Medieval art, architecture and material culture by Vitrearum
Buckinghamshire is a wealthy and pleasant county in the south east of England, rather too pleasant for churches to be kept open. The day I visited Chearsley, only half of the churches I visited were open - which is not a very good record. Anyway it was a delight to get into this charming little... Continue Reading →
Set into the east wall of Somerton church in Oxfordshire is what appears to be at first glance a complete medieval reredos. It portrays the Last Supper with Christ and the disciples ranged behind a long table covered in a pleated cloth. They are all tucking in to food and drink, eating from wooden trenchers... Continue Reading →
I had a trip into Berkshire a few months ago and to Childrey, where the church is a complex building of extraordinary interest, with lots of medieval glass and numerous late medieval monumental brasses. In the south transept, there is a fine early sixteenth-century monument of Purbeck marble which is built up against the north... Continue Reading →
Horsham St Faith is a small village about four or five miles north of Norwich. In the Middle Ages, it was dominated by a Benedictine Priory of which there are now very scant remains, except for some domestic quarters with important medieval wall paintings. The priory was founded in 1105 by Robert FitzWalter. After... Continue Reading →
Not all medieval missals were luxury items, this article looks at the fragmentary remains of a more ordinary medieval missal.
Goodness, what a building. The Church of Our Lady in Worstead in Norfolk is an enormous box of delights, built on the wealth of the cloth trade. Worstead was a major centre of yarn manufacture and weaving from the twelfth century to such an extent that the general term for high-quality woollen cloth took its... Continue Reading →
The parish church of St Mary and St Thomas of Canterbury in Wymondham in Norfolk, is all that is remains of a Benedictine Priory founded in 1107 by Wiliam d'Aubigny, which was raised to abbey status in 1448. When Wymondham Abbey was dissolved in 1538 at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the people of Wymondham... Continue Reading →
Medievalism and Ritualism – A Discussion of the Background and Context of The Parson’s Handbook, and of the ‘English Use’By the second decade of the twentieth century Ritualism, which had been growing steadily as a force in the life of the Church of England, had polarised into two very distinctive groups. There were those within... Continue Reading →
Hainton is one of those rare places, a manor that has been in the possession of a single family for much of its recorded the history. The church of St Mary stands in the grounds of Hainton Hall, which was and still is the home of the Heneage family. The chancel and north chapel contain an unparelleled and... Continue Reading →
