So much medieval art has been lost since the mid 16th century, here I look at some wonderful visual evidence of a lost rood screen from Norfolk.
Neglect, apathy and fire – a lost Norfolk screen
‘Stayned’ and ‘peynted’ textiles.
Not all medieval church textiles were made of rich and costly materials. This article looks at the stained or painted linen cloths, their use in church context, their production and a few surviving examples.
Burial ground or rubbish dump?
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 →
Founders of this Chantry, the interaction of ritual and memorial.
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 →
‘callyd the bachellers lyte’
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 →
Landscapes and townscapes
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.jsHillesden church in north Buckinghamshire is an impressive church, a pure, Perpendicular glass house, a coherent whole, all built in a single campaign.//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.jsWe know that in 1493 the previous church was somewhat ruinous and that provides a terminus post quem for the structure, which appears to have been built in stages up to c.1510. For... Continue Reading →
The great and terrible day of the Lord – the Wenhaston Doom
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.jsWenhaston is a small and rather ordinary village about three or four miles inland from Southwold on the Suffolk coast. It's church is a fairly ordinary building, rather heavily restored in the 1892 and with the old parish constable's handcuffs and shackles hanging up in its vestry, as you do!//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js Had it not been for... Continue Reading →
The Image of Pity – the Wellingham rood screen.
Wellingham is a remote little hamlet in the middle of Norfolk to the south of Fakenham. It's church, heavily rebuilt in 1896 is rather undistinguished, but it contains a great treasure. The dado of a rood screen from the 1530s. Rather interestingly the screen is inscribed and precisely dated. The inscription on the upper... Continue Reading →
Two fragments of painted stone reredoses
This is just the sort of thing that gets me excited, a bit of stone with a fragment of painted decoration on it that gives us just a tantalising glimpse of the liturgical arrangements that once existed in our parish churches before the Reformation. Here are photos of two fragments of the type of altarpiece... Continue Reading →
Vitrearum's Medieval Art 