St George in Stowlangtoft will have the distinction of acquiring the album with the most visuals, conserve for Canterbury Cathedral. It was a outstanding church, and a single I loved viewing.
I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I assumed I realized these two counties. But of class there is additional 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, runs a fabulous site, which I website link to on EA church buildings, and on his Suffolk Church website page he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a whole lot of churches for two counties to share, and numerous of those people churches are historical, flint constructed, round towered or have wall paintings, wooden roof angels or a little something worthy of the exertion of heading to see or looking for out the keyholder to acquire accessibility.
What I signify is that there is no way somebody who only had their individual motor vehicle until eventually 1984, and had minimal curiosity 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 saw St George from the main street, I was taking a brief reduce to join the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my past excursion of the year to lowestoft as Mother is now out of hospital and in the treatment of district nurses in buy to get place back again on her feet.
So I noticed the tower of St George from about 50 % a mile away, and thought I experienced ample time to go over and see inside of if I could.
I parked at the conclusion of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I stroll up the bank to the gate into the churchyard, the thoroughly clean traces of the tower, very well, towered above me.
In the porch I attempted the door and observed it locked, but the keyholder checklist manufactured it obvious that the nearest a person, at Xmas Cottage, was just over the highway. So, why not try, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my details in a ledger, a practical evaluate. But I confirmed by driving licence to demonstrate that I was who I claimed. Minimal did I know the compact village I lived in experienced been seen. A lot more of that in a minute.
Inside of St George, you eye is stolen by the fantastic pew ends animals of all kinds, actual and imaginary, and most had not been defaced, only individuals of obvious human sort. 1 with the entire body of a chicken but a apparent human face experienced been still left by yourself, therefore is the insanity of the puritan’s head.
I resolved that I would file just about every pew close figure, and a lot of complete pew ends so wonderful that they have been.
There is the feint define of a massive wall portray, Simon claims it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most spectacular when freshly painted. There is also a fantastic set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes down below. It is alarmed, so you can’t seem at them way too carefully, regrettably, but such is a indication of the situations.
I took the keys back, and the lady of the property 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. Unfortunately, I am not from, nor dwell in Cliffe. For after there was without a doubt two Cliffs in Kent, one particular on the Hoo Peninsular, in which her family is from, and a single around to Dover. Quite a few decades back, Cliffe near to Dover was identified as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further north. I stated this to her, but stated St Helen in Cliffe is one of my favorite Kent church buildings, crafted of alternate levels of black and light-weight flints and stone, in daylight it glistens and sparkles.
Though St George listed here in Stowlangtoft is a fantastic church, it is in a inadequate point out of repair service, and is due to be made redundant in the new yr. Normally sad when that occurs to a parish church, but it is likely to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to keep it tidy when the outdated wardens and keyholders are far too old.
Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church and so glad am I that I invested 40 minutes of my time to pay a visit 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-element series on BBC Radio Suffolk. A little something I mentioned in the fourth programme, about Hessett, created a good quantity 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 genuine furnishings and fittings are medieval, the full piece is still a Victorian conception.
People today wrote to me and reported issues like “but in that case, Simon, how do we know what was there initially and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that almost nothing is as it initial appears, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he failed to, then he really should have performed.
A primary case in point of a church that assumes a continuity that may not actually be the reality is right here in the flat fields concerning Woolpit and Ixworth. This portion of Suffolk can be alternatively bleak, specially in late October, but England’s greatest summer time and autumn for a long time experienced left the churchyard right here verdant and golden, as gorgeous a spot as any I’d seen that 12 months. The church is significant, and sits on a mound that has been slice down on a person side by the road. I walked up the slope, previous the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which in no way fails to shift me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett says of it that it can not be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the types of the mere head and sings to us of our further self.
Overcome as you might be by it, do not fall short to place the damaged window tracery that has been employed to establish the wall listed here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in scenario you don’t know, is one particular of the terrific Suffolk churches. Even though it might externally show up a little significant, and is by no suggests as grand as Blythburgh, Extended Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure residence of the medieval within. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in a person go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not still full of the ‘walls of glass’ self-confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and probably even renewed, which may well demonstrate why there is broken medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Having said that, it isn’t going to acquire substantially to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it may perhaps be that the broken tracery is from the unique church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall just isn’t medieval, so exactly where experienced it been all people a long time?
A further survival from the before church is the font. It also asks some thoughts. Unusually, it capabilities a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ staying on the westwards face. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it shows are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and fewer frequently 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 undoubtedly is just not on the lookout its best. But I imagine there is far more likely on right here than satisfies the eye. Fonts have been plastered over in Elizabethan occasions, and only aid that stood very pleased of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not imagine they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at the very least, this stonework seems weathered. I surprise if this font was eliminated from the church, in all probability in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor goal until it was returned in the 19th century.
The tale of this church in the 19th century is effectively-documented. In 1832, as portion of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was delighted to come across that the church was at last undergoing repair. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave used for expert services. A new Rectory was being built. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector right here for nearly the center forty a long time of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a great friend of John Henry Newman, the long run Cardinal, and they often corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is interesting to assume how, at this seminal minute, Rickards may possibly have educated the thought of the Oxford Motion. Regrettably, when Newman grew to become a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Throughout the program of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He obtained the fantastic Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and full the marvellous set of bench ends – Ringham did the exact same thing at Woolpit, a couple miles away. Ringham’s work is so excellent that it is often tricky for the inexperienced eye to detect it nonetheless, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals below, 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 possibly 60 carvings – but also that there are numerous exclusive topics you can see some of them below.
The carvings seem to be aspect of the same group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull actively playing a harp, the hen with a man’s head, from related carvings in other places. And then ideally that minor alarm bell in your listened to should start to go “Hmmmm…..” since some of the carvings right here are evidently not from the identical team. It is really hard to feel that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the exact workshop, or even from the exact same 10 years. The benches by themselves are no clue it was common observe in the 19th century to switch medieval bench finishes on modern benches, or on medieval benches, or even on contemporary benches produced out of medieval timber (as occurred at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards located some of these bench ends somewhere else? Could he have been the kind of person to do a point like that?
Very well, certainly he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is just one that Rickards obtained right after acquiring it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the good 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was loads of medieval junk lying all over, a lot of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the kind of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Nicely, indeed he most likely was. Search at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south facet of the nave. The four evangelists are over and underneath two wonderful representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them under click on them to enlarge them. Regrettably, they are not medieval at all, and it is commonly recognized that they have been painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is something comparable the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Actually medieval is the wide St Christopher wall-portray nonetheless discernible on the north wall. It was probably 1 of the last to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of system, as is the fantastic rood-display 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 fee, and the get the job done of William White. What can Rickards have been wondering of? But we step via into the chancel, and out of the blue the entire factor moves up a gear. For below are some issues that are truly remarkable.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood screen dado is Suffolk’s most finish set of return stalls. Most placing are the figures that form finials to the stall ends. They are members in the Mass, together with two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk have to be a person of the best medieval photos in Suffolk Mortlock assumed the stalls the greatest in England. I was listed here with my buddy Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had formerly photographed and composed about these carving a a couple of years ago. But even he discovered a thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that confront eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are great factors: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and topped heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Among the seats are unusual oriental faces. Some of them are underneath click on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to ask upcoming. How a lot of this is from this church initially? It all seems medieval function, and there is no reason to believe it could not have been moved somewhere else in the church when the chancel was open up to the elements. What evidence have we obtained?
First of all, we must recognize that the only other Suffolk church with this sort of a substantial quantity of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile absent, at Norton. I will not ask you to see this as considerable, basically to detect it in passing. Next, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as even though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled with each other the stalls that back on to the screen surface to have been built-in into the greater composition of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.
Nevertheless, if you glimpse carefully 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 appear on the rood screen, and the Ashfields have been the significant donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to think that the larger aspect of the stall framework was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Properly, I really don’t know. But I imagine they have to be regarded as part of the very same established as all those at Norton. In which situation they may well have occur from the exact same church, which may have been this 1, but may perhaps not have been. Practically undoubtedly, 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 impressive items in St George involve FE Howard’s lovely war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s lovely St George, which serves the same reason. It is as good as his function at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Good Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of program, most popular for the Flemish carvings that flank the fairly major altarpiece. They ended up provided to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk shop. They display images from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They day from the 1480s, and were practically absolutely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked in the course of the French Revolution. I had seen something identical at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a couple of weeks before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these once were being, and piled up in a block alternatively than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches over them, are 19th century. My favourite visuals are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on on the pictures below.
A person chilly winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing at all more was observed or read of them until finally 1982, when they were identified on exhibit in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one taken to Holland, they have been used as protection for a financial loan which was defaulted on. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings have been fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They were acquired from his shop, and taken to the museum, which straight away identified them as 15th century carvings. They set them on screen, and a Dutch female who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them again an injunction was taken out to quit the new operator eliminating them from the museum. The parish shed the circumstance, leaving them with a monstrous lawful bill but the tale has a joyful ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their invest in from the proprietor, compensated off the authorized expenditures, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at huge price, but the businessman gave the present in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
These days, the carvings are fastened firmly in put and alarmed, so they will not be likely walkabout once more. But a small aspect of me miracles if they really should really be in this article at all. Absolutely sure, they are medieval, but they weren’t here originally they were not even in England originally. Would not it be improved if they ended up exhibited somewhere safer, where men and women could pay out to see them, and present some profits for the maintenance of the church making? And then, whisper it, St George could even be stored open.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village significant road. 3 keyholders are listed, two of them promptly reverse. I am explained to that Wednesday is not a good time to try and get the key – it is current market day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-19 09:10:31
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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