not even in England originally. Wouldn’t it be improved if they ended up shown somewhere safer, exactly where individuals could pay back to see them, and provide some cash flow for the routine maintenance of the church setting up? And then, whisper it, St George may even be held open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village superior avenue. A few keyholders are stated, two of them quickly opposite. I am advised that Wednesday is not a fantastic time to try and get the crucial – it is market working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 13:42:58
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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