I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I assumed I realized all those two counties. But of system there is far 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 fabulous site, which I url to on EA churches, 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 a lot of of these church buildings are historical, flint developed, round towered or have wall paintings, wood roof angels or a little something worth the exertion of heading to see or trying to find out the keyholder to gain accessibility.
What I necessarily mean is that there is no way anyone who only experienced their very own auto till 1984, and had little desire in churches or parishes could have listened to 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 using a quick slash to join the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my previous vacation of the yr to lowestoft as Mom is now out of medical center and in the care of district nurses in purchase to get place back again on her toes.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about 50 percent a mile away, and believed I experienced adequate time to go in excess of and see inside of if I could.
I parked at the conclude of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the lender to the gate into the churchyard, the cleanse traces of the tower, perfectly, towered in excess of me.
In the porch I attempted the door and identified it locked, but the keyholder checklist produced it apparent that the nearest one particular, at Christmas Cottage, was just above the road. So, why not check out, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my facts in a ledger, a smart measure. But I confirmed by driving licence to confirm that I was who I claimed. Tiny did I know the little village I lived in experienced been recognized. Much more of that in a moment.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the fabulous pew ends animals of all kinds, true and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only those people of apparent human form. One with the overall body of a hen but a clear human deal with had been left alone, thus is the insanity of the puritan’s brain.
I determined that I would file just about every pew close determine, and numerous whole pew finishes so great that they were being.
There is the feint define of a large wall portray, Simon states it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most outstanding when freshly painted. There is also a wonderful established of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes beneath. It is alarmed, so you cannot seem at them also carefully, sadly, but these is a signal of the periods.
I took the keys back, and the lady of the residence arrived to communicate to me as she experienced been explained to by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is the place her loved ones is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor live in Cliffe. For when there was in fact two Cliffs in Kent, one particular on the Hoo Peninsular, the place her family is from, and 1 around to Dover. Many decades ago, Cliffe close to to Dover was identified as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further north. I spelled out this to her, but explained St Helen in Cliffe is 1 of my favorite Kent church buildings, constructed of alternate layers of black and light-weight flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Even though St George listed here in Stowlangtoft is a great church, it is in a lousy state of maintenance, and is thanks to be manufactured redundant in the new calendar year. Generally unfortunate when that happens to a parish church, but it is likely to be taken about by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to preserve it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are much too previous.
Stowlangtoft is a fantastic church and so happy am I that I used 40 minutes of my time to go to it. Go to see it now ahead of it is far too late!
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In the summertime of 2003, this web site turned a six-part sequence on BBC Radio Suffolk. Some thing I claimed in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a honest amount of correspondence. Referring to the way lots of churches 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 entire piece is however a Victorian conception.
Individuals wrote to me and claimed matters like “but in that circumstance, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “suppose that absolutely nothing is as it 1st appears, as Sherlock Holmes reported”. And if he didn’t, then he need to have completed.
A key instance of a church that assumes a continuity that may well not essentially be the reality is below in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be somewhat bleak, particularly in late Oct, but England’s best summer and autumn for decades experienced still left the churchyard listed here verdant and golden, as wonderful a place as any I might witnessed that 12 months. The church is huge, and sits on a mound that has been slash down on one facet by the street. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never fails to move me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett claims of it that it cannot be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the classes of the mere thoughts and sings to us of our deeper self.
Confused as you might be by it, will not are unsuccessful to place the damaged window tracery that has been utilised to establish the wall right here, for therefore hangs a tale.
St George, in scenario you don’t know, is a single of the fantastic Suffolk church buildings. Even though it may externally seem a minimal extreme, and is by no signifies 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 1 go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not however comprehensive of the ‘walls of glass’ assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and potentially even renewed, which might describe why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it won’t acquire significantly to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it may be that the damaged tracery is from the original church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall isn’t medieval, so where experienced it been all these decades?
An additional survival from the earlier church is the font. It also asks some issues. Unusually, it capabilities a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ staying on the westwards experience. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it reveals are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and considerably less typically St George. The cult of St George was at its peak in the early yrs of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it surely is just not searching its ideal. But I feel there is a lot more likely on here than fulfills the eye. Fonts ended up plastered over in Elizabethan instances, and only reduction 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 least, this stonework seems weathered. I ponder if this font was taken off from the church, most likely in the mid-17th century, and served an outside goal till it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is properly-documented. In 1832, as portion of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was pleased to locate that the church was at previous going through repair service. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave utilized for products and services. A new Rectory was being constructed. Who was the catalyst guiding all this? His title was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector listed here for practically the middle forty years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a great pal of John Henry Newman, the long run Cardinal, and they usually corresponded on the issue of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is interesting to consider how, at this seminal instant, Rickards may well have educated the considered of the Oxford Motion. Unfortunately, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
For the duration of the system of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He received the wonderful Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and comprehensive the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the very same issue at Woolpit, a number of miles away. Ringham’s get the job done is so excellent that it is occasionally difficult for the inexperienced eye to detect it nevertheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals listed here, and the wierder things is all medieval, and probably dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer amount – there are maybe 60 carvings – but also that there are various special topics you can see some of them below.
The carvings look to be element of the identical group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull actively playing a harp, the bird with a man’s head, from identical carvings somewhere else. And then hopefully that tiny alarm bell in your heard need to commence to go “Hmmmm…..” since some of the carvings here are clearly not from the identical group. It is hard to consider that the mermaid and the owl, for instance, are from the very same workshop, or even from the identical decade. The benches by themselves are no clue it was common exercise in the 19th century to switch medieval bench finishes on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on contemporary benches built 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 variety of human being to do a matter like that?
Very well, yes 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 acquired after discovering it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was hundreds of medieval junk lying close to, a great deal of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of individual to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Properly, indeed he almost certainly was. Glance at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south facet of the nave. The four evangelists are over and below two excellent representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them below click on them to enlarge them. Regrettably, they are not medieval at all, and it is normally accepted that they were painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is anything comparable the other side of Bury at Hawstead.
Really medieval is the extensive St Christopher wall-painting nonetheless discernible on the north wall. It was probably one particular of the final to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of study course, as is the great rood-screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval glass in the higher tracery of some of the home windows. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s fee, and the function of William White. What can Rickards have been pondering of? But we phase through into the chancel, and abruptly the total matter moves up a equipment. For in this article are some items that are truly remarkable.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. At the rear of 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 participants in the Mass, which include two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk ought to be one particular of the very best medieval images in Suffolk Mortlock believed the stalls the best in England. I was here with my mate Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he experienced earlier photographed and published about these carving a a couple of many years back. But even he discovered one 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 factors: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Between the seats are weird oriental faces. Some of them are beneath click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am heading to request next. How a lot of this is from this church initially? It all seems medieval work, and there is no motive to believe that it might not have been moved somewhere else in the church when the chancel was open up to the components. What evidence have we bought?
To start with, we should recognize that the only other Suffolk church with these a large variety of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I will not request you to see this as sizeable, simply to detect it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does glimpse to me as even though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together the stalls that back on to the display surface to have been built-in into the larger construction of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south walls.
Nevertheless, 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 monitor, and the Ashfields have been the significant donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on harmony I am inclined to think that the increased section of the stall construction was in this church at first from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Perfectly, I will not know. But I imagine they have to be viewed as as aspect of the similar set as individuals at Norton. In which circumstance they may well have arrive from the similar church, which may well have been this just one, but could not have been. Almost surely, the stalls at Norton did not occur from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were being originally in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other remarkable things in St George incorporate FE Howard’s attractive war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s gorgeous St George, which serves the exact purpose. It is as good as his get the job done at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Fantastic Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most well-known for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather major altarpiece. They have been presented to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly observed them in an Ixworth junk shop. They demonstrate pictures from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They date from the 1480s, and had been almost definitely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked throughout the French Revolution. I had observed something identical at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a several months before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these as soon as have been, and piled up in a block somewhat than unfold 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 photos under.
A person cold winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of intruders broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing at all far more was viewed or listened to of them right until 1982, when they had been uncovered on show in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they ended up applied as security for a loan which was defaulted on. The new operator was then burgled, and the carvings had been fenced to an Amsterdam junk seller. They ended up acquired from his store, and taken to the museum, which quickly recognized them as 15th century carvings. They put them on show, and a Dutch woman who experienced browse about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to end the new proprietor eradicating them from the museum. The parish lost the scenario, leaving them with a monstrous authorized monthly bill but the story has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the operator, paid out off the lawful payments, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at vast cost, but the businessman gave the reward in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Currently, the carvings are mounted firmly in spot and alarmed, so they would not be heading walkabout again. But a very little element of me wonders if they really must be in this article at all. Confident, they are medieval, but they weren’t right here originally they weren’t even in England initially. Wouldn’t it be improved if they were displayed someplace safer, where by individuals could shell out to see them, and provide some revenue for the servicing of the church making? And then, whisper it, St George may well even be held open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village substantial street. 3 keyholders are shown, two of them immediately opposite. I am explained to that Wednesday is not a very good time to check out and get the vital – it is sector day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.united kingdom/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-18 10:31:34
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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