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English Church Architecture.
RICKINGHALL SUPERIOR,
St. Mary
(TM 041 746),
SUFFOLK.
(Bedrock:
Upper Cretaceous, Upper Chalk.)
An attractive
little church, showing evidence of the work of the 'Master of Stowlangtoft', executed 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 one of two churches which formerly served the settlement at
Rickinghall, although the buildings stood in different parishes, firmly
separated by the ancient boundary dividing East and West Suffolk.
Today the single parish of Rickinghall is ministered solely from St. Mary’s,
Rickinghall Inferior, half a mile to the north, and St. Mary’s, Rickinghall
Superior, is in the care of the Churches Conservation
Trust, a decline in fortune probably attributable to being further from the
centre of population. So, indeed, it may always have been, for the suffix
'Superior' seems to refer only to the fact that the church stands on higher ground.
Comprising only a chancel, nave, W. tower and S. porch, St. Mary’s,
Rickinghall Superior,
is nevertheless a sizeable building, with an internal feeling of space
enhanced by large, clear glass, Perpendicular nave windows, which being of
unusual design, require detailed
description. (See
the easternmost S. window, illustrated right.) Beneath very depressed
four-centred
arches,
they are each formed of three broad lights with
dropped supermullioned tracery, intersecting two-centred subarcuation
of the lights in pairs and of the three lights grouped
together, and stepped
supertransoms
above the sublights. (See the glossary for an explanation of these
terms.) There are four of
these windows to the north, of which the second from the
west is raised to accommodate the N. door below, and three to the south,
where the westernmost (i.e. the window west of the porch) is raised to allow
for a broad blocked arch beneath, looking very much like an arch above a
tomb chest, and this arch may also be seen internally, leading Roy Tricker to surmise
that what has been lost is an erstwhile 'chantry chapel, or possibly the
Lady Chapel', although that being so, it was an exceptionally low-roofed
structure, constructed in an odd position (Church of St. Mary,
Rickinghall Superior, Suffolk, London, The Churches Conservation Trust,
p.4). Whatever purpose it did
serve, however, it was substantially built, as shown by the remains
of the heavy masonry that still forms
part of the S. porch W. wall (shown
in the photograph below left).
The porch is a rather grand affair - two-storeyed,
and with
a tierceron vault above the
entrance passageway. The outer doorway
has blank encircled shields in
the spandrels and a frieze of
flushwork
motifs
above, and there is more flintwork on the buttresses
and the porch E.
wall, as well, indeed, across most of the available space on the N. and S. walls
of the nave, albeit that here it takes the form of distinctly imprecise
chequerwork. The date of the nave, and/or the
porch, may be indicated by a will of 1442, bequeathing forty shillings (£2)
to the 'dedication and sanctification' of the building (ibid., p. 2), for it
is hard to understand to what else this might relate if not one or the other
since the chancel and tower remain largely intact from Decorated times.
The best feature of the chancel is the three-light E. window (shown above right),
with intersecting tracery below a two-centred arch and reticulation units
filled with daggers and mouchettes, but perhaps more interesting are the
windows in the eastern ends of the north and south walls (one each side),
inserted to bring additional light into the sanctuary, for these are exact
copies of the windows at Stowlangtoft and feature the same little
subarcuations linking the main lights, the same form of supermullioned tracery,
and the same quatrefoils in the apices, as also encountered at Brettenham,
Norton and Preston St. Mary among other places. The earlier W. tower
is diagonally-buttressed and rises in four stages to
bell-openings with reticulated tracery, lit by a two-light W. window with
the same. The stepped battlements with flushwork decoration
were probably added to the tower later.
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To all of this, the church interior adds relatively little, although it is
certainly light and airy, and an admirable illustration of the
'Perpendicular glasshouse' that now seems so curiously modern in comparison
with the nineteenth century’s infatuation with 'dim religious light'.
Yet large as they are, the nave windows are set in still wider blank arches,
divided by wall shafts reaching up to meet the roof wall posts. (See
the N. windows, illustrated right.)
There are thus four of these bays on each side, of which the second from the
west on the S. side, not only encompasses the porch inner doorway, but
immediately to the east, a smaller door to the porch stair. Along the
sides of the nave there is a long stone bench for the old and infirm, as gave rise to the proverb
'the weakest go to the wall'. In the east end of the chancel S. wall,
a trefoil-cusped piscina with castellated square surround is probably a
fifteenth century insertion and the same century may
be responsible for the present chancel arch with what looks like a recessed
wave moulding set high above the irregular semi-octagonal responds.
Northeast of this, a rood stair has been built into the corner of the nave,
while almost opposite, in the nave S. wall, is a second piscina, now with a
plain four-centred arch. The massive
tower arch to the west is formed of three flat-chamfered orders, of which
the innermost rises from
capitals while the others continue uninterrupted down the jambs The arch is
described as 'fifteenth century' in the church guide (ibid., p. 5), but
there is reason to doubt that, even though Roy Tricker is usually a reliable
authority.
The font is octagonal, with elaborate but indifferently-carved early fourteenth century traceries decorating the faces of the bowl
(though Roy Tricker calls it 'a masterpiece'). The church contains no
old woodwork and no monuments, almost all its present furnishings being the
result to the restoration carried out in 1868 by W. M. Fawcett of Cambridge.
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