I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk. So I imagined I knew those two counties. But of training course there is a lot 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 pal, Simon K, runs a magnificent internet site, which I connection to on EA churches, and on his Suffolk Church website page he has frequented 707 Suffolk churches, and 909 Norfolk church buildings. That is a lot of church buildings for two counties to share, and a lot of of all those church buildings are historic, flint created, spherical towered or have wall paintings, picket roof angels or a little something worthy of the work of going to see or searching for out the keyholder to achieve entry.
What I necessarily mean is that there is no way a person who only had their possess auto right until 1984, and experienced tiny interest in church buildings 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 principal road, I was using a short lower to sign up for the A14 and from there to the A12 and south on what I hoped my my last vacation of the 12 months to lowestoft as Mother is now out of clinic and in the treatment of district nurses in buy to get put again on her ft.
So I observed the tower of St George from about fifty percent a mile away, and believed I had plenty of time to go above and see inside if I could.
I parked at the end 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, well, towered above me.
In the porch I tried the door and located it locked, but the keyholder listing produced it obvious that the nearest a single, at Christmas Cottage, was just over the street. So, why not test, Ian?
I went to the cottage and rang the bell. I experienced to fill out my specifics in a ledger, a smart evaluate. But I confirmed by driving licence to demonstrate that I was who I claimed. Small did I know the tiny village I lived in had been discovered. Far more of that in a minute.
Inside St George, you eye is stolen by the fantastic pew finishes animals of all sorts, actual and imaginary, and most experienced not been defaced, only these of evident human form. One with the system of a rooster but a obvious human facial area had been remaining on your own, therefore is the insanity of the puritan’s brain.
I decided that I would file each and every pew close determine, and numerous whole pew ends so great that they were.
There is the feint outline of a huge wall painting, Simon suggests it was of St. Christopher. It would have been most outstanding when freshly painted. There is also a fantastic set of misericords.
St George’s glory is the altarpiece, into depth Simon goes beneath. It is alarmed, so you can’t glance at them too closely, regrettably, but these is a signal of the moments.
I took the keys again, and the lady of the property came to speak to me as she experienced been advised by her spouse that I was from Cliffe in Kent, which is exactly where her household is from. Unfortunately, I am not from, nor dwell in Cliffe. For after there was without a doubt two Cliffs in Kent, one on the Hoo Peninsular, where her spouse and children is from, and a person in the vicinity of to Dover. A lot of a long time ago, Cliffe close to to Dover was called WestCliffe to differentiate it from its namesake further north. I discussed this to her, but explained St Helen in Cliffe is just one of my favorite Kent church buildings, designed of alternate layers of black and mild flints and stone, in sunlight it glistens and sparkles.
Even though St George here in Stowlangtoft is a high-quality church, it is in a poor state of maintenance, and is due to be built redundant in the new yr. Generally unhappy when that transpires to a parish church, but it is possible to be taken around by the CCT, but then who will volunteer to continue to keep it tidy when the previous wardens and keyholders are far too old.
Stowlangtoft is a wonderful church and so glad am I that I spent 40 minutes of my time to pay a visit to it. Go to see it now just before it is much too late!
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In the summer months of 2003, this web-site became a 6-element sequence on BBC Radio Suffolk. Some thing I said in the fourth programme, about Hessett, created a honest volume of correspondence. Referring to the way numerous churches were being restored in the 19th century, I observed that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian eyesight of the medieval even when the precise furnishings and fittings are medieval, the whole piece is even now a Victorian conception.
People today wrote to me and explained issues like “but in that circumstance, Simon, how do we know what was there originally and what wasn’t?”. To which my reply was the enigmatic “assume that almost nothing is as it initial seems, as Sherlock Holmes said”. And if he did not, then he must have performed.
A prime example of a church that assumes a continuity that may possibly not really be the real truth is in this article in the flat fields in between Woolpit and Ixworth. This section of Suffolk can be somewhat bleak, particularly in late Oct, but England’s best summer time and autumn for a long time experienced left the churchyard right here verdant and golden, as attractive a spot as any I’d noticed that 12 months. The church is huge, and sits on a mound that has been slash down on just one facet by the street. I walked up the slope, earlier the memorial to the artwork critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, which never fails to go me. It is by the sculptor Glynn Williams, and Sister Wendy Beckett states of it that it are unable to be pinned down and encapsulated, it defeats the groups of the mere head and sings to us of our deeper self.
Confused as you may perhaps be by it, don’t fail to spot the broken window tracery that has been employed to make the wall here, for thereby hangs a tale.
St George, in case you really don’t know, is a single of the wonderful Suffolk church buildings. Though it may possibly externally show up a minor extreme, and is by no usually means as grand as Blythburgh, Long Melford and the relaxation, it is a treasure household of the medieval inside. 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 however total of the ‘walls of glass’ self esteem that the subsequent century would see. The tracery seems to have been fixed, and quite possibly even renewed, which may possibly clarify why there is damaged medieval tracery in the churchyard wall. Nevertheless, it would not just take significantly to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may possibly be that the broken tracery is from the primary church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall isn’t medieval, so where had it been all those people years?
Another survival from the previously church is the font. It also asks some thoughts. Unusually, it functions a Saint on 7 of the panels, Christ staying on the westwards deal with. 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 less usually St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early several years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it definitely isn’t looking its finest. But I assume there is additional going on in this article than fulfills the eye. Fonts have been plastered more than in Elizabethan occasions, and only reduction that stood happy of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not feel they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at minimum, this stonework seems weathered. I question if this font was eliminated from the church, almost certainly in the mid-17th century, and served an outside objective 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 frequented, and was happy to discover that the church was at past going through mend. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave used for expert services. A new Rectory was getting designed. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His identify was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for nearly the middle forty several years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good close friend of John Henry Newman, the foreseeable future Cardinal, and they often corresponded on the matter of the pre-Reformation ordering of English church buildings. It is fascinating to feel how, at this seminal second, Rickards may well have knowledgeable the assumed of the Oxford Motion. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.
Through the study course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He got the wonderful Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and finish the marvellous set of bench finishes – Ringham did the same factor at Woolpit, a handful of miles away. Ringham’s operate is so great that it is at times difficult for the inexperienced eye to detect it on the other hand, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals right here, and the wierder stuff 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 perhaps 60 carvings – but also that there are several exclusive subjects you can see some of them underneath.
The carvings seem to be element of the exact same group as Woolpit and Tostock – you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull playing a harp, the bird with a man’s head, from related carvings somewhere else. And then with any luck , that very little alarm bell in your listened to really should start out to go “Hmmmm…..” due to the fact some of the carvings right here are plainly not from the exact same team. It is challenging to consider that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the exact same workshop, or even from the similar decade. The benches themselves are no clue it was widespread follow in the 19th century to replace medieval bench finishes on modern day benches, or on medieval benches, or even on present day benches built out of medieval timber (as took place at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards found some of these bench ends in other places? Could he have been the kind of man or woman to do a detail like that?
Perfectly, indeed he could. As Roy Tricker recollects, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley’s church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is a person that Rickards acquired soon after discovering it in storage in Ipswich docks. In the ferment of the wonderful 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was masses of medieval junk lying all over, much of it likely begging. But was Samuel Rickards the variety of man or woman to counterfeit his church’s medieval inheritance?
Well, yes he almost certainly was. Seem at the medieval roundels in the middle window on the south side of the nave. The four evangelists are above and beneath two wonderful representations of the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism of Christ. You can see them underneath click on on them to enlarge them. However, they are not medieval at all, and it is normally recognized that they ended up painted by a daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. There is anything comparable the other facet of Bury at Hawstead.
Really medieval is the large St Christopher wall-portray continue to discernible on the north wall. It was likely just one of the past to be painted. The bench finishes are medieval, of system, as is the fine 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 commission, and the do the job of William White. What can Rickards have been imagining of? But we action by way of into the chancel, and suddenly the whole point moves up a gear. For below are some points that are truly remarkable.
In a county famous for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft’s chancel are spectacular, even awe-inspiring. Guiding the rood display screen dado is Suffolk’s most comprehensive set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that sort finials to the stall ends. They are contributors in the Mass, including two Clergymen, two servers and two acolytes. The determine of the Priest at a prayer desk need to be just one of the very best medieval photos in Suffolk Mortlock thought the stalls the very best in England. I was below with my friend Aidan of Sylly Suffolk fame, and he had beforehand photographed and published about these carving a a pair of decades ago. But even he located some thing new to photograph, and a hush fell on the chancel as we explored.
The benches that experience eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are great things: 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. Some of them are beneath click on on them to enlarge them.
Now, you know what I am likely to request future. How much of this is from this church at first? It all seems medieval get the job done, and there is no reason to believe it may not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the factors. What evidence have we got?
For starters, we need to discover that the only other Suffolk church with this kind of a huge selection of medieval misericords of this high quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I don’t request you to see this as sizeable, merely to notice it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does glance to me as though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled alongside one another the stalls that again on to the display screen look to have been integrated into the more substantial construction of stalls and desks that entrance them and the north and south walls.
Nonetheless, if you seem 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 surface on the rood monitor, and the Ashfields had been the main donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on harmony I am inclined to believe that the better portion of the stall structure was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Very well, I you should not know. But I assume they have to be considered as part of the exact same established as people at Norton. In which circumstance they may perhaps have arrive from the exact same church, which might have been this one, but might not have been. Nearly absolutely, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were being at first in the quire of Bury Abbey. Hmm….
Other extraordinary matters in St George contain FE Howard’s gorgeous war memorial in the previous north doorway, and in the reverse corner of the nave Hugh Easton’s gorgeous St George, which serves the similar intent. It is as good as his perform at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was seemingly exhibited at, and acquired from, the Fantastic Exhibition of 1851.
But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of study course, most famed for the Flemish carvings that flank the fairly weighty altarpiece. They had been presented to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Corridor, who allegedly uncovered them in an Ixworth junk store. They show photographs from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides propose. They date from the 1480s, and were pretty much definitely the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked throughout the French Revolution. I experienced viewed one thing related at Baumes-les-Messieurs in the French Jura a couple of weeks just before. There, the carvings are brightly painted, as these once were, 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 favourite visuals are the Pieta and the Mouth of Hell. Simply click on the pictures under.
One particular chilly winter’s evening in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Practically nothing more was noticed or listened to of them until 1982, when they ended up identified on screen in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one particular taken to Holland, they had been utilized as protection for a bank 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 purchased from his shop, and taken to the museum, which promptly determined them as 15th century carvings. They place them on display screen, and a Dutch girl who experienced read through about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.
The parish instituted lawful proceedings to get them back again an injunction was taken out to halt the new owner eradicating them from the museum. The parish shed the case, leaving them with a monstrous lawful bill but the tale has a content ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their buy from the owner, compensated off the lawful bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Evidently this was all at large price tag, but the businessman gave the present in many thanks for Britain’s liberation of Holland for the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.
Now, the carvings are preset firmly in location and alarmed, so they is not going to be going walkabout all over again. But a very little component of me miracles if they truly need to be here at all. Guaranteed, they are medieval, but they weren’t right here originally they weren’t even in England at first. Wouldn’t it be improved if they had been exhibited somewhere safer, in which persons could spend to see them, and supply some earnings for the upkeep of the church building? And then, whisper it, St George could even be saved open up.
St George, Stowlangtoft, is in the village significant road. 3 keyholders are listed, two of them promptly opposite. I am informed that Wednesday is not a superior time to consider and get the critical – it is market place working day in Bury.
Simon Knott
www.suffolkchurches.co.united kingdom/stowlangtoft.htm
Posted by Jelltex on 2017-12-17 14:43:51
Tagged: , St George , Stowlangtoft , Suffolk , pew , ends , carved pew finishes , Jelltex , Jelltecks , church
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