I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I imagined I knew individuals two counties. But of system 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 good friend, Simon K, operates a incredible web site, which I connection to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church webpage he has visited 707 Suffolk church buildings, and 909 Norfolk churches. That is a ton of church buildings for two counties to share, and numerous of people churches are historical, flint built, spherical towered or have wall paintings, picket roof angels or some thing value the hard work of going to see or looking for out the keyholder to gain entry.
What I necessarily mean is that there is no way another person who only experienced their possess vehicle till 1984, and had minor interest 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 observed St George from the key highway, I was using a shorter cut to be a part of 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 set again on her toes.
So I saw the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile away, and thought I had plenty of time to go in excess of and see within if I could.
I parked at the conclude of a cul-de-sac of new bungalows, and as I walk up the financial institution to the gate into the churchyard, the clear lines of the tower, nicely, towered about me.
In the porch I experimented with the door and discovered it locked, but the keyholder checklist made it distinct that the nearest just one, at Xmas Cottage, was just more than the road. So, why not consider, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I had to fill out my specifics in a ledger, a sensible measure. But I showed by driving licence to prove that I was who I claimed. Minor did I know the compact village I lived in experienced been noticed. A lot more of that in a moment.
Within St George, you eye is stolen by the fabulous pew ends animals of all varieties, authentic and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only those of obvious human type. One with the system of a chicken but a very clear human confront experienced been left alone, thus is the insanity of the puritan’s head.
I made a decision that I would record each pew finish determine, and a lot of complete pew ends so amazing that they have been.
There is the feint define of a substantial wall portray, Simon says it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most spectacular when freshly painted. There is also a high-quality set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes beneath. It is alarmed, so you simply cannot seem at them also carefully, sadly, but this kind of is a signal of the situations.
I took the keys back, and the woman of the property came to talk to me as she experienced been instructed by her husband that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is in which her loved ones is from. Regrettably, I am not from, nor stay in Cliffe. For after there was certainly two Cliffs in Kent, 1 on the Hoo Peninsular, the place her family is from, and one close to to Dover. A lot of a long time back, Cliffe around to Dover was referred to as WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake even more north. I spelled out this to her, but said St Helen in Cliffe is a single of my favorite Kent church buildings, designed of alternate layers of black and gentle flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
While St George right here in Stowlangtoft is a good church, it is in a weak point out of repair, and is thanks to be made redundant in the new 12 months. Normally unhappy 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 preserve it tidy when the old wardens and keyholders are much too aged.
Stowlangtoft is a incredible church and so happy am I that I used 40 minutes of my time to take a look at it. Go to see it now right before it is much 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. Something I explained in the fourth programme, about Hessett, generated a good total of correspondence. Referring to the way numerous church buildings had been restored in the 19th century, I noticed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval even when the actual furnishings and fittings are medieval, the whole piece is nonetheless a Victorian conception.
People wrote to me and claimed factors like “but in that situation, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what was not?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “believe that absolutely nothing is as it initial appears, as Sherlock Holmes mentioned”. And if he did not, then he really should have performed.
A key instance of a church that assumes a continuity that may perhaps not really be the real truth is here in the flat fields among Woolpit and Ixworth. This aspect of Suffolk can be relatively bleak, in particular in late October, but England’s finest summer and autumn for decades had still left the churchyard in this article verdant and golden, as stunning a put as any I’d witnessed that 12 months. The church is large, and sits on a mound that has been cut down on one particular aspect by the highway. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which in no way fails to move 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 classes of the mere head and sings to us of our further self.
Overwhelmed as you may possibly be by it, will not are unsuccessful to spot the broken window tracery that has been applied to construct the wall right here, for thus hangs a tale.
St George, in circumstance you don’t know, is one particular of the great Suffolk church buildings. Although it may well externally appear a tiny severe, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Prolonged Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure dwelling of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in just one go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not still comprehensive of the ‘walls of glass’ self-confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and perhaps even renewed, which may demonstrate why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Nonetheless, it doesn’t choose significantly to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but adorned. So it might be that the broken tracery is from the original church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall isn’t really medieval, so the place experienced it been all those a long time?
A further survival from the earlier church is the font. It also asks some queries. Unusually, it features a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ remaining on the westwards face. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it reveals are common cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and a lot less usually St George. The cult of St George was at its peak in the early decades of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it certainly is just not searching its very best. But I think there is additional heading on in this article than satisfies the eye. Fonts ended up plastered around in Elizabethan occasions, and only reduction that stood proud 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 wonder if this font was taken out from the church, possibly in the mid-17th century, and served an outside goal until 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 visited, and was happy to come across that the church was at very last undergoing repair. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave made use of for services. A new Rectory was getting constructed. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for pretty much the center forty many years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a superior buddy of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they normally corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation buying of English churches. It is fascinating to imagine how, at this seminal moment, Rickards could have educated the thought of the Oxford Movement. Regrettably, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Throughout the program of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards reworked Stowlangtoft church. He bought the good Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and full the marvellous established of bench finishes – Ringham did the very same detail at Woolpit, a few miles away. Ringham’s get the job done is so superior that it is at times really hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it having said that, 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 maybe 60 carvings – but also that there are many unique subjects you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings surface to be part of the identical team as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull enjoying a harp, the chicken with a man’s head, from identical carvings elsewhere. And then ideally that very little alarm bell in your heard should begin to go “Hmmmm…..” due to the fact some of the carvings below are plainly not from the very same group. It is tricky to believe that that the mermaid and the owl, for case in point, are from the identical workshop, or even from the similar decade. The benches on their own are no clue it was widespread practice in the 19th century to exchange medieval bench ends on fashionable benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern day benches manufactured out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards observed some of these bench ends in other places? Could he have been the kind of particular person to do a matter like that?
Effectively, indeed he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is 1 that Rickards acquired after getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the great 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was masses of medieval junk lying around, a lot of it heading begging. But was Samuel Rickards the sort of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Very well, yes he likely was. Seem at the medieval roundels in the center window on the south side of the nave. The 4 evangelists are previously mentioned and beneath two exceptional representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them under simply click on them to enlarge them. Regretably, they are not medieval at all, and it is generally approved that they were painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is some thing related the other aspect of Bury at Hawstead.
Certainly medieval is the huge St Christopher wall-portray however discernible on the north wall. It was in all probability one particular of the previous to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of program, as is the wonderful rood-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 commission, and the perform of William White. What can Rickards have been contemplating of? But we step by means of into the chancel, and abruptly the complete factor moves up a equipment. For right here are some factors that are genuinely exceptional.
In a county famous for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive established of return stalls. Most placing are the figures that kind finials to the stall ends. They are contributors in the Mass, including two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk ought to be 1 of the most effective medieval illustrations or photos in Suffolk Mortlock considered the stalls the very best in England. I was in this article with my mate Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had beforehand photographed and penned about these carving a a few of a long time back. But even he uncovered a thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that facial area eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are wonderful items: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Involving the seats are unusual 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 great deal of this is from this church at first? It all appears medieval get the job done, and there is no purpose to think it could not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open to the elements. What proof have we acquired?
To begin with, we should recognize that the only other Suffolk church with such a significant selection of medieval misericords of this good quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I do not ask you to see this as substantial, basically to observe it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as although two sets of furnishings have been cobbled jointly the stalls that again on to the display surface to have been built-in into the bigger framework of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
Having said that, if you search carefully at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche families. The Ashfield arms also show up on the rood display screen, and the Ashfields were being the significant donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to feel that the larger portion of the stall composition was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I don’t know. But I assume they have to be considered as section of the exact established as these at Norton. In which case they may have appear from the similar church, which may possibly have been this a person, but might not have been. Just about absolutely, the stalls at Norton did not arrive from Norton church, and folklore has it that they ended up initially in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other amazing matters in St George include things like FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s beautiful St George, which serves the exact intent. It is as great as his perform at Elveden. Again up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was evidently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Excellent Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather significant altarpiece. They have been presented to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly identified them in an Ixworth junk shop. They display photographs from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides recommend. They date from the 1480s, and had been just about absolutely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked in the course of the French Revolution. I had found anything equivalent at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a several months right before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these the moment were being, and piled up in a block alternatively than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches above them, are 19th century. My favorite pictures are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Click on the photographs below.
One particular chilly winter’s night in January 1977, a gang of burglars broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing at all much more was viewed or heard of them right up until 1982, when they have been found on show in an Amsterdam artwork gallery. Their journey experienced been a convoluted one particular taken to Holland, they ended up used as security for a bank loan which was defaulted on. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings have been fenced to an Amsterdam junk vendor. They have been acquired from his store, and taken to the museum, which instantly discovered them as 15th century carvings. They place them on show, and a Dutch woman who experienced read through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back an injunction was taken out to halt the new operator removing them from the museum. The parish dropped the situation, leaving them with a monstrous legal monthly bill but the tale has a satisfied ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their purchase from the operator, paid off the legal bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at large price tag, 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 preset firmly in put and alarmed, so they will not likely be heading walkabout once again. But a minimal aspect of me miracles if they definitely ought to be in this article at all. Guaranteed, they are medieval, but they were not here originally they weren’t even in England at first. Would not it be superior if they were exhibited somewhere safer, exactly where people today could pay back to see them, and provide some income for the maintenance of the church building? And then, whisper it, St George could even be kept open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village substantial road. A few keyholders are stated, two of them straight away opposite. I am explained to that Wednesday is not a very good time to consider and get the critical – it is sector working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.united kingdom/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 20:59:02
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , Church , Jelltex , Jelltecks
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