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Flint-knapped arrowhead.
Knapper: Roy Miller
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric American Indians quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old Indian flint pits can be examined along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park ("State Memorial"). Many authentic Indian artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
The arrowhead seen here is a modern replica, produced by a skilled knapper named Roy Miller, who has his own flint pits on Flint Ridge. Material from this site is famous for having greenish and/or bluish coloration, which become intensified with heating.
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: Roy Miller flint pit, northwestern corner of the Brownsville Road-Flint Ridge Road intersection, next to Flint Ridge State Park, Flint Ridge, southeastern Licking County, east-central Ohio, USA
Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, meets with Republic of Korea Deputy Chief of Mission Marc Knapper at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Republic of Korea, Aug. 14, 2017. (DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Dominique A. Pineiro)
Precious opal-knapped arrowhead. (~23.5 millimeters long)
Knapper: Chris Miller
Opal is hydrous silica (SiO2·nH2O) and is made up of extremely tiny spheres (colloids) that can be seen with a scanning electron microscope (SEM).
Gem-quality opal, or precious opal, has a wonderful rainbow play of colors (opalescence). This play of color is the result of light being diffracted by planes of voids between large areas of regularly packed, same-sized opal colloids. Different opalescent colors are produced by colloids of differing sizes. If individual colloids are larger than 140 x 10-6 mm in size, purple & blue & green colors are produced. Once colloids get as large as about 240 x 10-6 mm, red color is seen (Carr et al., 1979).
Not all opals have the famous play of colors, however. Common opal has a wax-like luster & is often milky whitish with no visible color play at all. Opal is moderately hard (H = 5 to 6), has a white streak, and has conchoidal fracture.
Several groups of organisms make skeletons of opaline silica, for example hexactinellid sponges, diatoms, radiolarians, silicoflagellates, and ebridians. Some organisms incorporate opal into their tissues, for example horsetails/scouring rushes and sawgrass. Sometimes, fossils are preserved in opal or precious opal.
Host rock: Bulldog Shale, lower Marree Subgroup, Aptian Stage, upper Lower Cretaceous
Locality: unrecorded site in the Coober Pedy Opal Field, north-central South Australia State, southern Australia
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Photo gallery of opal:
www.mindat.org/gallery.php?min=3004
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Reference cited:
Carr et al. (1979) - Andamooka opal fields: the geology of the precious stones field and the results of the subsidised mining program. Geological Survey of South Australia Department of Mines and Energy Report of Investigations 51. 68 pp.
These are my personal notes taken during a geology presentation. I give them here because they may be of some interest. Do not expect the notes to always be in complete sentences, etc.
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Mineral Resources and the Hopewell Culture in Licking County
Presented by: Tim Jordan (Newark Earthworks & site manager at Flint Ridge State Park, Ohio, USA)
29 January 2018
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Native American uses of flint - used to make points.
Flint points have a variety of shapes and sizes for different purposes/uses.
Smaller points are probably arrowheads in the traditional sense.
Larger points are for larger weapons such knife blades or spear points.
Flint points were used for hunting animals from deer to mastodons and mammoths.
Flint scrapers were used for cleaning animal hides.
Flint drill bits were used for boring into various materials.
European uses of flint - gunflints for flintlocks (= guns). The flint makes a spark which ignites a reservoir of gunpowder.
Also Danish daggers - need multiple techniques to fashion these.
Also millstones - used for grinding corn and wheat.
Chips of flint were used as road fill along Route 40 (= National Road), which is 3 miles south of Flint Ridge, Ohio.
Lots of uses for flint. Made into various tools - not just weapons.
Flint Ridge
Getting flint - Flint Ridge has a flint lens - a layer of flint - a big slab - that is 2 to 3 feet thick throughout the ridge that is 8 to 10 miles from west to east. In the Flint Ridge park area, the flint is a few inches down from the surface. There are also outcrops with no cover.
Otherwise, flint is obtained by digging downward.
Shells or deer scapulas could be used to dig through the dirt to get to the flint lens.
Hammerstones - granite clasts (small boulders) were ground down to make hammerstones. They look like cheese wheels.
Granite hammerstones were used to pound flint to obtain workable samples.
Pre-forms - semi-processed flint pieces. They can be further worked into tools and weapons.
Flint knapping - requires intimate knowledge of the material.
Flint ideally breaks along Hertzian cones. Compare this to the cones of damage after a BB is shot into glass. Flint predictably breaks like this. So do glass and obsidian.
Conchoidal fracture - smooth, curved fracture surfaces. They are a consequence of breaking along Hertzian cones.
Flint knappers know how to estimate the angle of a Hertzian cone when flint is struck.
Can control the angle of the shock wave when flint is whacked.
Methods used in flint knapping: percussion flaking and pressure flaking.
Can use parts of a deer antler to break flint along curved fractures.
Deer antlers or copper are used by modern flint knappers. These are preferred because they have enough give (are slightly soft) to result in flint breaking along Hertzian cones.
Harder objects just shatter flint.
Natural resources are feeding the usage of minerals - flint weapons are used to hunt deer, and deer antler is used to process flint.
Licking County, Ohio is named after natural salt deposits along rivers and streams.
Animals are attracted to such sites. Deer lick the salt deposits and get other minerals into their bodies as well. Licking County deer get larger antler racks as a result.
Non-Flint Ridge flint types: Arkansas novaculite, Coshocton chert, and Indiana hornstone. All three are shades of gray. The display sample of Arkansas novaculite is black-and-white (see: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/26106387308). The Coshocton chert sample is blackish-gray in color (see: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/26106934988). The Indiana horstone sample is gray-and-white with a bullseye pattern (www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/39081713015).
In contrast, Flint Ridge’s Vanport Flint has red and turquoise greenish-blue. The latter colors show up especially well after the flint is heated in a kiln.
See: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/26117233518
See: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/39989320101
See: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/39279564014
See: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/39279463344
See: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/39958031452
Flint heating makes the material more brittle and makes shock waves propagate better through the rock, allowing for the development of Hertzian cones.
Mythology & stories
There’s a Lakota Indian story about Flint Ridge - lightning struck a site and the spot had strange, brightly-colored rock that sparked when struck. Flint could be used to make fire.
Flint sites were places of power.
Newark Earthworks
There’s 4 to 4.5 miles of earthen walls in the Newark area.
Great Circle Mound is one portion of the complex. It is easily accessed - it’s a park.
See:
u.osu.edu/piday/files/2016/03/SIA3391-2k4mu4f-e1457893405...
Octagon Mound is part of a country club - a golf course. It has open houses a couple times each year.
See:
s3.amazonaws.com/artspan-fs/member_files/daniellepoling/N...
Some of the Newark Earthworks no longer exist - they have been flattened and built over.
Octagon Mound has built-in lunar alignment markers - 8 of them.
One needs an artificial horizon for such markers to work.
Example: northern maximum moonrise. Example: southern maximum moonrise.
Artificial horizons are created by making 5 feet high walls of earth (earthen walls).
Octagon Mound has an Observatory Circle Mound next to it. Its wall varies from 3 feet high to 7-8 feet high.
The artificial horizon, however, is level.
Making such mounds required careful study of the dirt used to make the structures.
The mound-making people probably had familiarity with the angle of repose.
Great Circle Mound has an interior moat, or ditch. Octagon Mound lacks a moat.
One hypothesis: the dirt used to make Great Circle Mound came directly from the ditch/moat. Actually - no it didn’t.
The walls of Great Circle Mound have two to three times more dirt than would fit in the moat/ditch.
A cross-section made through the mound by an archaeologist (Brad Lepper) showed that the mound had layered dirt. Darker-colored topsoil and yellowish-brown subsoil were used. Dirt as a building material - different types have different properties/qualities.
More earthworks occur in Chillicothe, Ohio. That site had more than Newark ever had. However, the Newark Earthworks have more connectivity than Chillicothe’s mounds.
A modern Indian remarked that the yellowish-brown soil may be representative of the yellowish-colored corona of the Sun. (?)
Octagon Mound is a pinnacle of achievement.
Shaman of Newark figurine - carved from schist, a metamorphic rock, possibly derived from the Carolinas. When carved, the rock was possibly bright yellow-colored. It is now earthy tones of brown (= an aged color). The figurine has copper ear spools. Copper was obtained from the Great Lakes area [Upper Peninsula of Michigan, near Lake Superior].
See:
www.flickr.com/photos/17903031@N00/28628013441
Granite hammerstones were obtained from granite clasts in Pleistocene glacial deposits here in Ohio.
Flint-knapped arrowhead.
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
The arrowhead seen here is a modern replica. I suspect that the material is Vanport Flint from Nethers Flint Quarries, at the eastern end of Flint Ridge.
Flint & flint breccia from the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA.
Flint is the state gemstone of Ohio. "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. In early times, light-colored material was called "chert" and dark-colored material was called "flint". Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules). Another proposed origin for some chert / flint is altered quartzose eolian dust deposits on ancient seafloors.
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric Americans quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old flint pits can be seen along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park ("Flint Ridge State Memorial"; "Flint Ridge Ancient Quarries & Nature Preserve"). Many prehistoric artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: Nethers Flint Quarries - flint pit in the woods on the southwestern side of Flint Ridge Road, eastern Flint Ridge, far-western Muskingum County, east-central Ohio, USA (vicinity of 40° 00.137’ North latitude, 82° 11.544’ West longitude)
Flint-knapped arrowhead. (~8.8 centimeters tall)
Knapper: Jim Bohannon
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric American Indians quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old Indian flint pits can be examined along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park. Many authentic Indian artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
The arrowhead / spearpoint seen here is a modern replica, produced by a skilled knapper named Jim Bohannon.
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: Nethers Flint Quarries - flint pit in the woods on the southwestern side of Flint Ridge Road, eastern Flint Ridge, far-western Muskingum County, east-central Ohio, USA (vicinity of 40° 00.137’ North latitude, 82° 11.544’ West longitude)
I was asked a few weeks back, if I fancied meeting up with friends, Simon and Cam for a few bears and a crawl round Ipswich.
Seemed a great idea, but checking Network Rain this week, I found that there were replacement buses out of Liverpool Street to Whitham and out of Cambridge. The first added an hour to the trip to Ipswich, the second, 90 minutes.
Jools said she would enjoy a trip out and a walk around Manningtree, so we could go in the car, I would drive up, she would drive back, and we would both have some exercise and I would meet friends.
Perfect.
Although we had planned to go to Tesco first, in the end we had breakfast and set off at half seven, eager to get some miles under our belts before traffic really built at Dartford.
Up the A2 in bright sunshine, it was a great day for travel, but also I thought it might have been good for checking out orchid woods back home. But a change is always good, and it has been nearly 9 years since Simon invited me for a tour round historic Ipswich, showing there was almost as much history there than in Norwich to the north.
Into Essex before nine, and arriving in Ipswich before ten, we decided to find somewhere for breakfast first before going our separate ways.
A large breakfast later, we split up, and I went to wander north to St Margaret's church, which I had been into on that trip 9 years back, but my shots not so good.
I found many interesting places in-between the modern buildings and urban sprawl, timber framed houses, Tudor brick and much more beside.
Sadly, St Margaret was locked. I could see the notice on the porch door, so I didn't go up to see what it said.
I wandered back, found St Mary le Tower open, so went in and took over a hundred shots, soaking in the fine Victorian glass and carved bench ends, even if they were 19th century and not older.
In the south chapel, a group were talking quietly, so I tried not to disturb them, only realising how loud the shutter on the camera was.
The font took my eye first, as it is a well preserved one from the 15th century. Though these are common in East Anglia, not so in deepest Kent, so I snapped it from all directions, recording each mark of the carver's tools.
The clocked ticked round to midday, and so I made my way to the quayside where I was to meet my friends.
Simon lives in Ipswich, but Cam and David had come down on the train from the Fine City. We met at the Briarbank Brewery Tap where I had a couple of mocha porters, which were very nice indeed.
From there we went to the Dove where we had two more beers as well as lunch.
And finally a walk to The Spread Eagle for one final beer before I walked back to Portman Road to meet Jools at the car.
Jools drove us back to the A12, and pointed the car south. As we drove, dusk fell and rain began to fall. Not very pleasant. But at least traffic was light, so in an hour we were on the M25 and twenty minutes later over the river and back in Kent.
Rain fell steadily as we cruised down the M20, past the familiar landmarks until we were back in Dover. Where we had to make a pit stop at M and S, as we needed supplies, and something for supper.
Not sure that garlic bread and wine counts as a meal, but did for us, so at half nine, we climbed the hill to bed.
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Ipswich is the county town of Suffolk, and is also probably the longest continuously occupied town in England. Here on the River Gipping, in the south of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia, a number of 7th Century industrial villages grew together, and since then Ipswich has always been an industrial and commercial town, processing the produce of the land round about, and exporting it up the River Orwell to other parts of England and the continent. It was wealthy in the late medieval period, but it suffered from being cut off from its European markets by the outfall from the Reformation. A strongly puritan town in the 17th Century, a quiet backwater in the 18th Century, it was not until the Industrial Revolution that it rose to commercial prominence again, with heavy industry producing agricultural machinery, vehicles and other ironwork. It would continue to be important industrially until the 1980s, but then most of the factories closed, and the town has not yet recovered.
The townscape is punctuated by church towers and spires, for Ipswich has twelve surviving medieval churches. Remarkably, six of them are still in use, and of these St Mary le Tower is the biggest and most prominent. Its spire rises sixty metres above the rooftops, making it the second tallest building in the town after the Mill apartment block on the Waterfront. There was a church here in 1200, when the Borough of Ipswich came into being in the churchyard by the declaration of the granting of a charter. The medieval church had a spire until it came down in the hurricane of 1661. When the Diocese of Norwich oversaw the restoration of the church in the mid-19th Century the decision was taken for a complete rebuild in stone on the same site. It is almost entirely the work of diocesan surveyor Richard Phipson, who worked on it over a period of twenty years in the 1850s and 1860s, including replacing the spire, and so this is East Anglia's urban Victorian church par excellence. The rebuilding was bankrolled by the wealthy local Bacon banking family. It is a large church, built more or less on the plan of its predecessor, full of the spirit of its age. One could no more imagine Ipswich without the Tower than without the Orwell Bridge.
The length of the church splits the churchyard into two quite separate parts, the south side a public space, the walled north side atmospheric and secretive. The large cross to the south-west of the tower is not a war memorial. It remembers John Patteson, Bishop of Melanesia, murdered by some of his flock in the 1870s. Treated as a martyr by the press of the day, Patteson appears to have had no local connection, but the Pattesons had intermarried with the Cobbolds, an important local family, and Patteson Road by Ipswich docks also remembers him. There never was a north door, and the west doors are beautiful and liturgically correct but perhaps not useful, since they are below street level and the path merely leads round to the south, allowing processions but no access from Tower Street. The flushwork is exuberant, and makes you think that being a flint-knapper must have been a good living in the 1860s. As with the medieval predecessor, the entrance is through the tower which forms a porch on the south side, in common with about thirty other East Anglian churches. Until the 1860s there was a further castellated porch on the south side of the tower, something in the style of the Hadleigh Deanery tower, but this was removed. You can see it in as photograph at the top of this page. And looking at this photograph, it is hard not to think that Phipson retained at least part of the lower stage of the tower.
There is a small statue of the church's patron saint in the niche above the entrance, by the sculptor Richard Pfeiffer. Away to the east, the same sculptor produced St John the Evangelist and St Mary of Magdala on the end of the chancel, and there is more of his work inside. You step into the tower porch under vaulting. A small door in the north-east corner leads up into the ringing chamber and beyond that the belfry, with a ring of twelve bells. The south doorway into the church has stops representing the Annunciation, with the angel to the west, and Mary at her prayer desk to the east. As part of a Millennium project this doorway was painted and gilded. It leads through into the south aisle, beyond which the wide nave seems to swallow all sound, a powerful transition from the outside. Polished wood and tile gleam under coloured light from large windows filled with 19th Century glass. At one time the walls were stencilled, but this was removed in the 1960s. The former church was dark and serious inside, as a drawing in the north aisle shows, so it must have made quite a contrast when the townspeople first entered their new church.
The font by the doorway is the first of a number of significant survivals from the old church. It's one of the 15th Century East Anglian series of which several hundred survive, all slightly different. It is in good condition, and you can't help thinking that this is ironically because Ipswich was a town which embraced protestantism whole-heartedly after the Reformation, and it is likely that the font was plastered over in the mid-16th Century to make it plain and simple. The lions around the pillar stand on human heads, and there are more heads beneath the bowl. The next survival that comes into view is the pair of 15th Century benches at the west end of the nave. The bench ends are clerics holding books, and above them memorable finials depicting two lions, a dragon and what might be a cat or a dog.
The box pews were removed as part of Phipson's restoration and replaced with high quality benches. The front row are the Borough Corporation seats, a mace rest and a sword rest in front of them. The carvings on the ends of the benches are seahorses, the creatures that hold the shield on the Ipswich Borough arms, and on the finials in front are lions holding ships, the crest of the Borough. As you might expect in Ipswich these are by Henry Ringham, whose church carving was always of a high quality, and is perhaps best known at Woolpit and Combs. His workshop on St John's Road employed fifty people at the time of the 1861 census, but by the following year he was bankrupt, and so the work here is likely some of the last that he produced. He died in 1866, and Ringham Road in East Ipswich remembers him.
Moving into the chancel, the other major survival is a collection of late 15th and early 16th Century brasses. Altogether there are ten large figures, but in fact some of them represent the same person more than once. The most memorable is probably that of Alys Baldry, who died in 1507. She lies between her two husbands. The first, Robert Wimbill, is on the right. He died in about 1477. He was a notary, and his ink pot and pen case hang from his belt. Her second husband, Thomas Baldry, is on the left. He died in 1525. He was a merchant, and his merchant mark is set beneath his feet next to Alys's five daughters and four sons.
Alys Baldry, Robert Wimbill and Thomas Baldry are all depicted in further brasses here. The best of these is that to Robert. It was commissioned by his will in the 1470s. He lies on his own with a Latin inscription which translates as 'My hope lies in my heart. Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on me.' His ink pot and pen case hang from his belt again, and between his feet are a skull and scattered bones, an early memento mori. Thomas Baldry's own brass memorial shows him lying between his two wives, Alys who we have already met, and his second wife Christian. The other group of three figures depicts Thomas Drayll, a merchant, with his wives Margaret and Agnes. Thomas died in 1512. The arms of the Cinque Ports are set above him, and a large merchant mark is beneath his feet. Several inscriptions are missing, and we know that when the iconoclast William Dowsing visited the church on 29th Janary 1644 he ordered the removal of six brass inscriptions with Ora pro nobis ('pray for us') and Ora pro animabus ('pray for our souls'), and Cujus animae propitietur deus ('on whose soul may God have mercy') and pray for the soul in English.
The spectacular sanctuary with its imposing reredos, piscina and sedilia was clearly designed for shadowy, incense-led worship. A lush Arts and Crafts crucifixion surmounts the altar. East Anglian saints flank the walls. James Bettley, revising the Buildings of England volume for East Suffolk, records that it was the work of Somers, Clarke & Micklethwaite in the 1880s. The chancel is only lit from the east window, emphasising the focus from the rest of the church. The set of twelve apostles and twelve angels on the choir stalls are also by Pfeiffer. You can see his signature on the back of St Luke's icon of the Blessed Virgin. This sanctuary is the ultimate expression of late 19th Century Tractarianism in Suffolk. Back in the nave, the early 18th Century pulpit speaks of a different liturgical age, when this church was a preaching house rather than a sacramental space. James Bettley credits its carving to James Hubbard, and notes its similarity to that in the Unitarian Meeting House a few hundred yards off. The 19th Century screen that stood in the chancel arch and separated these two liturgical ages was moved to the east end of the north aisle as an organ screen some time in the 20th Century.
Another screen separates off the Lady Chapel from the south aisle and the chancel. The chapel is a pleasing period piece, furnished sentimentally. The reredos, by Arthur Wallace in 1907, depicts the Supper at Emmaus flanked by Moses and Elijah in an echo of the Transfiguration. The early 20th Century paintings on the south wall are lovely, especially the infant Christ as he plays at the feet of St Joseph. But the overwhelming atmosphere of this church comes from its extensive range of 19th Century glass, the largest collection in Suffolk. It provides a catalogue of some of the major 19th Century workshops over a fairly short period, from the 1850s to the 1880s. Much of it is by Clayton & Bell, who probably received the commission for east and west windows and south aisle as part of Phipson's rebuilding contract. Other major workshops include those of William Wailes, the O'Connors and Lavers, Barraud & Westlake. A small amount of 1840s glass in the north aisle was reset here from the previous church. There are photographs of the glass at the bottom of this page.
As was common in major 19th Century restorations, the memorials that once flanked the walls were collected together and reset at the west end of the nave. At St Mary le Tower this was a major task, for there are a lot of them. The most famous is that to William Smart, MP for Ipswich in the late 16th Century. It is painted on boards. His inscription is a long acrostic, and he kneels at the bottom opposite his wife. between them is a panoramic view of the Ipswich townscape as it was in 1599, the year that he died, a remarkable snapshot of the past. Other memorials include those of the 17th Century when Ipswich was the heartland of firebrand protestant East Anglia. Matthew Lawrence, who died in 1653, was the publike preacher of this towne. There are more memorials in the north chancel aisle, now divided up as vestries. The best of these is to John and Elizabeth Robinson. He died in 1666. They kneel at their prayer desks, and below them are their children Thomas, John, Mary and Elizabeth, who all predeceased their mother. Also here are memorials to a number of the Cobbold family, who were not only important locally but even provided ministers for this church.
There are more Cobbold memorials in the nave, including one in glass at the west end of the north aisle. It is dedicated to Lucy Chevallier Cobbold, and depicts her with her daughter at the Presentation in the Temple. The Cobbold family embraced Tractarianism wholeheartedly, being largely responsible for the building of St Bartholomew near their home at Holywells Park. They probably had an influence over the Bacon family, whose wealth went towards the rebuilding, and whose symbol of a boar can be seen in the floor tiles. A good set of Stuart royal arms hangs above the west doorway.
I can't imagine what the 17th Century parishioners would make of this church if they could come back and see it now. Trevor Cooper, in his edition of The Journals of William Dowsing, recalls that the atmosphere in the town was so strongly puritan that in the 1630s the churchwardens were excommunicated for refusing to carry out the sacramentalist reforms of Archbishop Laud. The reforms demanded that the altar be returned to the chancel and railed in, but this was considered idolatrous by the parishioners. When the visitation commissioners of the Bishop of Norwich came to the church in April 1636 to see if the commands had been carried out, the churchwardens refused to give up the keys... verbally assaulting them and and confronting them with 'musketts charged, swords, staves and other weapons'.
Frank Grace, in his 'Schismaticall and Factious Humours': Opposition in Ipswich to Laudian Church Government, records a number of other incidents both here and in other Ipswich churches in the late 1630s, including an attack on 'a conformable minister' (that is to say one faithful to the Bishop) by a mob as well as a stranger who was invited by the town bailiffs to preach a very factious and seditious sermon in Tower church to a large congregation against the authority of the incumbent, who no doubt was held at bay while the ranting went on. As with all the Ipswich churches, the iconoclast William Dowsing was welcomed with open arms by the churchwardens here on his visit of January 1644. Looking around at Phipson's sacramental glory, it is hard to imagine now.
Simon Knott, December 2022
Flint from the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA. (cut surface) (centimeter scale)
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Studies done by geologists at Ohio State University at Newark indicate that the Vanport Flint has a relatively complex history, the details of which are still being worked out.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric American Indians quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old Indian flint pits can be examined along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park ("State Memorial"). Many authentic Indian artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
This multicolored flint sample is from far-eastern Flint Ridge. It has been heated - knappers usually do this to improve the knappability of the flint. Remarkably, the rock now has the consistency of opalite.
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: Neibarger Flint Quarry - flint pit on the Neibarger property, far-eastern Flint Ridge, far-western Muskingum County, east-central Ohio, USA
Flint from the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA. (cut surface) (centimeter scale)
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Studies done by geologists at Ohio State University at Newark indicate that the Vanport Flint has a relatively complex history, the details of which are still being worked out.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric American Indians quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old Indian flint pits can be examined along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park ("State Memorial"). Many authentic Indian artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
This multicolored flint sample is from far-eastern Flint Ridge. It has been heated - knappers usually do this to improve the knappability of the flint. Remarkably, the rock now has the consistency of opalite.
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: Neibarger Flint Quarry - flint pit on the Neibarger property, far-eastern Flint Ridge, far-western Muskingum County, east-central Ohio, USA
Peter Paul Rubens
Mädchen mit Fächer (nach Tizian) [1628-29] -
Vienna, KHM - wm
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Rubens copied Titian's model here, but there were apparently several versions of it. In addition to the painting by the Venetian artist now in Dresden, there was probably another, now lost, model by Titian, which Anton van Dyck recorded in his Italian sketchbook. Rubens varied the work of his great predecessor with great empathy by depicting the girl more succinctly and thus making her appear more lifelike.
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Rubens kopierte hier ein Vorbild Tizians, von dem es aber offenbar mehrere Versionen gab. Neben dem heute in Dresden befindlichen Gemälde des Venezianers hat es wohl noch eine andere, heute verschollene Vorlage Tizians gegeben, die Anton van Dyck in seinem italienischen Skizzenbuch festhielt. Mit großer Einfühlungsgabe variiert Rubens das Werk des großen Vorgängers, indem er das Mädchen knapper ins Bild setzt und es damit lebensnäher erscheinen lässt.
Source: KHM
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Flint from the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA. (centimeter scale)
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Studies done by geologists at Ohio State University at Newark indicate that the Vanport Flint has a relatively complex history, the details of which are still being worked out.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric American Indians quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old Indian flint pits can be examined along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park ("State Memorial"). Many authentic Indian artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
This attractive brown-and-dark blue flint sample is a flint knapper's preform. They are often sold to other flint knappers, who process them further into various points. The flint has been moderately heated in a kiln. Heating flint is a standard procedure. It improves the knappability of the flint. Heating also often intensifies colors.
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: Roy Miller Flint Quarries - flint pit just northwest of the Flint Ridge Road-Brownsville Road intersection, near Flint Ridge State Park, central Flint Ridge, southeastern Licking County, east-central Ohio, USA (vicinity of 39° 59’ 21.84" North latitude, 82° 15’ 49.04" West longitude)
Familiar to residents and visitors alike, the great Victorian spire of St Mary-le-Tower rises above the shopping streets of central Ipswich, the nearest thing the town will ever have to a cathedral. This is Suffolk's Victorian church par excellence. It is full of the spirit of its age, from the Suffolk flushwork to the international gothic of the spire itself. One could no more imagine Ipswich without 'the Tower' than without the Orwell Bridge.
There were six town centre churches dedicated to St Mary in the Middle Ages; four survive, picturesquely differentiated as St Mary le Tower ('the Tower'), St Mary at Elms ('the Elms'), St Mary at Quay and St Mary at Stoke.
There was a church here in 1200, when the Borough of Ipswich was declared in the churchyard by the granting of a charter. When the Diocese of Norwich restored it in the mid-nineteenth century, they decided on a complete rebuild in stone on the same site. The Diocesan Architect R.M. Phipson was chosen for the job, and the old church was effectively demolished in the 1860s, and a new one built in its place. The old foundations were used, with an extension towards Northgate Street, which is why the northern part of the churchyard is so severely cut off.
There never was a north door, and the west door is beautiful but rather useless, since it is below street level and the path merely leads round to the south. The only parts of the medieval church retained were a doorway, the nave arcades, and a few fixtures and fittings. From the outside it is virtually all Phipson's work, all of a piece, and quite magnificent. The flushwork is exuberant; being a flint-knapper must have been a good living in the 1860s.
The entrance is in the style of the area's south-west tower porches, although on a much grander scale. The actual entrance arch seems to have been retained, as it appears to be the same in the photograph of the 1850s (above), albeit with the tablets now removed. If so, then it is 15th century. There is a fine 19th century Madonna and child in the niche above by Richard Pfeiffer, full of Victorian Anglo-catholic sentiment. Away to the east, the same sculptor produced St John the Evangelist and St Mary of Magdala on the end of the chancel.
The spire is about 60m tall. The chequerboard pattern of the lower tower is rather alarming in comparison with the subtlety of some Suffolk churches, but must have been the very thing in the late 19th century (see the same at Butterfield's south porch of St Mary at Stoke), or at least until the confection of St Lawrence across the road was finished 20 years later. The spire is heartier than Phipson's other more feminine Suffolk spires at Great Finborough and Woolpit,.
The porch inside is grand, stone and marble rising to a painted wooden ceilure. St Peter and St Paul, in the windows either side, look on. A little door to the north-east leads up to the belfry, with a ring of thirteen bells. Their renewal was completed in 1999; I am told that it is actually a ring of twelve, and the thirteenth is a sharp 2nd for use when fewer than twelve are rung. The doorway into the church has been given lovely stops representing the Annunciation, with the angel to the west, and Mary at her prayer desk to the east. As part of the Millenium project, all of this has been guilded, and it is all absolutely gorgeous.
Inside, the vastness swallows all sound. Everywhere there is the gleam of polished wood and tile. Sadly, it was fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s to remove tiles from walls, but you can still make out where these would have been. Also removed was the chancel screen. The old memorials crowd uncomfortably at the west end - Phipson was having no truck with them - but the majestic view to the east is testimony to Phipson's competency. Everything is done to the letter, with the finest attention paid to detail.
The demolished church was very dark and serious inside, so it must have made quite a contrast when the town saw inside its new church. There is a drawing of the inside of this in the north aisle, along with part of the Jacobean chancel arch. Now, the great Perpendicular-style west window fills the nave with coloured light in the afternoons, a perfect foil for evening prayer. A fine Charles II royal arms hangs above.
The font is an excellent example of the typical 15th century East Anglian style, and deserves to be better known. It is in very good condition indeed, probably because this was a town that embraced protestantism whole-heartedly, and it was plastered over in the mid-16th century to make it plain and simple. The lions around the pillar stand on human heads, and there are more heads beneath the bowl. On the bowl itself are more lions, in a curious echo of the font of St Peter, albeit some four hundred years later. There are fine brasses from the original church in the chancel. The early 18th century pulpit, contemporary with and similar to the one in the Unitarian chapel, is a bit sombre, but an excellent example of Grinling Gibbons-style carving. The screen moved from the chancel arch can now be found at the east end of the north aisle, where it softens the metal organ pipes. It is slightly older than its near-twin that separates off the Lady Chapel.
The Decorated-style east window has a certain delicacy, and the otherwise windowless and heavy-wooded chancel was clearly designed for dark, shadowy, incense-led worship. The best feature of the chancel, and perhaps of the whole church, is the grand reredos, piscina and sedilia in the sanctuary, all of about 1900. A lush Arts and Crafts crucifixion surmounts the altar, done in gesso work on wood. East Anglian Saints flank the walls. This sanctuary is the ultimate expression of late 19th century Tractarianism in Suffolk. To think that this was only a few decades after the events at Claydon! You really feel as if you might be in a 19th century colonial Cathedral.
The Lady Chapel is also a delightful piece, full of Victorian and Edwardian sentiment. The reredos shows the transfiguation, but I like best the early 20th century paintings on the south wall, especially the touching infant Christ, as he plays at the feet of St Joseph.
The excellent set of twelve apostles and twelve angels on the choir stalls (still in use for their original purpose) are by Pfeiffer, who did the external statues. You can see his signature on the back of St Luke's icon of the Blessed Virgin.
The Victorian stained glass windows in the nave are of variable quality. The woodwork is much better; it is also largely 19th century, much the work of Pfeiffer and the always excellent Henry Ringham; more of his work can be seen at Great Bealings. The front pews are the so-called 'Corporation pews'; the Tower styles itself the civic church of Ipswich, and one can see the same attempt to merge the municipal with the sacramental as at Phipson's other major work for the diocese, the internal restoration of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich. The bench ends show the Ipswich symbols of a seahorse, and a lion carrying a ship.
If you look carefully at the back of the church, however, you will see that the churchwardens pews still retain their medieval bench ends.
The arcades are from the medieval church, and must have had a slender grace rather lost now - they yearn for white light to enfold them.
The famous Cobbold family provided ministers for this church for many years in the 18th and 19th centuries, and their tombs can be seen in the north chancel aisle, beyond the organ. The family embraced Tractarianism wholeheartedly, being largely responsible for the building of St Bartholomew near their home at Holywells Park. They probably had an influence over the Bacon family, whose wealth went towards the rebuilding, and whose symbol of a boar may be found in the floor tiles.
One memorial you must not miss is that to William Smart, MP for Ipswich, which you can find on the wall in the north west corner of the nave. It is painted on wood, and features a panoramic view of the Ipswich townscape as it was in 1599, when he died.
This parish is unusual in having virtually no resident population, and the congregation is of people drawn from a wide area attracted by the liberal teaching, musical tradition and peculiar cathedral-style high churchmanship of the church. It may not be the biggest congregation in Ipswich, but it is a friendly one.
Familiar to residents and visitors alike, the great Victorian spire of St Mary-le-Tower rises above the shopping streets of central Ipswich, the nearest thing the town will ever have to a cathedral. This is Suffolk's Victorian church par excellence. It is full of the spirit of its age, from the Suffolk flushwork to the international gothic of the spire itself. One could no more imagine Ipswich without 'the Tower' than without the Orwell Bridge.
There were six town centre churches dedicated to St Mary in the Middle Ages; four survive, picturesquely differentiated as St Mary le Tower ('the Tower'), St Mary at Elms ('the Elms'), St Mary at Quay and St Mary at Stoke.
There was a church here in 1200, when the Borough of Ipswich was declared in the churchyard by the granting of a charter. When the Diocese of Norwich restored it in the mid-nineteenth century, they decided on a complete rebuild in stone on the same site. The Diocesan Architect R.M. Phipson was chosen for the job, and the old church was effectively demolished in the 1860s, and a new one built in its place. The old foundations were used, with an extension towards Northgate Street, which is why the northern part of the churchyard is so severely cut off.
There never was a north door, and the west door is beautiful but rather useless, since it is below street level and the path merely leads round to the south. The only parts of the medieval church retained were a doorway, the nave arcades, and a few fixtures and fittings. From the outside it is virtually all Phipson's work, all of a piece, and quite magnificent. The flushwork is exuberant; being a flint-knapper must have been a good living in the 1860s.
The entrance is in the style of the area's south-west tower porches, although on a much grander scale. The actual entrance arch seems to have been retained, as it appears to be the same in the photograph of the 1850s (above), albeit with the tablets now removed. If so, then it is 15th century. There is a fine 19th century Madonna and child in the niche above by Richard Pfeiffer, full of Victorian Anglo-catholic sentiment. Away to the east, the same sculptor produced St John the Evangelist and St Mary of Magdala on the end of the chancel.
The spire is about 60m tall. The chequerboard pattern of the lower tower is rather alarming in comparison with the subtlety of some Suffolk churches, but must have been the very thing in the late 19th century (see the same at Butterfield's south porch of St Mary at Stoke), or at least until the confection of St Lawrence across the road was finished 20 years later. The spire is heartier than Phipson's other more feminine Suffolk spires at Great Finborough and Woolpit,.
The porch inside is grand, stone and marble rising to a painted wooden ceilure. St Peter and St Paul, in the windows either side, look on. A little door to the north-east leads up to the belfry, with a ring of thirteen bells. Their renewal was completed in 1999; I am told that it is actually a ring of twelve, and the thirteenth is a sharp 2nd for use when fewer than twelve are rung. The doorway into the church has been given lovely stops representing the Annunciation, with the angel to the west, and Mary at her prayer desk to the east. As part of the Millenium project, all of this has been guilded, and it is all absolutely gorgeous.
Inside, the vastness swallows all sound. Everywhere there is the gleam of polished wood and tile. Sadly, it was fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s to remove tiles from walls, but you can still make out where these would have been. Also removed was the chancel screen. The old memorials crowd uncomfortably at the west end - Phipson was having no truck with them - but the majestic view to the east is testimony to Phipson's competency. Everything is done to the letter, with the finest attention paid to detail.
The demolished church was very dark and serious inside, so it must have made quite a contrast when the town saw inside its new church. There is a drawing of the inside of this in the north aisle, along with part of the Jacobean chancel arch. Now, the great Perpendicular-style west window fills the nave with coloured light in the afternoons, a perfect foil for evening prayer. A fine Charles II royal arms hangs above.
The font is an excellent example of the typical 15th century East Anglian style, and deserves to be better known. It is in very good condition indeed, probably because this was a town that embraced protestantism whole-heartedly, and it was plastered over in the mid-16th century to make it plain and simple. The lions around the pillar stand on human heads, and there are more heads beneath the bowl. On the bowl itself are more lions, in a curious echo of the font of St Peter, albeit some four hundred years later. There are fine brasses from the original church in the chancel. The early 18th century pulpit, contemporary with and similar to the one in the Unitarian chapel, is a bit sombre, but an excellent example of Grinling Gibbons-style carving. The screen moved from the chancel arch can now be found at the east end of the north aisle, where it softens the metal organ pipes. It is slightly older than its near-twin that separates off the Lady Chapel.
The Decorated-style east window has a certain delicacy, and the otherwise windowless and heavy-wooded chancel was clearly designed for dark, shadowy, incense-led worship. The best feature of the chancel, and perhaps of the whole church, is the grand reredos, piscina and sedilia in the sanctuary, all of about 1900. A lush Arts and Crafts crucifixion surmounts the altar, done in gesso work on wood. East Anglian Saints flank the walls. This sanctuary is the ultimate expression of late 19th century Tractarianism in Suffolk. To think that this was only a few decades after the events at Claydon! You really feel as if you might be in a 19th century colonial Cathedral.
The Lady Chapel is also a delightful piece, full of Victorian and Edwardian sentiment. The reredos shows the transfiguation, but I like best the early 20th century paintings on the south wall, especially the touching infant Christ, as he plays at the feet of St Joseph.
The excellent set of twelve apostles and twelve angels on the choir stalls (still in use for their original purpose) are by Pfeiffer, who did the external statues. You can see his signature on the back of St Luke's icon of the Blessed Virgin.
The Victorian stained glass windows in the nave are of variable quality. The woodwork is much better; it is also largely 19th century, much the work of Pfeiffer and the always excellent Henry Ringham; more of his work can be seen at Great Bealings. The front pews are the so-called 'Corporation pews'; the Tower styles itself the civic church of Ipswich, and one can see the same attempt to merge the municipal with the sacramental as at Phipson's other major work for the diocese, the internal restoration of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich. The bench ends show the Ipswich symbols of a seahorse, and a lion carrying a ship.
If you look carefully at the back of the church, however, you will see that the churchwardens pews still retain their medieval bench ends.
The arcades are from the medieval church, and must have had a slender grace rather lost now - they yearn for white light to enfold them.
The famous Cobbold family provided ministers for this church for many years in the 18th and 19th centuries, and their tombs can be seen in the north chancel aisle, beyond the organ. The family embraced Tractarianism wholeheartedly, being largely responsible for the building of St Bartholomew near their home at Holywells Park. They probably had an influence over the Bacon family, whose wealth went towards the rebuilding, and whose symbol of a boar may be found in the floor tiles.
One memorial you must not miss is that to William Smart, MP for Ipswich, which you can find on the wall in the north west corner of the nave. It is painted on wood, and features a panoramic view of the Ipswich townscape as it was in 1599, when he died.
This parish is unusual in having virtually no resident population, and the congregation is of people drawn from a wide area attracted by the liberal teaching, musical tradition and peculiar cathedral-style high churchmanship of the church. It may not be the biggest congregation in Ipswich, but it is a friendly one.
I have a beautiful old box full of buttons from my grandmother. This is three of the sweet buttons.
This weeks #TwPhCh is "nær" (close).
Flint-knapped point. (~6.3 centimeters tall)
Knapper: Chris Miller
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric American Indians quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old Indian flint pits can be examined along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park ("State Memorial"). Many authentic Indian artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
The point seen here is a modern replica, made by a knapper using material from a Roy Miller quarry on Flint Ridge. This area is famous for having greenish and/or bluish coloration, which become intensified with heating.
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: Roy Miller flint pit, northwestern corner of the Brownsville Road-Flint Ridge Road intersection, next to Flint Ridge State Park, Flint Ridge, southeastern Licking County, east-central Ohio, USA
Flint-knapped arrowhead. (~5.7 centimeters tall)
Knapper: Jim Bohannon
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric American Indians quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old Indian flint pits can be examined along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park ("State Memorial"). Many authentic Indian artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
The arrowhead seen here is a modern replica, produced by a skilled knapper named Jim Bohannon. The flint itself comes from a Roy Miller flint pit on Flint Ridge. Material from this site is famous for having greenish and/or bluish coloration, which become intensified with heating.
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: Roy Miller flint pit, northwestern corner of the Brownsville Road-Flint Ridge Road intersection, next to Flint Ridge State Park, Flint Ridge, southeastern Licking County, east-central Ohio, USA
Familiar to residents and visitors alike, the great Victorian spire of St Mary-le-Tower rises above the shopping streets of central Ipswich, the nearest thing the town will ever have to a cathedral. This is Suffolk's Victorian church par excellence. It is full of the spirit of its age, from the Suffolk flushwork to the international gothic of the spire itself. One could no more imagine Ipswich without 'the Tower' than without the Orwell Bridge.
There were six town centre churches dedicated to St Mary in the Middle Ages; four survive, picturesquely differentiated as St Mary le Tower ('the Tower'), St Mary at Elms ('the Elms'), St Mary at Quay and St Mary at Stoke.
There was a church here in 1200, when the Borough of Ipswich was declared in the churchyard by the granting of a charter. When the Diocese of Norwich restored it in the mid-nineteenth century, they decided on a complete rebuild in stone on the same site. The Diocesan Architect R.M. Phipson was chosen for the job, and the old church was effectively demolished in the 1860s, and a new one built in its place. The old foundations were used, with an extension towards Northgate Street, which is why the northern part of the churchyard is so severely cut off.
There never was a north door, and the west door is beautiful but rather useless, since it is below street level and the path merely leads round to the south. The only parts of the medieval church retained were a doorway, the nave arcades, and a few fixtures and fittings. From the outside it is virtually all Phipson's work, all of a piece, and quite magnificent. The flushwork is exuberant; being a flint-knapper must have been a good living in the 1860s.
The entrance is in the style of the area's south-west tower porches, although on a much grander scale. The actual entrance arch seems to have been retained, as it appears to be the same in the photograph of the 1850s (above), albeit with the tablets now removed. If so, then it is 15th century. There is a fine 19th century Madonna and child in the niche above by Richard Pfeiffer, full of Victorian Anglo-catholic sentiment. Away to the east, the same sculptor produced St John the Evangelist and St Mary of Magdala on the end of the chancel.
The spire is about 60m tall. The chequerboard pattern of the lower tower is rather alarming in comparison with the subtlety of some Suffolk churches, but must have been the very thing in the late 19th century (see the same at Butterfield's south porch of St Mary at Stoke), or at least until the confection of St Lawrence across the road was finished 20 years later. The spire is heartier than Phipson's other more feminine Suffolk spires at Great Finborough and Woolpit,.
The porch inside is grand, stone and marble rising to a painted wooden ceilure. St Peter and St Paul, in the windows either side, look on. A little door to the north-east leads up to the belfry, with a ring of thirteen bells. Their renewal was completed in 1999; I am told that it is actually a ring of twelve, and the thirteenth is a sharp 2nd for use when fewer than twelve are rung. The doorway into the church has been given lovely stops representing the Annunciation, with the angel to the west, and Mary at her prayer desk to the east. As part of the Millenium project, all of this has been guilded, and it is all absolutely gorgeous.
Inside, the vastness swallows all sound. Everywhere there is the gleam of polished wood and tile. Sadly, it was fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s to remove tiles from walls, but you can still make out where these would have been. Also removed was the chancel screen. The old memorials crowd uncomfortably at the west end - Phipson was having no truck with them - but the majestic view to the east is testimony to Phipson's competency. Everything is done to the letter, with the finest attention paid to detail.
The demolished church was very dark and serious inside, so it must have made quite a contrast when the town saw inside its new church. There is a drawing of the inside of this in the north aisle, along with part of the Jacobean chancel arch. Now, the great Perpendicular-style west window fills the nave with coloured light in the afternoons, a perfect foil for evening prayer. A fine Charles II royal arms hangs above.
The font is an excellent example of the typical 15th century East Anglian style, and deserves to be better known. It is in very good condition indeed, probably because this was a town that embraced protestantism whole-heartedly, and it was plastered over in the mid-16th century to make it plain and simple. The lions around the pillar stand on human heads, and there are more heads beneath the bowl. On the bowl itself are more lions, in a curious echo of the font of St Peter, albeit some four hundred years later. There are fine brasses from the original church in the chancel. The early 18th century pulpit, contemporary with and similar to the one in the Unitarian chapel, is a bit sombre, but an excellent example of Grinling Gibbons-style carving. The screen moved from the chancel arch can now be found at the east end of the north aisle, where it softens the metal organ pipes. It is slightly older than its near-twin that separates off the Lady Chapel.
The Decorated-style east window has a certain delicacy, and the otherwise windowless and heavy-wooded chancel was clearly designed for dark, shadowy, incense-led worship. The best feature of the chancel, and perhaps of the whole church, is the grand reredos, piscina and sedilia in the sanctuary, all of about 1900. A lush Arts and Crafts crucifixion surmounts the altar, done in gesso work on wood. East Anglian Saints flank the walls. This sanctuary is the ultimate expression of late 19th century Tractarianism in Suffolk. To think that this was only a few decades after the events at Claydon! You really feel as if you might be in a 19th century colonial Cathedral.
The Lady Chapel is also a delightful piece, full of Victorian and Edwardian sentiment. The reredos shows the transfiguation, but I like best the early 20th century paintings on the south wall, especially the touching infant Christ, as he plays at the feet of St Joseph.
The excellent set of twelve apostles and twelve angels on the choir stalls (still in use for their original purpose) are by Pfeiffer, who did the external statues. You can see his signature on the back of St Luke's icon of the Blessed Virgin.
The Victorian stained glass windows in the nave are of variable quality. The woodwork is much better; it is also largely 19th century, much the work of Pfeiffer and the always excellent Henry Ringham; more of his work can be seen at Great Bealings. The front pews are the so-called 'Corporation pews'; the Tower styles itself the civic church of Ipswich, and one can see the same attempt to merge the municipal with the sacramental as at Phipson's other major work for the diocese, the internal restoration of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich. The bench ends show the Ipswich symbols of a seahorse, and a lion carrying a ship.
If you look carefully at the back of the church, however, you will see that the churchwardens pews still retain their medieval bench ends.
The arcades are from the medieval church, and must have had a slender grace rather lost now - they yearn for white light to enfold them.
The famous Cobbold family provided ministers for this church for many years in the 18th and 19th centuries, and their tombs can be seen in the north chancel aisle, beyond the organ. The family embraced Tractarianism wholeheartedly, being largely responsible for the building of St Bartholomew near their home at Holywells Park. They probably had an influence over the Bacon family, whose wealth went towards the rebuilding, and whose symbol of a boar may be found in the floor tiles.
One memorial you must not miss is that to William Smart, MP for Ipswich, which you can find on the wall in the north west corner of the nave. It is painted on wood, and features a panoramic view of the Ipswich townscape as it was in 1599, when he died.
This parish is unusual in having virtually no resident population, and the congregation is of people drawn from a wide area attracted by the liberal teaching, musical tradition and peculiar cathedral-style high churchmanship of the church. It may not be the biggest congregation in Ipswich, but it is a friendly one.
Fossiliferous chert nodule with a fossil sponge from the Cretaceous of Britain. (public display, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA)
Sedimentary rocks form by the solidification of loose sediments. Loose sediments become hard rocks by the processes of deposition, burial, compaction, dewatering, and cementation.
There are three categories of sedimentary rocks:
1) Siliciclastic sedimentary rocks form by the solidification of sediments produced by weathering & erosion of any previously existing rocks.
2) Biogenic sedimentary rocks form by the solidification of sediments that were once-living organisms (plants, animals, micro-organisms).
3) Chemical sedimentary rocks form by the solidification of sediments formed by inorganic chemical reactions. Most sedimentary rocks have a clastic texture, but some are crystalline.
Chert is a cryptocrystalline-textured, siliceous sedimentary rock. It is composed of quartz (SiO2). Traditionally, light-colored varieties were called “chert” by geologists, and dark-colored varieties were called “flint”. This arbitrary distinction is no longer preferred. “Flint” is now an archaeological term for chert that has been worked by early humans. "Flint" is generally perceived by rockhounds to be high-quality material (from a flint-knapper's point of view, apparently), whereas "chert" is perceived as low-quality material. Chert nodules in Cretaceous chalks of Britain are still called “flint” by some geologists. Chert meganodules at Flint Ridge, Ohio are called “flint” in the geologic literature.
Individual quartz crystals are incredibly small in cherts, and generally cannot be seen with normal microscopes. Chert comes close to having the physical properties of a glassy textured rock - it is very hard (H = 7), has conchoidal fracture (smooth & curved fracture surfaces), and has sharp broken edges.
Cherts vary in color. Common chert colors include whitish, grayish, brownish to dark gray, very dark blue, and black. Reds, yellows, and greens are sometimes present. Some cherts are complexly multicolored.
Some cherts form biogenically, but other cherts have a chemical origin. As a result, chert cannot be placed cleanly or neatly or unambiguously into a traditional sedimentary rock category (siliciclastic, biogenic, chemical).
The chert nodule shown above is from an Upper Cretaceous chalk succession at Warminster, England. It contains a fossil sponge (Animalia, Porifera).
Flint-knapped spearpoint from the Oligocene of Georgia, USA. (~11.3 centimeters tall)
Knapper: Ronnie Miller
"Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
Seen here is a knapped spearpoint - it's a modern replica. The rock is "Flint River Chert", derived from the "Flint River Formation" in Georgia. Oligocene-aged fossils have been reported from the fossiliferous chert component of the unit.
Stratigraphy: chert clast in the "Flint River Formation", Oligocene
Locality: unrecorded/undisclosed site at or near the town of Albany, southern Georgia, USA
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is greeted by U.S. Embassy Chargé d’ Affaires Marc Knapper upon arrival at Osan Air Base in the Republic of Korea on November 7, 2017. [State Department Photo/ Public Domain]
This image and others where kindly donated to the Society by Leon Knapper whose grandfather worked at the Formby Power House from about 1916 to 1959.
Marc Knapper, U.S. Embassy Seoul Chargé d’Affaires ad interim; Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, U.S. Forces Korea commander; and South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs Deputy Director General for North American Affairs Lee Choong-myon await the arrival of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at Osan Air Base outside of Seoul, South Korea, on March 17, 2017. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
Flint from the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA.
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Studies done by geologists at Ohio State University at Newark indicate that the Vanport Flint has a relatively complex history, the details of which are still being worked out.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric American Indians quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old Indian flint pits can be examined along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park ("State Memorial"). Many authentic Indian artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
The reddish and yellowish-brown coloration in the large specimen shown above is from iron oxides (hematite and limonite).
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: unrecorded/undisclosed site on Flint Ridge (probably Nethers Flint Quarries - flint pits in the woods on the southwestern side of Flint Ridge Road, eastern Flint Ridge), east-central Ohio, USA
I was asked a few weeks back, if I fancied meeting up with friends, Simon and Cam for a few bears and a crawl round Ipswich.
Seemed a great idea, but checking Network Rain this week, I found that there were replacement buses out of Liverpool Street to Whitham and out of Cambridge. The first added an hour to the trip to Ipswich, the second, 90 minutes.
Jools said she would enjoy a trip out and a walk around Manningtree, so we could go in the car, I would drive up, she would drive back, and we would both have some exercise and I would meet friends.
Perfect.
Although we had planned to go to Tesco first, in the end we had breakfast and set off at half seven, eager to get some miles under our belts before traffic really built at Dartford.
Up the A2 in bright sunshine, it was a great day for travel, but also I thought it might have been good for checking out orchid woods back home. But a change is always good, and it has been nearly 9 years since Simon invited me for a tour round historic Ipswich, showing there was almost as much history there than in Norwich to the north.
Into Essex before nine, and arriving in Ipswich before ten, we decided to find somewhere for breakfast first before going our separate ways.
A large breakfast later, we split up, and I went to wander north to St Margaret's church, which I had been into on that trip 9 years back, but my shots not so good.
I found many interesting places in-between the modern buildings and urban sprawl, timber framed houses, Tudor brick and much more beside.
Sadly, St Margaret was locked. I could see the notice on the porch door, so I didn't go up to see what it said.
I wandered back, found St Mary le Tower open, so went in and took over a hundred shots, soaking in the fine Victorian glass and carved bench ends, even if they were 19th century and not older.
In the south chapel, a group were talking quietly, so I tried not to disturb them, only realising how loud the shutter on the camera was.
The font took my eye first, as it is a well preserved one from the 15th century. Though these are common in East Anglia, not so in deepest Kent, so I snapped it from all directions, recording each mark of the carver's tools.
The clocked ticked round to midday, and so I made my way to the quayside where I was to meet my friends.
Simon lives in Ipswich, but Cam and David had come down on the train from the Fine City. We met at the Briarbank Brewery Tap where I had a couple of mocha porters, which were very nice indeed.
From there we went to the Dove where we had two more beers as well as lunch.
And finally a walk to The Spread Eagle for one final beer before I walked back to Portman Road to meet Jools at the car.
Jools drove us back to the A12, and pointed the car south. As we drove, dusk fell and rain began to fall. Not very pleasant. But at least traffic was light, so in an hour we were on the M25 and twenty minutes later over the river and back in Kent.
Rain fell steadily as we cruised down the M20, past the familiar landmarks until we were back in Dover. Where we had to make a pit stop at M and S, as we needed supplies, and something for supper.
Not sure that garlic bread and wine counts as a meal, but did for us, so at half nine, we climbed the hill to bed.
--------------------------------------------------
Ipswich is the county town of Suffolk, and is also probably the longest continuously occupied town in England. Here on the River Gipping, in the south of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia, a number of 7th Century industrial villages grew together, and since then Ipswich has always been an industrial and commercial town, processing the produce of the land round about, and exporting it up the River Orwell to other parts of England and the continent. It was wealthy in the late medieval period, but it suffered from being cut off from its European markets by the outfall from the Reformation. A strongly puritan town in the 17th Century, a quiet backwater in the 18th Century, it was not until the Industrial Revolution that it rose to commercial prominence again, with heavy industry producing agricultural machinery, vehicles and other ironwork. It would continue to be important industrially until the 1980s, but then most of the factories closed, and the town has not yet recovered.
The townscape is punctuated by church towers and spires, for Ipswich has twelve surviving medieval churches. Remarkably, six of them are still in use, and of these St Mary le Tower is the biggest and most prominent. Its spire rises sixty metres above the rooftops, making it the second tallest building in the town after the Mill apartment block on the Waterfront. There was a church here in 1200, when the Borough of Ipswich came into being in the churchyard by the declaration of the granting of a charter. The medieval church had a spire until it came down in the hurricane of 1661. When the Diocese of Norwich oversaw the restoration of the church in the mid-19th Century the decision was taken for a complete rebuild in stone on the same site. It is almost entirely the work of diocesan surveyor Richard Phipson, who worked on it over a period of twenty years in the 1850s and 1860s, including replacing the spire, and so this is East Anglia's urban Victorian church par excellence. The rebuilding was bankrolled by the wealthy local Bacon banking family. It is a large church, built more or less on the plan of its predecessor, full of the spirit of its age. One could no more imagine Ipswich without the Tower than without the Orwell Bridge.
The length of the church splits the churchyard into two quite separate parts, the south side a public space, the walled north side atmospheric and secretive. The large cross to the south-west of the tower is not a war memorial. It remembers John Patteson, Bishop of Melanesia, murdered by some of his flock in the 1870s. Treated as a martyr by the press of the day, Patteson appears to have had no local connection, but the Pattesons had intermarried with the Cobbolds, an important local family, and Patteson Road by Ipswich docks also remembers him. There never was a north door, and the west doors are beautiful and liturgically correct but perhaps not useful, since they are below street level and the path merely leads round to the south, allowing processions but no access from Tower Street. The flushwork is exuberant, and makes you think that being a flint-knapper must have been a good living in the 1860s. As with the medieval predecessor, the entrance is through the tower which forms a porch on the south side, in common with about thirty other East Anglian churches. Until the 1860s there was a further castellated porch on the south side of the tower, something in the style of the Hadleigh Deanery tower, but this was removed. You can see it in as photograph at the top of this page. And looking at this photograph, it is hard not to think that Phipson retained at least part of the lower stage of the tower.
There is a small statue of the church's patron saint in the niche above the entrance, by the sculptor Richard Pfeiffer. Away to the east, the same sculptor produced St John the Evangelist and St Mary of Magdala on the end of the chancel, and there is more of his work inside. You step into the tower porch under vaulting. A small door in the north-east corner leads up into the ringing chamber and beyond that the belfry, with a ring of twelve bells. The south doorway into the church has stops representing the Annunciation, with the angel to the west, and Mary at her prayer desk to the east. As part of a Millennium project this doorway was painted and gilded. It leads through into the south aisle, beyond which the wide nave seems to swallow all sound, a powerful transition from the outside. Polished wood and tile gleam under coloured light from large windows filled with 19th Century glass. At one time the walls were stencilled, but this was removed in the 1960s. The former church was dark and serious inside, as a drawing in the north aisle shows, so it must have made quite a contrast when the townspeople first entered their new church.
The font by the doorway is the first of a number of significant survivals from the old church. It's one of the 15th Century East Anglian series of which several hundred survive, all slightly different. It is in good condition, and you can't help thinking that this is ironically because Ipswich was a town which embraced protestantism whole-heartedly after the Reformation, and it is likely that the font was plastered over in the mid-16th Century to make it plain and simple. The lions around the pillar stand on human heads, and there are more heads beneath the bowl. The next survival that comes into view is the pair of 15th Century benches at the west end of the nave. The bench ends are clerics holding books, and above them memorable finials depicting two lions, a dragon and what might be a cat or a dog.
The box pews were removed as part of Phipson's restoration and replaced with high quality benches. The front row are the Borough Corporation seats, a mace rest and a sword rest in front of them. The carvings on the ends of the benches are seahorses, the creatures that hold the shield on the Ipswich Borough arms, and on the finials in front are lions holding ships, the crest of the Borough. As you might expect in Ipswich these are by Henry Ringham, whose church carving was always of a high quality, and is perhaps best known at Woolpit and Combs. His workshop on St John's Road employed fifty people at the time of the 1861 census, but by the following year he was bankrupt, and so the work here is likely some of the last that he produced. He died in 1866, and Ringham Road in East Ipswich remembers him.
Moving into the chancel, the other major survival is a collection of late 15th and early 16th Century brasses. Altogether there are ten large figures, but in fact some of them represent the same person more than once. The most memorable is probably that of Alys Baldry, who died in 1507. She lies between her two husbands. The first, Robert Wimbill, is on the right. He died in about 1477. He was a notary, and his ink pot and pen case hang from his belt. Her second husband, Thomas Baldry, is on the left. He died in 1525. He was a merchant, and his merchant mark is set beneath his feet next to Alys's five daughters and four sons.
Alys Baldry, Robert Wimbill and Thomas Baldry are all depicted in further brasses here. The best of these is that to Robert. It was commissioned by his will in the 1470s. He lies on his own with a Latin inscription which translates as 'My hope lies in my heart. Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on me.' His ink pot and pen case hang from his belt again, and between his feet are a skull and scattered bones, an early memento mori. Thomas Baldry's own brass memorial shows him lying between his two wives, Alys who we have already met, and his second wife Christian. The other group of three figures depicts Thomas Drayll, a merchant, with his wives Margaret and Agnes. Thomas died in 1512. The arms of the Cinque Ports are set above him, and a large merchant mark is beneath his feet. Several inscriptions are missing, and we know that when the iconoclast William Dowsing visited the church on 29th Janary 1644 he ordered the removal of six brass inscriptions with Ora pro nobis ('pray for us') and Ora pro animabus ('pray for our souls'), and Cujus animae propitietur deus ('on whose soul may God have mercy') and pray for the soul in English.
The spectacular sanctuary with its imposing reredos, piscina and sedilia was clearly designed for shadowy, incense-led worship. A lush Arts and Crafts crucifixion surmounts the altar. East Anglian saints flank the walls. James Bettley, revising the Buildings of England volume for East Suffolk, records that it was the work of Somers, Clarke & Micklethwaite in the 1880s. The chancel is only lit from the east window, emphasising the focus from the rest of the church. The set of twelve apostles and twelve angels on the choir stalls are also by Pfeiffer. You can see his signature on the back of St Luke's icon of the Blessed Virgin. This sanctuary is the ultimate expression of late 19th Century Tractarianism in Suffolk. Back in the nave, the early 18th Century pulpit speaks of a different liturgical age, when this church was a preaching house rather than a sacramental space. James Bettley credits its carving to James Hubbard, and notes its similarity to that in the Unitarian Meeting House a few hundred yards off. The 19th Century screen that stood in the chancel arch and separated these two liturgical ages was moved to the east end of the north aisle as an organ screen some time in the 20th Century.
Another screen separates off the Lady Chapel from the south aisle and the chancel. The chapel is a pleasing period piece, furnished sentimentally. The reredos, by Arthur Wallace in 1907, depicts the Supper at Emmaus flanked by Moses and Elijah in an echo of the Transfiguration. The early 20th Century paintings on the south wall are lovely, especially the infant Christ as he plays at the feet of St Joseph. But the overwhelming atmosphere of this church comes from its extensive range of 19th Century glass, the largest collection in Suffolk. It provides a catalogue of some of the major 19th Century workshops over a fairly short period, from the 1850s to the 1880s. Much of it is by Clayton & Bell, who probably received the commission for east and west windows and south aisle as part of Phipson's rebuilding contract. Other major workshops include those of William Wailes, the O'Connors and Lavers, Barraud & Westlake. A small amount of 1840s glass in the north aisle was reset here from the previous church. There are photographs of the glass at the bottom of this page.
As was common in major 19th Century restorations, the memorials that once flanked the walls were collected together and reset at the west end of the nave. At St Mary le Tower this was a major task, for there are a lot of them. The most famous is that to William Smart, MP for Ipswich in the late 16th Century. It is painted on boards. His inscription is a long acrostic, and he kneels at the bottom opposite his wife. between them is a panoramic view of the Ipswich townscape as it was in 1599, the year that he died, a remarkable snapshot of the past. Other memorials include those of the 17th Century when Ipswich was the heartland of firebrand protestant East Anglia. Matthew Lawrence, who died in 1653, was the publike preacher of this towne. There are more memorials in the north chancel aisle, now divided up as vestries. The best of these is to John and Elizabeth Robinson. He died in 1666. They kneel at their prayer desks, and below them are their children Thomas, John, Mary and Elizabeth, who all predeceased their mother. Also here are memorials to a number of the Cobbold family, who were not only important locally but even provided ministers for this church.
There are more Cobbold memorials in the nave, including one in glass at the west end of the north aisle. It is dedicated to Lucy Chevallier Cobbold, and depicts her with her daughter at the Presentation in the Temple. The Cobbold family embraced Tractarianism wholeheartedly, being largely responsible for the building of St Bartholomew near their home at Holywells Park. They probably had an influence over the Bacon family, whose wealth went towards the rebuilding, and whose symbol of a boar can be seen in the floor tiles. A good set of Stuart royal arms hangs above the west doorway.
I can't imagine what the 17th Century parishioners would make of this church if they could come back and see it now. Trevor Cooper, in his edition of The Journals of William Dowsing, recalls that the atmosphere in the town was so strongly puritan that in the 1630s the churchwardens were excommunicated for refusing to carry out the sacramentalist reforms of Archbishop Laud. The reforms demanded that the altar be returned to the chancel and railed in, but this was considered idolatrous by the parishioners. When the visitation commissioners of the Bishop of Norwich came to the church in April 1636 to see if the commands had been carried out, the churchwardens refused to give up the keys... verbally assaulting them and and confronting them with 'musketts charged, swords, staves and other weapons'.
Frank Grace, in his 'Schismaticall and Factious Humours': Opposition in Ipswich to Laudian Church Government, records a number of other incidents both here and in other Ipswich churches in the late 1630s, including an attack on 'a conformable minister' (that is to say one faithful to the Bishop) by a mob as well as a stranger who was invited by the town bailiffs to preach a very factious and seditious sermon in Tower church to a large congregation against the authority of the incumbent, who no doubt was held at bay while the ranting went on. As with all the Ipswich churches, the iconoclast William Dowsing was welcomed with open arms by the churchwardens here on his visit of January 1644. Looking around at Phipson's sacramental glory, it is hard to imagine now.
Simon Knott, December 2022
I was asked a few weeks back, if I fancied meeting up with friends, Simon and Cam for a few bears and a crawl round Ipswich.
Seemed a great idea, but checking Network Rain this week, I found that there were replacement buses out of Liverpool Street to Whitham and out of Cambridge. The first added an hour to the trip to Ipswich, the second, 90 minutes.
Jools said she would enjoy a trip out and a walk around Manningtree, so we could go in the car, I would drive up, she would drive back, and we would both have some exercise and I would meet friends.
Perfect.
Although we had planned to go to Tesco first, in the end we had breakfast and set off at half seven, eager to get some miles under our belts before traffic really built at Dartford.
Up the A2 in bright sunshine, it was a great day for travel, but also I thought it might have been good for checking out orchid woods back home. But a change is always good, and it has been nearly 9 years since Simon invited me for a tour round historic Ipswich, showing there was almost as much history there than in Norwich to the north.
Into Essex before nine, and arriving in Ipswich before ten, we decided to find somewhere for breakfast first before going our separate ways.
A large breakfast later, we split up, and I went to wander north to St Margaret's church, which I had been into on that trip 9 years back, but my shots not so good.
I found many interesting places in-between the modern buildings and urban sprawl, timber framed houses, Tudor brick and much more beside.
Sadly, St Margaret was locked. I could see the notice on the porch door, so I didn't go up to see what it said.
I wandered back, found St Mary le Tower open, so went in and took over a hundred shots, soaking in the fine Victorian glass and carved bench ends, even if they were 19th century and not older.
In the south chapel, a group were talking quietly, so I tried not to disturb them, only realising how loud the shutter on the camera was.
The font took my eye first, as it is a well preserved one from the 15th century. Though these are common in East Anglia, not so in deepest Kent, so I snapped it from all directions, recording each mark of the carver's tools.
The clocked ticked round to midday, and so I made my way to the quayside where I was to meet my friends.
Simon lives in Ipswich, but Cam and David had come down on the train from the Fine City. We met at the Briarbank Brewery Tap where I had a couple of mocha porters, which were very nice indeed.
From there we went to the Dove where we had two more beers as well as lunch.
And finally a walk to The Spread Eagle for one final beer before I walked back to Portman Road to meet Jools at the car.
Jools drove us back to the A12, and pointed the car south. As we drove, dusk fell and rain began to fall. Not very pleasant. But at least traffic was light, so in an hour we were on the M25 and twenty minutes later over the river and back in Kent.
Rain fell steadily as we cruised down the M20, past the familiar landmarks until we were back in Dover. Where we had to make a pit stop at M and S, as we needed supplies, and something for supper.
Not sure that garlic bread and wine counts as a meal, but did for us, so at half nine, we climbed the hill to bed.
--------------------------------------------------
Ipswich is the county town of Suffolk, and is also probably the longest continuously occupied town in England. Here on the River Gipping, in the south of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia, a number of 7th Century industrial villages grew together, and since then Ipswich has always been an industrial and commercial town, processing the produce of the land round about, and exporting it up the River Orwell to other parts of England and the continent. It was wealthy in the late medieval period, but it suffered from being cut off from its European markets by the outfall from the Reformation. A strongly puritan town in the 17th Century, a quiet backwater in the 18th Century, it was not until the Industrial Revolution that it rose to commercial prominence again, with heavy industry producing agricultural machinery, vehicles and other ironwork. It would continue to be important industrially until the 1980s, but then most of the factories closed, and the town has not yet recovered.
The townscape is punctuated by church towers and spires, for Ipswich has twelve surviving medieval churches. Remarkably, six of them are still in use, and of these St Mary le Tower is the biggest and most prominent. Its spire rises sixty metres above the rooftops, making it the second tallest building in the town after the Mill apartment block on the Waterfront. There was a church here in 1200, when the Borough of Ipswich came into being in the churchyard by the declaration of the granting of a charter. The medieval church had a spire until it came down in the hurricane of 1661. When the Diocese of Norwich oversaw the restoration of the church in the mid-19th Century the decision was taken for a complete rebuild in stone on the same site. It is almost entirely the work of diocesan surveyor Richard Phipson, who worked on it over a period of twenty years in the 1850s and 1860s, including replacing the spire, and so this is East Anglia's urban Victorian church par excellence. The rebuilding was bankrolled by the wealthy local Bacon banking family. It is a large church, built more or less on the plan of its predecessor, full of the spirit of its age. One could no more imagine Ipswich without the Tower than without the Orwell Bridge.
The length of the church splits the churchyard into two quite separate parts, the south side a public space, the walled north side atmospheric and secretive. The large cross to the south-west of the tower is not a war memorial. It remembers John Patteson, Bishop of Melanesia, murdered by some of his flock in the 1870s. Treated as a martyr by the press of the day, Patteson appears to have had no local connection, but the Pattesons had intermarried with the Cobbolds, an important local family, and Patteson Road by Ipswich docks also remembers him. There never was a north door, and the west doors are beautiful and liturgically correct but perhaps not useful, since they are below street level and the path merely leads round to the south, allowing processions but no access from Tower Street. The flushwork is exuberant, and makes you think that being a flint-knapper must have been a good living in the 1860s. As with the medieval predecessor, the entrance is through the tower which forms a porch on the south side, in common with about thirty other East Anglian churches. Until the 1860s there was a further castellated porch on the south side of the tower, something in the style of the Hadleigh Deanery tower, but this was removed. You can see it in as photograph at the top of this page. And looking at this photograph, it is hard not to think that Phipson retained at least part of the lower stage of the tower.
There is a small statue of the church's patron saint in the niche above the entrance, by the sculptor Richard Pfeiffer. Away to the east, the same sculptor produced St John the Evangelist and St Mary of Magdala on the end of the chancel, and there is more of his work inside. You step into the tower porch under vaulting. A small door in the north-east corner leads up into the ringing chamber and beyond that the belfry, with a ring of twelve bells. The south doorway into the church has stops representing the Annunciation, with the angel to the west, and Mary at her prayer desk to the east. As part of a Millennium project this doorway was painted and gilded. It leads through into the south aisle, beyond which the wide nave seems to swallow all sound, a powerful transition from the outside. Polished wood and tile gleam under coloured light from large windows filled with 19th Century glass. At one time the walls were stencilled, but this was removed in the 1960s. The former church was dark and serious inside, as a drawing in the north aisle shows, so it must have made quite a contrast when the townspeople first entered their new church.
The font by the doorway is the first of a number of significant survivals from the old church. It's one of the 15th Century East Anglian series of which several hundred survive, all slightly different. It is in good condition, and you can't help thinking that this is ironically because Ipswich was a town which embraced protestantism whole-heartedly after the Reformation, and it is likely that the font was plastered over in the mid-16th Century to make it plain and simple. The lions around the pillar stand on human heads, and there are more heads beneath the bowl. The next survival that comes into view is the pair of 15th Century benches at the west end of the nave. The bench ends are clerics holding books, and above them memorable finials depicting two lions, a dragon and what might be a cat or a dog.
The box pews were removed as part of Phipson's restoration and replaced with high quality benches. The front row are the Borough Corporation seats, a mace rest and a sword rest in front of them. The carvings on the ends of the benches are seahorses, the creatures that hold the shield on the Ipswich Borough arms, and on the finials in front are lions holding ships, the crest of the Borough. As you might expect in Ipswich these are by Henry Ringham, whose church carving was always of a high quality, and is perhaps best known at Woolpit and Combs. His workshop on St John's Road employed fifty people at the time of the 1861 census, but by the following year he was bankrupt, and so the work here is likely some of the last that he produced. He died in 1866, and Ringham Road in East Ipswich remembers him.
Moving into the chancel, the other major survival is a collection of late 15th and early 16th Century brasses. Altogether there are ten large figures, but in fact some of them represent the same person more than once. The most memorable is probably that of Alys Baldry, who died in 1507. She lies between her two husbands. The first, Robert Wimbill, is on the right. He died in about 1477. He was a notary, and his ink pot and pen case hang from his belt. Her second husband, Thomas Baldry, is on the left. He died in 1525. He was a merchant, and his merchant mark is set beneath his feet next to Alys's five daughters and four sons.
Alys Baldry, Robert Wimbill and Thomas Baldry are all depicted in further brasses here. The best of these is that to Robert. It was commissioned by his will in the 1470s. He lies on his own with a Latin inscription which translates as 'My hope lies in my heart. Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on me.' His ink pot and pen case hang from his belt again, and between his feet are a skull and scattered bones, an early memento mori. Thomas Baldry's own brass memorial shows him lying between his two wives, Alys who we have already met, and his second wife Christian. The other group of three figures depicts Thomas Drayll, a merchant, with his wives Margaret and Agnes. Thomas died in 1512. The arms of the Cinque Ports are set above him, and a large merchant mark is beneath his feet. Several inscriptions are missing, and we know that when the iconoclast William Dowsing visited the church on 29th Janary 1644 he ordered the removal of six brass inscriptions with Ora pro nobis ('pray for us') and Ora pro animabus ('pray for our souls'), and Cujus animae propitietur deus ('on whose soul may God have mercy') and pray for the soul in English.
The spectacular sanctuary with its imposing reredos, piscina and sedilia was clearly designed for shadowy, incense-led worship. A lush Arts and Crafts crucifixion surmounts the altar. East Anglian saints flank the walls. James Bettley, revising the Buildings of England volume for East Suffolk, records that it was the work of Somers, Clarke & Micklethwaite in the 1880s. The chancel is only lit from the east window, emphasising the focus from the rest of the church. The set of twelve apostles and twelve angels on the choir stalls are also by Pfeiffer. You can see his signature on the back of St Luke's icon of the Blessed Virgin. This sanctuary is the ultimate expression of late 19th Century Tractarianism in Suffolk. Back in the nave, the early 18th Century pulpit speaks of a different liturgical age, when this church was a preaching house rather than a sacramental space. James Bettley credits its carving to James Hubbard, and notes its similarity to that in the Unitarian Meeting House a few hundred yards off. The 19th Century screen that stood in the chancel arch and separated these two liturgical ages was moved to the east end of the north aisle as an organ screen some time in the 20th Century.
Another screen separates off the Lady Chapel from the south aisle and the chancel. The chapel is a pleasing period piece, furnished sentimentally. The reredos, by Arthur Wallace in 1907, depicts the Supper at Emmaus flanked by Moses and Elijah in an echo of the Transfiguration. The early 20th Century paintings on the south wall are lovely, especially the infant Christ as he plays at the feet of St Joseph. But the overwhelming atmosphere of this church comes from its extensive range of 19th Century glass, the largest collection in Suffolk. It provides a catalogue of some of the major 19th Century workshops over a fairly short period, from the 1850s to the 1880s. Much of it is by Clayton & Bell, who probably received the commission for east and west windows and south aisle as part of Phipson's rebuilding contract. Other major workshops include those of William Wailes, the O'Connors and Lavers, Barraud & Westlake. A small amount of 1840s glass in the north aisle was reset here from the previous church. There are photographs of the glass at the bottom of this page.
As was common in major 19th Century restorations, the memorials that once flanked the walls were collected together and reset at the west end of the nave. At St Mary le Tower this was a major task, for there are a lot of them. The most famous is that to William Smart, MP for Ipswich in the late 16th Century. It is painted on boards. His inscription is a long acrostic, and he kneels at the bottom opposite his wife. between them is a panoramic view of the Ipswich townscape as it was in 1599, the year that he died, a remarkable snapshot of the past. Other memorials include those of the 17th Century when Ipswich was the heartland of firebrand protestant East Anglia. Matthew Lawrence, who died in 1653, was the publike preacher of this towne. There are more memorials in the north chancel aisle, now divided up as vestries. The best of these is to John and Elizabeth Robinson. He died in 1666. They kneel at their prayer desks, and below them are their children Thomas, John, Mary and Elizabeth, who all predeceased their mother. Also here are memorials to a number of the Cobbold family, who were not only important locally but even provided ministers for this church.
There are more Cobbold memorials in the nave, including one in glass at the west end of the north aisle. It is dedicated to Lucy Chevallier Cobbold, and depicts her with her daughter at the Presentation in the Temple. The Cobbold family embraced Tractarianism wholeheartedly, being largely responsible for the building of St Bartholomew near their home at Holywells Park. They probably had an influence over the Bacon family, whose wealth went towards the rebuilding, and whose symbol of a boar can be seen in the floor tiles. A good set of Stuart royal arms hangs above the west doorway.
I can't imagine what the 17th Century parishioners would make of this church if they could come back and see it now. Trevor Cooper, in his edition of The Journals of William Dowsing, recalls that the atmosphere in the town was so strongly puritan that in the 1630s the churchwardens were excommunicated for refusing to carry out the sacramentalist reforms of Archbishop Laud. The reforms demanded that the altar be returned to the chancel and railed in, but this was considered idolatrous by the parishioners. When the visitation commissioners of the Bishop of Norwich came to the church in April 1636 to see if the commands had been carried out, the churchwardens refused to give up the keys... verbally assaulting them and and confronting them with 'musketts charged, swords, staves and other weapons'.
Frank Grace, in his 'Schismaticall and Factious Humours': Opposition in Ipswich to Laudian Church Government, records a number of other incidents both here and in other Ipswich churches in the late 1630s, including an attack on 'a conformable minister' (that is to say one faithful to the Bishop) by a mob as well as a stranger who was invited by the town bailiffs to preach a very factious and seditious sermon in Tower church to a large congregation against the authority of the incumbent, who no doubt was held at bay while the ranting went on. As with all the Ipswich churches, the iconoclast William Dowsing was welcomed with open arms by the churchwardens here on his visit of January 1644. Looking around at Phipson's sacramental glory, it is hard to imagine now.
Simon Knott, December 2022
BEER INFO
Brewed by:
Störtebeker Braumanufaktur
Germany
Style: German Pilsener
Alcohol by volume (ABV): 4.90%
Availability: Year-round Duidelijke gouden giet, twee vingers donzige witte kop met mooie retentie.
Zeer flauw fruitigheid in de geur, grazige hop, sommige granen en een beetje van de aardsheid, alle standaard voor een pilsener.
In plaats van zoete van start tot finish, gecompenseerd door bittere pittige hop. Sommige citroenzuur knapperigheid, vage gele appel, wit brood. Nogmaals, standaard, met een extra aromatische aanwezigheid hop, met enkele bloemige noten, aardsheid en een kleine gestoofde groenten voelen. Geen metalen tho.
Light bodied, een klein beetje boterachtige, koolzuurhoudende.
Decent, verfrissend, krijgt een beetje ruw als je het drinkt, en de zoetheid stokken rond een beetje na de droge afdronk.
An expert flint knapper at work. He is using a soft hammer of antler to shape the rough-out into a handaxe.
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - JULY 24: Andrew Knapper of England competes in the men's pairs at Kelvingrove Lawn Bowls Centre during day one of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games on July 24, 2014 in Glasgow, United Kingdom. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Chert ("flint")
Sedimentary rocks form by the solidification of loose sediments. Loose sediments become hard rocks by the processes of deposition, burial, compaction, dewatering, and cementation.
There are three categories of sedimentary rocks:
1) Siliciclastic sedimentary rocks form by the solidification of sediments produced by weathering & erosion of any previously existing rocks.
2) Biogenic sedimentary rocks form by the solidification of sediments that were once-living organisms (plants, animals, micro-organisms).
3) Chemical sedimentary rocks form by the solidification of sediments formed by inorganic chemical reactions. Most sedimentary rocks have a clastic texture, but some are crystalline.
Chert is a cryptocrystalline-textured, siliceous sedimentary rock. It is composed of quartz (SiO2). Traditionally, light-colored varieties were called “chert” by geologists, and dark-colored varieties were called “flint”. This arbitrary distinction is no longer preferred. “Flint” is now an archaeological term for chert that has been worked by early humans. "Flint" is generally perceived by rockhounds to be high-quality material (from a flint-knapper's point of view, apparently), whereas "chert" is perceived as low-quality material. Chert nodules in Cretaceous chalks of Britain are still called “flint” by some geologists. Chert meganodules at Flint Ridge, Ohio are called “flint” in the geologic literature.
Individual quartz crystals are incredibly small in cherts, and generally cannot be seen with normal microscopes. Chert comes close to having the physical properties of a glassy textured rock - it is very hard (H = 7), has conchoidal fracture (smooth & curved fracture surfaces), and has sharp broken edges.
Cherts vary in color. Common chert colors include whitish, grayish, brownish to dark gray, very dark blue, and black. Reds, yellows, and greens are sometimes present. Some cherts are complexly multicolored.
Some cherts form biogenically, but other cherts have a chemical origin. As a result, chert cannot be placed cleanly or neatly or unambiguously into a traditional sedimentary rock category (siliciclastic, biogenic, chemical).
Button stitched with wool, metallic thread, raffia and micro-ice chenille thread. It is all shiny and christmas like :-)
EAST CHINA SEA (March 20, 2013) The last five CH-46E Sea Knight helicopters, assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM) 262, prepare to launch from the flight deck of the forward-deployed amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6). Their departure and flyover marks the last time the CH-64E Sea Knight helicopter will embark aboard Bonhomme Richard. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Betsy Knapper/Released)
Tiny beetle (Ditropis pteridis female)photographed on a coastal path in North Wales near Criccieth. Thanks to Paul Knapper for help with ID; very much appreciated!
Flint-knapped spearpoint from the Oligocene of Georgia, USA. (~11.3 centimeters tall)
Knapper: Ronnie Miller
"Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
Seen here is a knapped spearpoint - it's a modern replica. The rock is "Flint River Chert", derived from the "Flint River Formation" in Georgia. Oligocene-aged fossils have been reported from the fossiliferous chert component of the unit.
Stratigraphy: chert clast in the "Flint River Formation", Oligocene
Locality: unrecorded/undisclosed site at or near the town of Albany, southern Georgia, USA
Flint from the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA. (centimeter scale)
Flint is the "official" state gemstone of Ohio (actually, there's no such thing as "official" anything). "Flint" is sometimes used as a lithologic term by modern geologists, but it is a synonym for chert. Flint and chert are the same - they are cryptocrystalline, quartzose sedimentary rocks. Rockhounds often assert that flint is high-quality while chert is low-quality. Some geologists assert that "flint" implies a biogenic origin and "chert" implies a chemical origin.
Many cherts do have a chemical origin - chert nodules are moderately common in some limestone units. The nodules form during diagenesis - pre-existing silica components in the carbonate sediments are dissolved, mobilized, and reprecipitated as chert masses. Some cherts do have a biogenic origin - for example, radiolarian cherts (rich in radiolarian microfossils) or spicular cherts (rich in siliceous sponge spicules).
The most famous flint deposit in Ohio is Flint Ridge, in Licking County. At this locality, the Middle Pennsylvanian-aged Vanport Flint is exposed in several places. The geologic literature on the Vanport Flint is relatively sparse, with inaccurate, incomplete descriptions and characterizations. For example, the literature describes the Vanport as a sheet of flint at Flint Ridge - it's actually a meganodule horizon. Other descriptions refer to the chert as the remains of siliceous sponges. In reality, siliceous sponge spicules are quite scarce in Vanport samples.
Two graduate student projects during the 2000s, conducted at two different universities, had very different conclusions & interpretations about the origin of the Vanport Flint. A 2003 study concluded that chert at Flint Ridge is biogenic in origin. A 2006 study concluded that the chert is chemical in origin.
Studies done by geologists at Ohio State University at Newark indicate that the Vanport Flint has a relatively complex history, the details of which are still being worked out.
Modern flint knappers value the Vanport Flint for being multicolored and high-quality (= very few impurities). With artificial heating, the flint is more easily knapped into arrowheads, spear points, and other objects. Prehistoric American Indians quarried the Vanport Flint at many specific sites on Flint Ridge. Old Indian flint pits can be examined along hiking trails in Flint Ridge State Park ("State Memorial"). Many authentic Indian artifacts found in Ohio (arrowheads & spearpoints - "projectile points") are composed of Vanport Flint.
This spectacular red-and-green-and-dark blue flint sample is a flint knapper's preform. They are often sold to other flint knappers, who process them further into various points. The flint has been heated in a kiln, which is a standard procedure. Heating improves the knappability of the flint. Heating also often intensifies colors.
Stratigraphy: Vanport Flint, Allegheny Group, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: Roy Miller Flint Quarries - flint pit just northwest of the Flint Ridge Road-Brownsville Road intersection, near Flint Ridge State Park, central Flint Ridge, southeastern Licking County, east-central Ohio, USA (vicinity of 39° 59’ 21.84" North latitude, 82° 15’ 49.04" West longitude)