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English Church Architecture.
THRANDESTON,
St. Margaret of Antioch
(TM 117 765),
SUFFOLK.
(Bedrock:
Quaternary, Norwich Crag Formation.)
A 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 church is attractively situated along a quiet country lane, less than three
miles from the centre of Diss, and consists of a W. tower, a nave with
embattled aisles and porches, and a chancel with a mediaeval N. vestry that
seems once to have been two-storeyed. It is a building that reveals a
different history inside from that which appears without, for while,
externally, everything is very neat and trim, here it is entirely
Perpendicular in style, with many renewed or restored features. The
parts of the building that seem to have been least altered or repaired down
the centuries, are the tower and
nave clerestory. The tower has a basal frieze of flint flushwork (although,
more precisely, it runs round the tower, about 4' up from the ground) and rises
thereafter
in three stages, of which the first is by far the tallest. A
projection at the east end of the N. wall houses the stair to the ringing
chamber, the bell-openings have strong mullions and supertransoms
resting on the stepped lights, and the bell-stage is surmounted by tall
stepped battlements faced in flushwork and by crocketed pinnacles at the
corners. The three-light W. window in the first stage, rests on
another flushwork frieze that includes three shields and an inscription. The windows
in the nave aisles are an
assortment but all include at least a little supermullioned tracery above
the lights, and one window each to the north and south displays a little linking subarcuation above and
between the lights, like those to be seen at Stowlangtoft and other places,
where the work is dateable to c.
1390. The
windowless N. porch projects only slightly beyond the aisle and now appears largely
nineteenth century in date. The S. porch outer doorway carries
a series of wave mouldings arranged in two orders, of which those on the
inner order die into a flat chamfer running down the responds. The
attractive clerestory consists of four, two-light windows on each side, with
supermullioned drop tracery beneath triangular-pointed arches,
trefoil-cusped sublights, and cinquefoil-cusped lights. The chancel
E. window is segmental-pointed and the north and south windows,
square-headed, yet internally, they all retain an order of narrow
colonnettes (as shown in the photograph left). This is
thirteenth century work, apparently in situ, within the windows original
width of which, the windows have been remodelled.
If construction of
the church began with the chancel, therefore (as was usually the case), then
perhaps following an interruption in the proceedings, that might be
consistent with the apparent early fourteenth century (Decorated) appearance
of the nave arcades, being composed of double-flat-chamfered arches supported on octagonal
piers with characteristically prominent capitals (as seen in the photograph of the
S. arcade, left). The alignment of the nave from the chancel is
sharply southwards for which the traditional explanation is that it is
intended to symbolize Christ’s drooping head after his death on he Cross,
though nearly all such cases can probably be explained by the difficulties
encountered in laying out of a building's foundations
(albeit that it
must be admitted that northward-deflections are rare). The change of
alignment at Thrandeston is exceptionally pronounced - in the order of 10°
to 15° - and seems most
unlikely
to have been intended at the outset, raising such questions as whether a
decision to make the nave longer than originally planned, could have
meant that burials or other obstacles prevented work continuing westwards along the
original building line. The chancel arch does arguably span the transition between the
Early
English and Decorated styles, for while it is similar to the nave arcades in
basic form (with two flat-chamfered orders above semi-octagonal responds),
the capitals are enriched with leaf and vine carving which is still
thirteenth century in spirit. (See the capital to the N. respond, right.)
The tower arch consists of two flat-chamfered orders that die into the jambs
while other masonry features include a Decorated
piscina in the S. wall of the S. aisle, a blocked rood stair beside the E.
respond to the N. arcade, and a trefoiled ogee niche for a statue in the N.
wall of the N. aisle. The octagonal font (illustrated left)
has carved roses alternating with the symbols of the Evangelists on the
faces of the bowl, and four very jolly lion supporters between buttresses
round the stem, with frog-like back legs! It is one of a number in
this region aligned to face the secondary inter-cardinal directions (i.e. east-northeast, east-southeast, south-southeast,
etc.), rather than the more usual cardinal and ordinal directions.
Finally, a few items of woodwork should be
mentioned, most especially the chancel benches, of which there is a long one on
the N. side (illustrated below) and a
shorter one to the south. These have tracery on the back and
front panels of late fifteenth or sixteenth century appearance, but also -
on the back panel of the N. bench, behind the gangway - a Jacobean round
arch, suggesting either that the correct date is the seventeenth century or,
at the least, that the work was altered then. There are also two tall
carved figures rising from the front panel on either side of this gangway,
carrying a dog and a bird. The rood screen consists of two, one-light
divisions on each side of the central opening, with supermullioned tracery
above and a carved dado below; the central opening has two traceried
lights above, again with supermullioned tracery. Many of the nave
benches appear to include old work re-used.

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