The parish church in the Northamptonshire village
of Slapton – close to the Silverstone Race track – is reputed to be one of the
best places in England to see how a medieval church looked. It still looks astonishing today even after
many centuries. We can only imagine what
an impression it would have made in its original vividness on a people who were
not sated as we are by constant exposure through the media to extravagant
displays.
Today many remains of these wall paintings are very
faint and can appear to be without meaning.
But five hundred years ago when windows shone with colour and polished
silver chalices gleamed on the altar and the richly coloured statues wore
velvet cloaks and gold rings the parish church was often a place of wonderment
and a magnificent setting for the celebration of the Eucharist and the other
ceremonies of the Church. These paintings strengthened the Christian faith of
those who were surrounded by them as they gathered to worship. They provided inspiration for their devotion
and prayer.
When the sixteenth century Reformation swept
traditional religion aside wall paintings were among the casualties. But some of those paintings were rediscovered
three hundred years later when the churches were restored by the
Victorians. Sometimes behind up to
thirty coats of white wash the ancient wall paintings became visible once more. This was how the paintings at St Botolph’s
Church in Slapton were saved. But the
majority were not.
Most of the medieval wall paintings that can be
seen in churches today were made between one thousand and five hundred years
ago. But the tradition of painting
religious images on walls goes back to about two centuries after Christ’s death
when the walls of Roman Catacombs (underground burial galleries) and chapels began to be painted with
Christian images drawing on Old and New Testament themes. Initially Christ was depicted as te Good
Shepherd tending his flockl. Explicit
portraits of Christ began to appear around the time – 380 AD – when
Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The earliest Christian wall paintings so far
discovered in England are now displayed in the British Museum. They were recovered from the ruins of a
fourth century first-floor house church in a Roman villa near Lullingstone in
Kent and include garlands of flowers and fruit enclosing the CHI-RHO monogram –
the first letters in Greek of the name of Christ.
Very few examples of Anglo-Saxon wall paintings
survive. Viking raids which devastated
churches wiped out so much. But in Nether
Wallop in Hampshire a painting from around 1,00 AD shows two angels one on
either side of an arch incensing a now destroyed painting of Christ in Majesty,
surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists – Mathew, Mark, Luke and
John.
Notable Anglo-Norman paintings dating from around
1100 AD belong to the ‘Lewes Group’ of five churches. These were thought to come from a school of
painters associated with the powerful Priory of St Pancras at Lewes. The most extensive remains of this group can
be seen at Hardham, Clayton and Coombes.
Plumpton church has some important paintings while the paintings at
Westmeston church were destroyed shortly after their discovery in 1862.
If you would like to visit it might be worthwhile
making sure they are open. Caring for
wall-paintings is expensive and so generous donations would be appreciated.
I
am indebted ‘Medieval Wall Paintings’ by Roger Rosewell
