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WICKHAM SKEITH,
St. Andrew
(TM 099 693),
SUFFOLK.
(Bedrock:
Neogene to Quaternary, Crag Group.)
One of a group
of Suffolk churches identified by the late Birkin Haward as having been
part-built by the same master mason, 'Hawes of Occold', fl.
1410-1440.
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 styllistic 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 Mediaval
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). The validity of this exercise is ultimately for the
reader to decide, but the examples illustrated on this web-site will seek to promote it.
Indeed, the present writer has attempted to identify another group of Suffolk
churches using Haward's methodology, centred on and around St. George's church,
Stowlangtoft, and these can be examined separately.
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Except in
one regard, this is one of the less interesting mediaeval churches in the area,
consisting of a W. tower, a nave with N. and S. porches, and a chancel,
of which the first is Decorated and the rest, Perpendicular. The
diagonally-buttressed tower rises in two stages to two-light reticulated
bell-openings and battlements. However, the tall nave and chancel
windows are by far the building's best feature and can probably be
associated with master mason Hawes of Occold (fl. 1410-40) by virtue of
their similarity to windows at
Bildeston, Debenham and Occold among other places. They are
segmental-pointed with supermullioned tracery, split “Y”s, and either
two-lights in the N. and S. walls of the chancel or three lights in the
chancel E. wall and the N. and S. walls of the nave, but what is telling
is that the three-light windows have stepped lights
crossed by two castellated transoms, one immediately on top of the light
and the other,
about
eighteen inches (45 cm.) below.
(See the example in the nave S. wall, shown left.) The S.
front of the tall S.
porch
has a S. front (right)
faced with flushwork arches in three tiers on either side of the
doorway, and by plain knapped flint above, separated into two large
sections by a narrow, vertical panel of stone surrounding an even narrower
central opening. The N.
porch (below)
is covered wholly in flushwork, again consisting of three tiers of
arches on each side of the doorway, but now with a
fourth tier over the
top above a plain stone frieze, a canopied
niche in the centre, and
battlements above this, with
flushwork arches in the merlons and shields in
stars beneath the embrasures. The N. porch windows are similar to
the chancel side windows but have the addition of little quatrefoils in
the apices.
Internally, the church is very plain with almost the only features of
note being the three niches cut into in the nave E. wall, north of the
chancel arch, and the rood stair, which is further north again.
The chancel arch springs from head corbels while the tower communicates
with the nave through a small flat-chamfered doorway only. The
octagonal font is badly worn and it is hard to make out what James
Bettley and Nikolaus Pevsner
describe as the signs of the Evangelists and 'four Wild Men' set
out around the stem (in the 'Suffolk West' volume of The Buildings of
England, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 2015, p. 561). The only woodwork of significance is the
hammerbeam nave roof constructed in four bays but, predictably,
the figures have been sawn off.
[Other churches featured on this web-site where
Hawes of Occold appears to have worked include Bedingfield,
Bildeston, Bramford, Debenham ,Thorndon and Wingfield in Suffolk,
and Dickleburgh, just across the county border in Norfolk.] |