St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk
Specified that our parish church buildings virtually without having exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it really should be noticeable that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval. Even when the genuine furnishings and fittings are medieval, the full piece is nonetheless a Victorian conception.
Inevitably, the issue arises of what was there before the restoration and what wasn’t. The noticeable solution is that we must presume that practically nothing is as it to start with appears.
A primary instance of a church that assumes a continuity that may not basically be the truth is right here in the flat fields between Woolpit and Ixworth. This section of Suffolk can be instead bleak in winter, but in summer season the churchyard right here is verdant and golden, as wonderful a place as any in the county. The church is huge, and nonetheless unusually narrow. It sits on a mound that has been cut down on a single side by the street. In the churchyard you may locate the effectively-acknowledged memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a auto crash in 1990.
In the churchyard wall there is what appears to be broken medieval window tracery, which is well worth noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.
St George is 1 of the wonderful Suffolk churches. Whilst it may possibly externally appear a tiny critical, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Very long Melford and the rest, it is a treasure house of the medieval within. Unusually for a church of its day, it was all rebuilt in 1 go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular home windows are not still whole of the ‘walls of glass’ self-assurance that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been repaired, and potentially even renewed, which may possibly clarify the tracery in the churchyard wall. On the other hand, it does not acquire significantly to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but embellished. So it may perhaps be that the broken tracery is from the initial church that the late 14th century church changed. But the wall by itself just isn’t medieval, so exactly where had it been all people yrs? Is it feasible that the recent window tracery is not medieval at all?
Stowlangtoft church highlighted in Simon Jenkins’ book England’s Thousand Best Churches, which sends a good deal of people to its locked door, and may possibly support stave off the inevitable for a although, for there is no actual congregation here any a lot more and the church is moribund. Common solutions are held across the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only used on particular occasions. The important is retained throughout the road, the place the pretty pleasant lady told me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It would seem probably that care of it will be conveyed into the palms of the Churches Conservation Have faith in.
You stage in by way of the chancel doorway (the lock right here is really awkward, but do persevere) and if you are nearly anything like me you will head straight down to the west close where by you will discover the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some inquiries. Unusually, it capabilities a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ becoming on the westwards experience. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it demonstrates are acquainted cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and considerably less normally St George. The cult of St George was at its peak in the early many years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it surely isn’t really seeking its best. But I consider there is much more likely on here than fulfills the eye. Fonts ended up plastered over in Elizabethan moments, and only relief that stood very pleased of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not assume they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at the very least, this stonework seems weathered. I wonder if this font was taken off from the church, in all probability in the mid-17th century, and served an outside function till it was returned in the 19th century.
The story of this church in the 19th century is nicely-documented. In 1832, as component of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was delighted to uncover that the church was at previous going through repair service. The chancel experienced been roofless, and the nave employed for expert services. A new Rectory was becoming designed. Who was the catalyst at the rear of all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector in this article for almost the middle forty years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good close friend of John Henry Newman, the long term Cardinal, and they generally corresponded on the subject matter of the pre-Reformation purchasing of English churches. It is attention-grabbing to consider how, at this seminal moment, Rickards may well have informed the thought of the Oxford Motion. Regrettably, when Newman grew to become a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Throughout the study course 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 detail at Woolpit, a handful of miles absent. Ringham’s work is so great that it is often hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it. On the other hand, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals right here, and the weirder things is all medieval, and likely dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft’s bench finishes is partly the sheer amount – there are probably 60 carvings – but also that there are various distinctive subjects.
The carvings seem to be portion of the same group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull taking part in a harp, the fowl with a man’s head, from related carvings elsewhere. And then with any luck , that minimal alarm bell in your heard really should start off to go “Hmmmm…..” simply because some of the carvings listed here are clearly not from the similar team. It is tricky to feel that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the same workshop, or even from the similar 10 years. The benches themselves are no clue, as it was common exercise in the 19th century to substitute medieval bench ends on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on fashionable benches created out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards observed some of these bench finishes somewhere else? Could he have been the type of person to do a factor like that?
Properly, yes he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is East Anglian. Rickards acquired it following getting it in storage in Ipswich docks. It presumably came from a person of the Ipswich church buildings. In the ferment of the terrific 19th century restoration of our English church buildings, there was hundreds of medieval junk lying all-around, a lot of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the type of human being to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Perfectly, of course he almost certainly was. The fake-medieval roundels in the windows of the nave are plainly not medieval at all, but have been in actuality the get the job done of the youthful Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are plainly to the youthful girl’s style and design, and Pevsner notes that other individuals are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, while the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at the very least are really shut copies of the Flemish roundels of the similar topics in Nowton church on the other aspect of Bury St Edmunds.
Genuinely medieval is the large St Christopher wall-portray nevertheless discernible on the north wall. It was possibly 1 of the past to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of study course, as is the good rood-display dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval figure glass in the upper tracery of some of the windows, together with St Agnes keeping a lamb and 4 Old Testament prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard’s commission, and the work of William White. What can Rickards have been imagining of? But we action by means of into the chancel, and quickly the entire thing moves up a gear. For here are some factors that are certainly impressive.
In a county popular for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are amazing, even awe-inspiring. Guiding the rood monitor dado is Suffolk’s most complete set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that variety finials to the stall ends. They are contributors in the Mass, such as two Monks, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk have to be one of the very best medieval pictures in Suffolk, and Mortlock assumed the stalls the very best in England.
The benches that face 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. In between the seats are unusual oriental faces.
Now, you know what I am going to question subsequent. How considerably of this is from this church originally? It all seems medieval operate, and there is no motive to consider it may well not have been moved in other places in the church when the chancel was open up to the elements. What evidence have we got?
To begin with, we ought to discover that the only other Suffolk church with this kind of a massive variety of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I don’t request you to see this as important, just to discover it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does glimpse to me as however two sets of furnishings have been cobbled collectively the stalls that again on to the display screen appear to have been integrated into the larger sized framework of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south partitions.
However, if you glimpse 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 look on the rood screen, and the Ashfields have been the major donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on stability I am inclined to consider that the higher element of the stall composition was in this church initially from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Well, I never know. But I assume they have to be regarded as as portion of the identical set as individuals at Norton. In which case they may perhaps have come from the identical church, which could have been this just one, but may well not have been. Pretty much unquestionably, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they ended up originally in the quire of Bury Abbey.
Other exceptional matters in St George include things like FE Howard’s wonderful war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s unexpectedly beautiful St George, which serves the same goal. He is not an artist I ordinarily admire, but it is as excellent as his perform at Elveden. Back 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 course, most popular for the Flemish carvings that flank the instead heavy altarpiece. They ended up provided to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly uncovered them in an Ixworth junk shop. They show illustrations or photos from the crucifixion tale, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides advise. They date from the 1480s, and ended up nearly unquestionably the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked for the duration of the French Revolution. The carvings were once brightly painted, and piled up in a block somewhat than distribute out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches higher than them, are 19th century.
One cold winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Very little a lot more was viewed or read of them till 1982, when they have been learned on screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted just one. Taken to Holland, they had been applied as security for a personal loan which was defaulted upon. The new proprietor was then burgled, and the carvings have been fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They had been purchased from his store, and taken to the museum, which straight away determined them as 15th century carvings. They set them on screen, and a Dutch female who experienced browse about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted authorized proceedings to get them back again. An injunction was taken out to cease the new owner taking away them from the museum. The parish misplaced the situation, leaving them with a monstrous authorized monthly bill, but the story has a joyful ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their order from the owner, paid out off the authorized bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Seemingly this was all at large cost, but the businessman gave the reward in thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
These days, the carvings are fastened firmly in put and alarmed, so they will not likely be going walkabout once again. But a little component of me miracles if they definitely should be right here at all. Certain, they are medieval, but they weren’t here originally, and they weren’t even in England originally. Wouldn’t it be better if they were shown somewhere safer, the place men and women could shell out to see them, and present some earnings for the maintenance of the church setting up? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they may well even be in a position to go away it open.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-13 18:09:36
Tagged: , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , east Anglia
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