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English Church Architecture.
PRESTON ST.
MARY,
St. Mary
(TL 946 503),
SUFFOLK.
(Bedrock:
Neogene to Quaternary, Crag Group.)
A small village
church, part-built by the 'Master of Stowlangtoft'
during the
reign of Richard II (1377-1399).
The question of whether or not it is
pertinent
to talk about 'the mediaeval mason' is a subject that has fiercely divided
architectural historians in recent decades, with many taking the view that the
very concept of 'authorship', defined as the consideration of a work of art as an expression of an
individual's creative skill and personality, had no currency before the Tudor
period. This supposition has coincided with the passing from fashion of
connoisseurship as an approach to art history more generally, whereby the identity of
individual artists was previously sought by stylistic analysis, in favour of
such modern obsessions as understanding art as an expression of ethnicity,
colonialism, gender, 'the male gaze', or similar issues, and since some academics have built their
reputations on the basis of these new studies, they naturally seek to defend them
vigorously.
This shift in the focus of art history has
not gone completely unchallenged however, albeit that some of the greatest
champions of 'the old school' have since passed away too. One such was Dr.
John Harvey (1911-97), whose biographical dictionary English Medieval Architects
(Gloucester, Alan Sutton, 1987) identified some 1,700 men of varying importance,
who appear to have been responsible for buildings or part-buildings in England
before 1550, and who argued that the only reason the men who designed mediaeval
buildings are so little known is that no-one makes the
effort to discover them. This theme was subsequently taken up at a local level in
Suffolk by the late Birkin Haward (1912-2002), who tried to group Suffolk's
mediaeval churches on the basis of their aisle arcades (Suffolk Mediaeval
Church Arcades, Hitcham, Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 1993)
and who, in particular, went on to pick out on stylistic grounds, a dozen churches in mid
Suffolk that appear to have been part-built by the same master mason, referred
to by name in a building estimate for work at Wingfield church as 'Hawe[s],
mason of Ocolte' (Master Mason Hawes of Occold, Ipswich, Suffolk
Institute of Archaeology and History, 2000). This led the
writer to attempt to apply a similar methodology to another
group of Suffolk churches with striking similarities to one
another and to the church of St. George, Stowlangtoft, in
particular, and by good fortune, it subsequently proved possible
to provide a degree of support for the findings through
documentary evidence. Readers wishing to understand how
this was done and the conclusions reached - as well, of course,
to judge for themselves the validity of the exercise - should
first read the page for Stowlangtoft, then (in any order) the
pages for Brettenham, Holton St. Mary, Norton, Preston St. Mary,
Rattlesden, Rickinghall Superior and Thrandeston, and then
finally, in this precise order, the pages for Sproughton,
Fressingfield, Wortham, Wingfield, Parham and Brundish.
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This is an attractive church on the edge of a small, pleasant village.
A great spotted woodpecker was drumming on a tree behind whilst these notes
were being taken. The diagonally-buttressed W. tower was reconstructed in 1868 using some of
the original materials but the rest of the church is old and consists of a
chancel, a short aisled nave, and a N.
porch (illustrated left),
of which the last is the grandest piece of work and another in the series
to be seen also at Bildeston, Felsham
and Hitcham, notwithstanding the minor differences in the side
windows and the fact that this is the only porch among the four with flint
flushwork covering the sides as well as the front. However, the principal
façade is almost identical to those others, for it has the same
stepped flushwork battlements, the same central niche with a lierne vault, and
the same angle buttresses with flushwork sides and further niches on the
leading edges, and likewise the outer doorway adopts a similarly close design with its carved
spandrels, crocketed pinnacles at the sides, and carved fleurons set at intervals
around an arch springing from castellated capitals on semicircular shafts
with fillets. All this can probably be dated to c.
1470 by
association with circumstantial evidence at Felsham and Hitcham (see the
relevant pages). Yet so rich a display seems positively incongruous
here, especially when it becomes apparent how much narrower was the original
N. doorway, which is now off-centre inside. The rest of the building
is not without interest, however, for the Perpendicular aisle windows
(admittedly mostly renewed) follow another local fashion, seen, in
particular, at Stowlangtoft and Rattlesden. (See the N. aisle E. window, right.)
This is sufficiently non-standard to suggest that all these windows are
attributable to the same master mason and, if that is the case, then
they can presumably be dated by the work at Stowlangtoft, known to have
been executed around 1390. The chancel is Decorated and has one
original two-light S. window with curvilinear tracery to prove it, even
though the others are now Victorian.
Internally,
the three-bay aisle arcades are formed of arches of two orders bearing a
series of wave mouldings, rising from piers composed of four major and four
very minor shafts, all with fillets but with capitals to the major shafts
only (see the N. arcade, left), and the question arises as to whether
these could be the work of the 'Master of Stowlangtoft' too, since St.
George's, Stowlangtoft is aisleless, and so comparison is not possible. (In fact,
those following these notes through, will discover they are almost certainly not by him.)
The two-light clerestory windows with supermullioned
tracery are situated above the arch spandrels (i.e. there are four pairs - a
pair at either end and a pair above each pier). The chancel arch
carries two flat chamfers above semi-octagonal responds, the
easternmost S. window to the chancel has a low internal sill which acts as a
sedilia, and east of this there is a trefoil-cusped, ogee-pointed piscina,
with arches opening from it, north to the sanctuary and west to the window splay.
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Finally a
few furnishings must also to be
mentioned, the oldest of which is the square
Norman bowl of the font, now standing on modern supports, carved on its E.
face with narrow intersecting round arches with scalloped capitals
(illustrated right), and with a variety of designs on the other
three. Then in the N. aisle there hangs a royal arms to Elizabeth I
(shown below),
fancifully created by the antiquarian Robert Reyce (1555 - 1638), a devoted
Elizabethan who appreciated the more tolerant religious climate that her
reign brought. A second and similar board, of probably similar date, is
inscribed with the Ten Commandments. Lastly, the Victorianized
chancel interior has been furnished with an attractive reredos in mosaic and
tile, commemorating the Rev. William Heard Shelford (d. 1854), formerly
rector of this parish, and his wife, Emily Frost (d. 1889. The artist
is unknown.
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