East Anglian medieval church screens: a brief guide to their physical history

transcript

East Anglian medieval church screensA brief guide to their physical history

LUCY J. WRAPSON

East Anglia’s screenworkAlongside England’s West Country, East Anglia can claim pre-eminence in both the quality and quantity of its surviving fourteenth- to sixteenth-century painted wooden screenwork (figure 1).2 This mainly takes the form of rood or chancel screens, of which more than five hundred examples survive within the historical boundaries of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, which comprise the medieval dioceses of Norwich and Ely.3 Of the three counties, Norfolk is richest, with two hundred and seventy- five screens, including parclose screens. Almost a hundred Norfolk screens have painted figures.

Rood screens were previously part of a larger varied ensemble of which much is lost, specifically the rood, its attendant figures and the rood loft (figure 2). Decorated wooden screens, known as parclose screens, were also used to separate private chapels such as chantry and guild chapels from the

Figure 1. Bramfield rood screen in Suffolk.

AbstractAs Pugin stated, England is the pre-eminent country for medieval painted wooden screenwork and East Anglia is its richest region, for within Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire over five hundred examples remain. This large body of polychrome woodwork mainly takes the form of chancel or rood screens. Rood screens were previously part of a larger ensemble of which much is lost, specifically the Crucifix or rood, its attendant figures and the rood loft, a balcony on top of the screen. This paper examines the changes which the rood ensemble underwent during the Reformation and Civil War, as well as the subsequent physical histories of East Anglian screens through the fashions of succeeding centuries. It details the complexities of understanding screens in their present condition and discusses some of the conservation problems they face today.

There is no country in Christendom where so many screens are still preserved and standing, as in England. A. W. Pugin, 1851.1

main body of the nave and often linked up with the chancel screen.

This paper, which deals mainly with the more historically controversial chancel screens, aims to describe the historical factors which have led to the alteration of East Anglian screen structures and affected their survival, serving to explain why they appear as they do today. It also looks at more recent trends of removal, repainting, restoration and, latterly, conservation.

It has been long established that various terms were used, often interchangeably, to describe the apparatus between the chancel and nave by those who commissioned it. The most common original term for both the rood screen and adjacent loft was rood loft.4 A 1479 will bequest ‘to make the lower part of the perke’ from St Peter Mancroft in

Norwich is a rare reference specifically to the part we now call a rood screen.5

The main terms used in East Anglian wills are rodeloft, perk(e) and candlebeam. Instances also occur of januas, particus, trabis, sollar, cancellus and pulpitum.6 In Suffolk and those parts of Norfolk close to the border, the term candlebeam is used more extensively than in Norfolk, where perk(e) predominates.7 Particus usually refers to parclose rather than chancel screens.

The term rood screen is the conflation of two separate but interrelated entities, the rood loft and the chancel screen which necessarily supported it. Rood screen is a fairly modern term, probably originating in the 1830s or 40s as part of the Gothic Revival movement in architecture and furnishings.8 Rood screen probably became

Hamilton Kerr Institute, Bulletin number 4, 2013

Figure 2. The constituent parts of a fifthteenth-century chancel screen.

East Anglian medieval church screens

a mainstream description as a result of the so-called rood screen controversy which began in July 1848 and concerned the role of the screen in the newly built Southwark Cathedral.9 Vallance has demonstrated that the word screen was chiefly post-Reformation, there being one reference to an Essex church ‘skreene’ from 1525. The Elizabethan Order of 1561 favours the term partition.10

The chancel partition in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuriesThe majority of surviving Norfolk and Suffolk chancel screens can be dated stylistically and from will bequest evidence to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the Suffolk and Norfolk context, it seems likely that a powerful fashion for elaborate – often figurative – screens in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries meant that many earlier examples were replaced. In the two counties, the years 1490–1520 were the most active in terms of bequests.11 Bequeathing money for the production of perkes was popular right up until the Reformation and the slight reduction in bequests between 1520 and 1540 may show that by this date most churches had completed the construction and decoration of their screens rather than a sign of impending reform.

Screenwork survives in some 40% of the remaining medieval churches of East Anglia.

Evidence of the previous existence of rood lofts can be gleaned in many more from the presence of rood stairs, built into the fabric of the church (figure 3).12 The indication is that most medieval churches in East Anglia came to have a chancel screen by the late fifteenth century. Though perhaps not mandatory or completely ubiquitous, as Lunnon has explored, chancel screens were the norm by the late fifteenth century.13

By this time, the ensemble tended to consist of a solid lower dado, about a metre and a half in height, topped with perpendicular-style traceried openings through which the high altar could be seen. In addition, some, but by no means all, screens had doors, as at Gooderstone and Cawston in Norfolk. Usually the screen was galleried with a rood loft and topped by the rood, with the accompanying figures of Mary and John the Evangelist. This rood group might be placed either on a separate rood beam, or upon the rood loft itself; it might also be backed by a painted tympanum or decorated chancel arch, depicting figures attendant on the Crucifix or a Doom, as seen at Wenhaston and Cowlinge in Suffolk. The former presence of a rood can sometimes be detected by the survival of a ceilure, as at Metfield, Suffolk or canopy of honour as at Woolpit, also in Suffolk. This too was painted and formed a part of the whole rood ensemble.

Technical examination of more than five hundred screens from the region has overwhelmingly indicated that screens were usually painted. Where screens now often appear to be plain oak, it is generally possible to find small remnants of the original colour scheme.14

Reformation, roods and rood loftsThis is not the place to rehearse the academic arguments which surround the Reformation, but instead to tackle its specific effect on the physical architecture and painted surfaces of roods, rood screens and rood lofts. The use and perceived abuse of images lay at the heart of the ideological struggles of the Reformation.15 However, the English Reformation developed in stages under different monarchs and it is clear that roods, rood lofts and their lower reaches, rood screens, were viewed differently at distinct periods during the upheaval. The dismantling of the traditional rood apparatus was protracted and piecemeal.

Official reforms began during the 1530s, from Henry VIII’s assuming the title of supreme head of the English church in 1534, through the reign of Edward VI (1547–1553), until the accession of Mary I to the throne in 1553. The Catholic Marian revival saw the reversal of policy and the reinstatement of images, although this was reversed shortly after Mary’s death in 1558 with the Elizabethan Injunctions of 1559.16 A further wave of Puritanical iconoclasm took place in 1643–44.17

Figure 3. Rood stair at Edingthorpe in Norfolk.

Henry VIIIThe destruction of images did not begin with the dissolution of monastic houses from 1536. Iconoclasm increased in the 1520s and especially into the 1530s, there being a particular spate of attacks in the east.18 This was inspired by both internal currents, such as Lollard heresy, as well as Lutheran doctrines from Europe.19 However, until official sanction in the mid-1530s, such iconoclasm was a crime. An examination of wills and bequests in Norfolk indicates that the construction and painting of rood lofts and screens was extremely popular on the eve of the Reformation.20 Thomas Martin’s rare account of the pre-Reformation riches of Melford church in Suffolk is a glimpse into an image-rich world.21 Written in the 1580s or 90s, Martin describes the church as he knew it in his youth during the 1530s and 40s.

The dissolution officially sanctioned the destruction, dismantling and often sale of the fittings of monastic churches, including screens and lofts. From 1536, this was coupled with the destruction of cult images in conventual and parochial settings.22 Despite this, the building of parochial rood lofts (in the contemporary sense meaning both the screen and loft) continued into the reign of Henry VIII as shown by documentary and physical remains. A ‘goodly roodloft’ was built at Cranbrook, Kent in 1543 and another

at Bletchingley, Surrey in 1546.23 At Banham in Norfolk, a bequest was left for the screen as late as 1538.24 However, as Whiting has shown in his survey of Henrician image destruction in the West Country, the troubled climate of the latter 1530s had already led to a reduction in lay donations to roods and rood lofts under Henry VIII.25

While the 1536 Royal Injunctions had criticised the cult of images, relics and pilgrimage, those two years later were more forceful. The 1538 Injunctions forbade pilgrimage and outward manifestations of devotion to the cult of the saints and to the dead.26 However, tapers and candles were still officially permitted to be burnt before the Great Rood and there was to be no officially sanctioned destruction of the rood or any part of its supporting structure at that date, although attacks did take place between 1538 and 1540.27

By the death of Henry VIII in January 1547, pilgrimage sites, the shrines of saints and the entire monastic system had been taken apart.28 The building of rood lofts had slowed in pace, and those in the monastic setting had been destroyed or sold.

Edward VIIt was under Edward VI (1547–1553) that the building of screens and lofts was fully halted, images were attacked and roods were taken away and burnt. The Injunctions of 1547 led to Royal

Figure 4. The Elizabethan royal arms at Ludham, Norfolk, re-erected on the east side of the tympanum.

Visitations from September.29 While the Visitations prompted the widespread destruction of many images, the distinction between a used and a misused image was not clarified until the end of 1547. The official order to remove all images from London came first, and was extended by Cramner to the rest of the country in February of the following year.30 From that point on, all images were to be removed from churches and chapels and explicitly destroyed. The campaign lasted many years, often coinciding with the introduction of yet more radical versions of the Book of Common Prayer. By 1550, ownership of religious images would lead to fines and imprisonment.31

The iconoclasm of roods and rood groups was so successful that only five or so fragments of British roods have survived. Fragments remain at Kemeys Inferior and Mochdre in Wales, South Cerney, Gloucestershire, Cartmel Fell, Cumbria, Branscombe, Devon and the arm of a large cross was found in a well in Durham. Rood beams are more common in their survival although where figurative or naturalistic they too suffered destruction; a sole surviving Golgotha rood beam remains in Cullompton, Devon.32

Under Edward VI, screens themselves were retained and acquired a new function. Where the rood and its attendant figures had once stood, the royal arms were now positioned. Only a single set of Edwardian royal arms survives, at Westerham, Kent, having survived the reversal of fortunes under Mary.33

However, it was not until the reign of Elizabeth I that rood lofts, in the modern understanding of the term – the parapets or canopies – were officially condemned. Clearly in a time of great turmoil and without official sanction, some reformers such as Bishop Hooper in 1551–52, sought and succeeded in the abolition of some rood lofts.34 It is likely that much of the iconoclasm evident on parochial screen panel saints dates from the reign of Edward VI.

Marian revival The reign of Mary (1553–1558), saw the restoration of rood groups, as at Ludham, Norfolk.35 The paint layers of the Ludham tympanum typify the complexity of the period (figures 4 and 5). Restored to the chancel arch after its discovery in the rood stair in 1879 during an Archaeological Society outing, is a wooden tympanum.36 On the chancel side of the arch, an Elizabethan royal arms is visible, one of three surviving in Norfolk, the others at Tivetshall St Mary and Kenninghall perhaps also having a medieval origin. Now reinstated to face the nave at Ludham is the earlier medieval tympanum with Marian reworking, which was once covered with the Elizabethan arms.

The older tympanum was somehow retained through the 1540s, perhaps in the hope that it would one day be put back. An examination of the painting (from floor level and using high resolution digital photographs) indicates that this was most probably the medieval tympanum prior to the removal of roods in the reign of Edward VI. Not all the paint is Marian, that the tympanum is older is shown by the fact that the figure of Christ and the Cross is rather crudely added over blank space on the tympanum previously hidden by statuary of the same subject. At Foxley in Norfolk, the upper part of the screen is sawn from the dado, but reattached with handmade iron strapwork (figure 6).

Although Foxley’s church guide states that this re-joining occurred in the reign of Elizabeth, it may well have happened under Mary. Without documentary or specific technical evidence, it is difficult to ascribe such alterations to so narrow a period: caution must be exercised. For example, surveying undertaken by the author has indicated that Cambridgeshire (as Essex) retains numerous fourteenth to early sixteenth-century screens, which is at odds with Woodger’s reading of Cambridgeshire screenwork as extensively Marian.37 In another instance, Duffy has stated that the secondary scheme on the currently ex situ Lessingham rood screen is Marian in date.38 However, the presence of the same workshop using some of the same stencils and tin relief patterns as Trunch, some ten miles away, instead indicates a date nearer 1502, the date of the inscription on that screen.39

Figure 5. The front of the tympanum with screen beneath at Ludham, Norfolk.

ElizabethUnder the agency of Royal Visitors, 1559 was a year of widespread image destruction, as 1547 had been. Marian roods, and those earlier examples which had been squirreled away, re-emerging under Mary, were burnt in great bonfires.40 For the first time, rood lofts were officially ordered to be removed and it was under Elizabeth that the majority of rood lofts were taken down, although not always immediately. The partition between the nave and the chancel was to be retained, as made explicit in the Elizabethan order of 10th October 1561.41 It is perhaps for this reason, rather paradoxically, that England retains such a large number of screens as opposed to the continent where the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformations respectively swept them away (although their popularity may well have varied regionally throughout Europe). However some screens at least appear to have been completely dismantled at this time.

In the case of Great St Mary’s in Cambridge, the order to remove the loft is recorded for 1562 and it was at least partially dismantled the following year as a record of the payment of 3s 4d to four carpenters for taking down the rood loft testifies.42 Some aspect of the structure was mended in 1566, most likely the lower reaches, what now might be termed the rood screen. It appears that, contrary to the 1561 order, timber from the whole structure was sold in 1569 and it was completely removed in 1570.

As appears to have been the case under Edward VI, the royal arms at the head of the rood screen became a familiar sight in parish churches under Elizabeth, as at Kenninghall, Ludham and Tivetshall in Norfolk. Quidenham in Norfolk is said to be a rare example of a screen built in the reign of Elizabeth.43 However, there is no specific physical or documentary evidence to indicate that this screen post-dates the first half of the sixteenth century.

Iconoclasm in the English Civil War A number of roods and rood lofts must have survived into the seventeenth century as both the 28th August, 1643 Ordinance and May, 1644 Ordinance explicitly state their prohibition, an inclusion considered ‘a curiosity’ by Spraggon.44 Notable too is the stipulation that offensive religious images were not only to be removed, but defaced. More important than the removal of the imagery was that it must be seen to be destroyed or disempowered.45

William Dowsing was the Parliamentary commander commissioned by the Earl of Manchester to enforce the 28th August Ordinance against images in the east of England.46 This he did

Figure 6. Iron strapwork has been used to reattach the upper part of the screen at Foxley, Norfolk.

Figure 7. St Matthew at Cawston, Norfolk. His left eye has been deliberately burnt.

zealously, visiting more than two hundred and fifty churches chiefly in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, recording his work, including the destruction of screens, meticulously in his journal.47 It has been said that the scale of destruction in the eastern counties exceeded the rest of the country specifically due to Dowsing.48 Indeed figurative screenwork survives better in Norfolk than in those counties where Dowsing and his lieutenants were at work. Whether this should be taken as evidence of Dowsing’s impact or instead of Norfolk’s pre-eminence in figurative screenwork remains to be seen. It is probably evidence of both: much of the best quality paintings on screenwork in Suffolk, as

at Southwold and Bramfield, has a Norfolk origin.

Iconoclasm as manifest on screensSecurely dating the iconoclasm on rood screens by its location and type without documentary evidence is a nigh-on impossible task, which is perhaps one reason why iconoclasm on screens was not examined in Cooper’s essay concerning the identification of Civil War damage in the most recent edition of Dowsing’s journal.49 Screens are curiously absent from the broader discussion of East Anglian iconoclasm in the book, which focuses rather on bells, brasses and glass. The lack of a well illustrated screen gazetteer for the region might be a further contributor to this omission and it is hoped that the publication of Baker’s book

Figure 8. St Agnes from the chancel screen at Bee-ston-next-Mileham, Norfolk.

Figure 9. St Peter at Beeston Regis, Norfolk.

Figure 10. Defaced spandrel unicorn at Fritton, Norfolk.

on figurative screens will go some way to restore balance.50

Deliberate damage to screens is variable across the region, ranging from the burning out of eyes at Cawston (figure 7) to vigorous defacing as at Beeston-next-Mileham (figure 8). The degree of mutilation appears to have reflected the fervour or torpor of the individuals charged with the task. Examples such as Beeston Regis (figure 9), where eyes are rather cursorily damaged (though retouched), may testify to unwillingness. The sculpted aspects of screens too could draw attack, especially spandrel designs which included saintly figures and fantastical beasts. This can be seen at Fritton, Norfolk (figure 10).

Some screens, such as Gateley (Norfolk) and

Bramfield (Suffolk), survive without any sign of attack, while others, like North Elmham probably prevailed through being whitewashed. Indeed some figures at North Elmham remain painted-out to this day. The screen at Binham, Norfolk (figure 11) and the tympanum doom at Wenhaston both retain passages of both whitewash and black-letter texts. It is generally possible to glean whether figurative panel paintings have been whitewashed from technical examination, as removal of all traces of white paint is difficult.

Perhaps an apparently un-whitewashed screen such as Gateley prevailed because of its remoteness, or possibly screen panels were hidden or boxed in by seating at critical periods. It is very difficult to date iconoclasm: while deliberate mutilation of prayer clauses as seen on the parclose screen at Edgefield and on the chancel screen at Weston Longville (figure 12) might be taken to be Puritan iconoclasm of the Civil War period, the destruction of prayer clauses on brasses is already mentioned by Weever before the Civil War.51 Citing Weever’s reference to brasses, Cooper concludes that prayer clause mutilation cannot therefore be taken as a conclusive evidence of 1640s iconoclasm.52

Parclose screensParclose screens were less controversial than chancel screens, and so suffered less deliberate damage during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, except where they too portrayed the figures of saints, as at Edgefield, Norfolk. However, their retention was not legislated for as was the case with rood screens under Elizabeth I. Many decayed, initially as a result of their loss of function as guild and chantry chapels. Later, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the chief driver for their removal and destruction was prevailing taste. Evidence of former parcloses can often be seen in churches from the fixture points set into columns, as at Monks Eleigh in Suffolk. As with chancel screens, with which they at times were designed to link up, they too appear to have been commonplace by the late fifteenth century.

Figure 11. St Sebastian peers through whitewash and black-letter texts from Cranmer’s Bible of 1539, Binham, Norfolk.

Figure 12. A deliberately damaged prayer clause on the chancel screen at Weston Longville, Norfolk.

Figure 13. Above the screen door in Hardwick, Norfolk, the churchwardens who restored the screen are named and the date 1667 painted.

Seventeenth-century restorationDatable seventeeth-century restoration or reworking is uncommon in screenwork throughout the three counties: screens were more typically subjected to further iconoclasm and whitewashing, especially during the first part of the century. However, a rare example from 1667, naming the churchwardens responsible, survives at Hardwick in Norfolk (figure 13).

Earlier screens were sometimes reused or repainted during this century, sometimes in stone or wood imitation, or their format altered. While conducting cleaning tests, Pauline Plummer noted seventeenth-century marble effect painting at Eye, Suffolk on the east side of the dado.53 The Barnardiston pew at Kedington, Suffolk is a family box pew made out of parts of a former parclose. The medieval front of the structure was restored by Professor E. W. Tristram in the 1920s, who removed three schemes of paint to reveal part of the original decorative medieval scheme.54 The reworking of 1610 appears to have involved covering the original decoration with a rather lurid wood imitation graining, a fashion which continued, typically in more subdued form, into the eighteenth and early nineteenth century (figure 14).

Kedington is also a rare example of a seventeenth-century ‘new build’ chancel screen, dating from 1618. A further example can be found at Wilby, Norfolk, which dates from c. 1610. Both screens are simple in structure, have few carved details and are unpainted.

The eighteenth century By the eighteenth century, an interest in screens from an antiquarian perspective began to emerge. As the highly-charged religious politics of screens faded, there was the necessary distance for them to be considered worthy of historical study. However this distance also meant that screens were increasingly seen as irrelevant and obstructing. Simultaneous to the recording of their iconography and inscriptions, many screens were being built into box pews and painted over in imitation wood graining (as can be seen on the framework of the screen at Foxley in figure 6). This ‘wainscot colour’ or graining is habitually painted over a thick and tough oil-bound lead white underlayer. As this thick coating is invariably difficult to remove, many screens have suffered losses to original paint during the removal of non-original graining schemes. Many screens were cut down to the transom rail or removed during this century, as fashions for open, clear church vistas prevailed. In a particularly well-documented case, within ten years, between 1727 and 1737, seventy-one medieval screens were taken down in Yorkshire.55

Some of the first records of now-lost inscriptions emerged in the eighteenth century. One of the

most influential regional antiquaries was Francis Blomefield (1705–1752), who first wrote about Cambridgeshire, making note of several screens, whilst at Gonville and Caius College, where he was ordained priest in 1729.56 He then went to Norfolk to take up a living, first at Hargham and shortly afterwards at Fersfield, where he commenced his many volume book An Essay towards a Topographical History of Norfolk. Blomefield died before the completion of the book, which was continued by Charles Parkin, rector of Oxborough (1689–1765). It was first published in five volumes between 1739 and 1775.57 The series of books have a drawn out and complicated publication and authorship history. Blomefield’s Norfolk was ultimately reprinted as an eleven-volume quarto set between 1805 and 1810.58 In terms of their

Figure 14. Painted wood patterns on the Barnardiston pew at Kedington, Suffolk.

records of rood screens, the Blomefield volumes focus on inscriptions rather than visual analysis or detailed description, but provide useful dates and donor names for screens which are either no longer extant, or have since been stripped of their paint.

Nineteenth–twentieth centuryFrom the mid-nineteenth century, a great deal of building of churches and of screens took place throughout Great Britain. Coupled with this was greater interest in the uncovering and restoration of medieval examples, especially in those regions where figurative screens were found in numbers.

Screens gained in prestige and importance, acquiring the new name ‘rood screen’ and a controversy to go along with it. Pugin felt prompted to write a response, which verges on the polemic, to the attacks on him about the role of his newly designed screen in Southwark Cathedral. As well as making the case for the need for parochial and conventual screens in new churches, Pugin also railed against the destruction of historical examples. His treatise, written from 1848 to 1851 lambasts ambonoclasm, a term for screen iconoclasm which he borrowed from seventeenth-century historian Abbé J.-B. Thiers.59 Pugin wrote four fascinating vignettes of historical fiction, describing in turn the Calvinist, Pagan and Revolutionary Ambonoclast, but he spared no punches for his final example, the Modern Ambonoclast. Despite his pleas and such interest in screens, medieval examples were still being removed.

Aymer Vallance, born in 1862, summarised well the nineteenth-century attitude towards screens. Writing in 1936 towards the end of a long life, he reflected on it:

For its reckless destruction of ancient screen-work the nineteenth century has been quite as bad as any that preceded it. In the Victorian period one of the most active causes of the disappearance of screens was, strange to say, the so-called “Gothic revival” itself.60

A sense of the scale of the loss felt so viscerally by Vallance can be gleaned from comparing the figurative screens Charles Keyser recorded in 1886 to what survives today.61 A third of the region’s figurative screens have been wholly or partially destroyed since that time.

In Norfolk, Keyser refers to a hundred and twelve figurative screens by name, missing out six figurative screens which are still extant.62 This indicates that at least a hundred and nineteen figurative screens survived in Norfolk at the end of the nineteenth century. In the past hundred and twenty-five years, thirty-nine of these screens have suffered losses. Twenty-one screens have since been completely removed, ten screens stripped or painted over and eight have lost figurative panels.63

Staggeringly, 33% of the screens noted by Keyser have suffered loss of figure paintings, ranging from panels going missing, to figure paintings being stripped off or painted over, to deliberate removal or destruction of the screen through fire (as at Great Plumstead, Norfolk).64 It must be noted that these figurative screens are the ones most likely to have been retained in the nineteeth century, decorative or stripped examples being much less highly favoured and hence more likely to be removed.

Losses have occurred in both Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, although the sample sizes are much smaller. In Suffolk, Keyser listed twenty-eight figurative screens, omitting fourteen which are

still present today. Of these forty-two in total, ten have been lost either partially or totally.65 In Cambridgeshire, Keyser lists three figurative screens, of which one has since been stripped (Cherry Hinton) and another repainted (Guilden Morden). The Cherry Hinton screen appears to have been stripped during restoration work led by George Gilbert Scott.66

As well as numerous losses and removals of screens, the nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a great deal of uncovering and restoration. The removal of earlier whitewashing and graining from screens was often undertaken with corrosive

Figure 15. The overcleaned surface on this panel of the Adoration of the Magi at Loddon, Norfolk, has had the black lines of its underdrawing reinforced.

or caustic materials as well as being done mechanically: local legend at Clavering in Essex has it that the figurative screen was uncovered using a bread knife.67 The chancel screens at Ranworth, Loddon and Pulham St Mary the Virgin display the characteristics of overcleaning. They have all, in places, been stripped down to their underdrawing. In the case of Loddon, this has then been repainted as a line drawing, making for a strange and hard-to-read overall appearance (figure 15). So-called restoration often led to the complete removal or irreversible covering of original paint. This type of wholesale repainting continued until the mid-twentieth century.

A great boon of the nineteenth-century interest in screens has been their recording. The 1865 rood screen survey in Norfolk was the first systematic attempt to write a definitive list of survivals in that county, and lists such as that of Keyser already detailed are invaluable in investigating survival rates.68 However, such lists are generally scanty in their information. Drawings, paintings, prints and latterly photographs often provide valuable information of lost painting schemes, tympana and lofts. Collections at the Norwich Castle Museum, the respective county Record Offices and British Museum contain many illustrations showing the decoration and condition of screens including some that have been destroyed such as Great Plumstead and Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk.69

The early twentieth century continued in much the same vein as the late nineteenth. While the removal and restoration of screens was already by this time controlled by the church authorities, who would need to approve and grant a faculty for work of this kind to take place, they continued to be removed, as can be gleaned from consistory court and faculty records for the period.70 At this date, screens were variously recorded, uncovered and restored but also stripped of paint and dismantled in their entirety. One typical early twentieth-century screen alteration is the addition of a modern rood or rood group, sometimes as a First World War memorial.

A notable figure involved in the restoration of rood screens in the first half of the twentieth century was Professor E. W. Tristram, who worked at Kedington in Suffolk and Attleborough and Great Snoring in Norfolk, among other sites. While Tristram is criticised for some of his restoration techniques, his emphasis on the necessity of careful recording has created a legacy of valuable drawings.

However, it was at the mid-point of the twentieth century that modern conservation practices began to supplant traditional restoration in the treatment of East Anglian screens. This was characterised by conservators’ use of stable, reversible materials, as well as the collation of written and photographic documentation about treatments.71 Instrumental to the conservation of screens in East Anglia, but

especially in Norfolk has been Pauline Plummer. Trained under the aegis of the Council for the Care of Churches at the Courtauld Institute of Art in the late 1950s, she has worked on numerous screens in the region.72

Despite this, there have been further losses since the mid-twentieth century. In one instance in the 1950s, figurative panels were scraped off and completely repainted after being sent away to a church furnishing company for restoration. Even now in the twenty-first century, losses can still occur, through theft, error and neglect. A panel of St Eligius was stolen from the church at Hempstead-on-Sea in Norfolk in the 1980s. It has never been recovered, although a photograph of it was taken by Pauline Plummer (figure 16).

In a well-publicised incident at Saxtead in Suffolk in 2000, a cupboard made out of panels from the rood screen was sold for £350. It reportedly later changed hands for a four-figure sum at a Christie’s auction and is now in private hands.73

A future for East Anglian screens?A major improvement in modern times is that the active removal of a medieval screen sought by a church will no longer be recommended by the Diocesan Advisory Committee (DAC).74 Any

Figure 16. The panel on the right, depicting St Eligius was stolen in 1982, along with half of the figure of St Leonard. Photograph courtesy of Pauline Plummer.

proposed alterations to be made to a screen itself or to the floor beneath a screen, will be examined by them before they advise approval. However, through no ill-will, at times church communities make alterations without consultation. This can result in the fixing of lights, notices and fire-extinguishers to screens and the feeding of wiring through holes in them. Instances of screens being repainted with house paint can be found as late as the 1980s.75 It is not uncommon to see Christmas, Easter or Harvest decorations affixed with nails or pins to medieval painted screens. The typically dirty condition of screens contributes to their being overlooked and disregarded. Congregations often are not fully aware of the treasures in their midst, or at least not of their vulnerability.

Furthermore, some churchgoers have a genuine dislike of screens, seeing them as an impediment to worship. In one case, at North Walsham in Norfolk, this led in the mid-1980s to the holding of a consistory court over the proposed removal of the c. 1480 figurative rood screen. The screen was ultimately kept.

Screens may be protected from wholesale removal, but not always from movement and de-contextualisation. Many are now to be found at the side or back of churches rather than in the original locations in which they were constructed and painted. Moreover, the requirement to consult the DAC protects only against active change rather than passive degradation or accidental damage.

The chief conservation problems facing East Anglian screens include fungal and insect attack, damage from bat faeces, and the loss of original paint due to fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity.76 Surveying shows that where paint survives, it is often in poor condition – raised and actively flaking. In addition, roughly one in five screens surveyed have signs of recent or active death watch beetle (Xestobium rufovillosum).

The nature of the organisation of parish churches means that conservation is undertaken on a church-by-church, case-by-case basis. It is difficult for communities to look after objects for which the degradation processes are complex, changes subtle, and damage slowly incremental. Some small congregations struggle to raise funds even to keep buildings weather tight. Screens can understandably fall down the ‘to do’ list, especially when churchwardens, incumbents and communities are faced with leaking roofs and broken windows.Vallance, himself a clergyman, wrote in 1936:

The only possible way of safeguarding such remnants as yet survive is to insist on a full and detailed return of all the fittings and contents of every ancient church being drawn up by experts…a schedule subject at frequent intervals to thorough inspection and checking.77

The Inspection of Churches Measure in 1955 established the quniquennial system under which churches are inspected by a surveyor, often an architect, every five years. While this system is vital for the maintenance of building fabrics, it is more variable in its safeguarding of church fittings such as screens.

An idea proposed by conservator Pauline Plummer is that alongside the architect system, a roving conservator is required to keep track of fittings and contents. Such an individual might use an archive of photographs to assess changing conditions of objects and alert communities to problems as they arise, pointing them in the direction of the necessary professionals.78 This would require the establishing of complete records of church contents, the like of which do not yet exist for screens.

Despite so much damage and dismantling, from iconoclasm, through taste to neglect, the survival of such a large body of wooden polychrome objects is unparalleled in the English medieval context. It is for this reason that it is vital that the screens of East Anglia are conserved as a corpus for future generations.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Paul Binski, Spike Bucklow and Pauline Plummer. This project was generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

1 A. W. Pugin, A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts: Their Antiquity, Use and Symbolic Signification, London 1851, p. 65.2 A. M. Baker, English Panel Paintings 1400–1558: A Survey of Figure Paintings on East Anglian Rood Screens, London 2011.3 For the purposes of this article, East Anglia is defined as the Dioceses of Norwich and Ely –therefore the boundaries of Suffolk, Norfolk and the ancient boundary of Cambridgeshire. See D. Dymond and E. Martin, Historical Atlas of Suffolk, Ipswich 1999, pp. 22–23.4 A. Vallance, English Church Screens, London 1936, p. 31. 5 S. Cotton, ‘Mediæval roodscreens in Norfolk-their construction and painting dates’, Norfolk Archaeology, vol. 40, no. 1, 1987, pp. 44–54; p. 50.6 Baker (note 2) and Cotton (note 5). 7 Cotton (note 5), p. 45.8 ‘A few words to church-builders published by the Cambridge Camden Society’, Cambridge Camden Society, Cambridge 1841.9 B. Ward, ‘The rood screen controversy’, in The Sequel to Catholic Emancipation, London 1915, pp. 261–78.10 Vallance (note 4), p. 31.11 E. Duffy, ‘The parish, piety, and patronage in late medieval East Anglia: the evidence of screens’, in K. L. French, G. G. Gibbs and B. A. Kümin (eds),

The Parish in English Life, 1400–1600, Manchester 1997, pp. 133–62.12 J. Schweiso, ‘Rood stairs - an analysis based upon a systematic sample from three English counties’, Church Archaeology, vol. 10, 2006, pp. 51–65.13 H. Lunnon, ‘Observations on the changing form of chancel screens in late medieval Norfolk’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, vol. 163, no. 1, 2010, pp. 110–31.14 There are, rarely, exceptions; the choir screen at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge was made by foreign and English craftsmen between 1532 and 36 in a fully Renaissance style and was never intended to be fully polychrome. At Salle in Norfolk, some panels of the screen were never finished, although it seems that a ground layer (distinct from subsequent whitewash) was applied to blank panels in anticipation of painting.15 R. Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England, Stroud 2004, p. 256.16 E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580, New Haven and London 1992.17 J. Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm in the English Civil War, Woodbridge 2003.18 Duffy (note 16), p. 381.19 W. J. Sheils, The English Reformation 1530–1570, Harlow 1989, pp. 7–10.20 Cotton (note 5).21 R. Martin, ‘The state of Melford church and our ladie’s chapel at the east end, as I did know it’, in D. Dymond and C. Paine (eds), The Spoil of Melford Church: The Reformation in a Suffolk Parish, Ipswich 1989.22 M. Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, vol. 1 Laws against Images, Oxford 1988, p. 225.23 Vallance (note 4), pp. 76–77.24 Cotton (note 5), p. 46. 25 R. Whiting, ‘Abominable idols: images and image-breaking under Henry VIII’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 33, no. 1, 1982, pp. 30–47; p. 45.26 Duffy (note 16), p. 407.27 Vallance (note 4), p. 5.28 R. Deacon and P. Lindley, Image and Idol: Medieval Sculpture, London 2001, p. 33.29 Duffy (note 16), pp. 448–77.30 Marks (note 15), pp. 263–64.31 Marks (note 15), p. 264.32 Vallance (note 4), pp. 1–12. I am grateful to Eddie Sinclair for the Branscombe reference. 33 D. MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant. Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation, London 1999, p. 161. Rushbrooke’s (Suffolk) set of Henrician arms are almost certainly the work of Colonel Rushbrooke, who restored the interior of the church in the middle years of the nineteenth century.34 Vallance (note 4), p. 77.35 Duffy (note 16), p. 556.36 P. Mortlock and C. V. Roberts, The Guide to Norfolk Churches, Cambridge 2007, p. 179. The royal arms, which must have historically covered the wooden tympanum, is on canvas and was placed in its current position, facing east, on a new

stretcher in the 1970s. I am grateful to Pauline Plummer for this information. 37 C. Hicks, Cambridgeshire Churches, Stamford 1997.38 Duffy (note 11); E. Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor, Yale 2009. 39 The testamentary evidence for Trunch and Lessingham has been collated by Cotton (note 5, pp. 49 and 52). The screen at Trunch is dated 1502 in its inscription. In 1496, John Gogull left 5 marks to the reparation of the perke; In 1505, Helwise Molle left 20d to painting the rood loft. At Lessingham John Sowter left 4 marks to the reparation of the perke in 1495, Edmund Kyng left 5 marks for the same in 1503. Robert Jones left 3s 4d to the reparation of the perke in 1505 and in 1508, Thomas Heylott left 33s 4d to the painting of the perke. It is unlikely that a stencil would be in circulation for 50 years.40 Aston (note 22), p. 302.41 Vallance (note 4), p. 86. That lofts were dismantled but screens deliberately retained is evident especially in the West Country, where numerous screens have decorative parts of their lofts applied to the upper parts of the screen, particularly where vaulting had been dismantled and had left bare areas. This ‘tidying-up’ clearly indicates a continued use for screens, albeit without lofts.42 J. E. Foster, Churchwarden’s Accounts of St Mary the Great, Cambridge from 1504 to 1635, Cambridge 1905, p. 151.43 Mortlock and Roberts (note 36).44 Spraggon (note 18), p. 79.45 Spraggon (note 18), p. 81.46 T. Cooper (ed), The Journal of William Dowsing: Iconoclasm in East Anglia during the English Civil War, Woodbridge 2001.47 Spraggon (note 17); Cooper (note 46). 48 Spraggon (note 17).49 Cooper (note 46).50 Baker (note 2).51 J. Weever, Ancient funerall monvments within the vnited Monarchie of Great Britaine, Ireland, and the islands adiacent, London 1631.52 Cooper (note 46), p. 106.53 I am grateful to Pauline Plummer for passing on this information. 54 The information about Tristram’s work comes from the church itself. 55 Vallance (note 4), p. 91 cites C. R. Norcliffe’s 1862 paper for the Yorkshire Architectural Society.56 F. Blomefield, Collectanea Cantabrigiensia, Norwich 1750.57 F. Blomefield and C. Parkin, An essay towards a topographical history of the county of Norfolk, 5 vols., Lynn and London 1739–75.58 D. Stoker, ‘Blomefield’s History of Norfolk’, Factotum: Newsletter of the XVIII century STC, XXVI, 1988, pp. 17–22.59 Pugin (note 1).60 Vallance (note 4), p. 92.61 Some caution must be exercised as Keyser often used earlier sources, including Blomefield rather than visiting all sites himself. With the exception of Blomefield, his sources were nineteenth century.

62 C. E. Keyser, A list of buildings in Great Britain and Ireland having mural and other painted decorations, London 1883. Keyser misses some figurative screens which survive today in Norfolk: Great Snoring, Riddlesworth, Swanton Abbot, Tacolneston, Tatterford and Wolferton (6).63 Complete removal, whereabouts unknown or destruction: Babingley, Erpingham, Hethersett, Hickling, Kenninghall, Neatishead, Northwold, Norwich St Peter Mancroft, Norwich St Simon and St Jude, Great Plumstead, Poringland, South Raynham, East Rudham, Swaffham, Thorpe Abbots, Toft Monks, Upwell, Little Walsingham, Weeting, Wighton, East Wretham (21). Stripping/painting over: Beighton, Buxton, Carbrooke, Foxley (possible painting over), Happisburgh, Harpley (painted over, but also probably stripped), Norwich St Peter Parmentergate, Repps, Taverham, Thetford St Peter (10). Partial loss, for example the loss of some figure panels: Norwich St James, Norwich St Swithin, South Lynn, Lessingham, Stalham, Suffield, Walpole St Peter, Weasenham St Peter (8).64 Keyser (note 62).65 Keyser refers to 28 figurative screens in Suffolk. Total losses: Barton, Gisleham, Herringfleet, Ringsfield, Stanton, Sudbury St Peter, Wingfield, Yoxford (7). Stripped or painted over: Barking, Barningham, Sudbury St Peter (3). Suffolk figurative screens surviving today which are not mentioned by Keyser: Belstead, Bildeston, Brent Eleigh, Coddenham, Hacheston, Nayland, Saxtead, Somerleyton, Sotherton, South Cove, South Elmham, Stradbroke, Westhorpe, Wyverstone (14).66 The figure panels at Cherry Hinton were described by Cambridge antiquarian W. Cole in the eighteenth century and J. Piggott in 1869, but were gone by 1909 (F. Bligh Bond, ‘On the Rood Screens in Cambridgeshire, part 2.’ Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, vol. 8, 1909, pp. 31-75). Gilbert Scott’s intervention was completed in 1880. 67 I am grateful to Marie Louise Sauerberg for this information.68 G. A. F. Plunkett, ‘Norfolk church screens 1865 survey’, Norfolk Archaeology, vol. 37, 1979, pp. 178–89.69 For example the Dawson Turner collection. Dawson Turner, the botanist and antiquary (1775–1858) illustrated volumes of Blomefield’s Norfolk which are now in the British Museum (British Library Add MSS 23024 and 23053, dated 1846/7 and 1834 respectively).70 Consistory court records for Norfolk in the period are available online at the National Archive website. See: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=153-dn-con&cid=0#0. Accessed May 2012.71 Conservators known to have worked on East Anglian painted screens in the latter half of the twentieth century and twenty-first century include Pauline Plummer (and many assistants), Anna Hulbert (Great Snoring, Norfolk), Christine Easton (Bedfield, Suffolk), Robert and Eve Baker (Thornham, Horsham St Faith pulpit, both

Norfolk), Maurice Keevil (Tivetshall tympanum, Norfolk; repainted screen at Gislingham, Suffolk) and Joan Wormald (Cawston, Norfolk). Woodwork treatments have been done by Joe Royal, Herbert Read Ltd (Barton Turf) and, more recently, Joe Dawes. Joe Dawes has worked in conjunction with Pauline Plummer on numerous projects.72 Pauline Plummer’s work ranges from major projects involving overpaint and varnish removal such as at Barton Turf, Eye, Worstead and Ranworth, to emergency consolidation. Her work on screens has been concentrated mainly in Norfolk. In that county, she has spent between one and several days undertaking emergency consolidation on 48 screens and 2 font covers to date. 10 figurative screens and 3 medieval pulpits have been the subject of larger projects, variously over weeks, months and years. In Suffolk, a major project took place at Eye and a shorter one at Stradbroke. In addition, emergency consolidation has been done at Yaxley and Bramfield. Her monitoring of screens is ongoing and conducted on a voluntary basis.73 See Simon Knott’s Suffolk churches website: http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/saxtead.html.Accessed May 2012. This website is archived by the British Library.74 The Diocesan Advisory Committee for the Care of Churches and Churchyards is a statutory body established by the Faculty Jurisdiction Measure of 1938. It advises on the care of churches and churchyards and offers formal advice to the Chancellor of the Diocese on faculty applications made by PCCs (or others) seeking to undertake works in church buildings and churchyards. The DAC has no authority to make decisions; its role is to offer advice. For more information see www.norwich.anglican.org/about/organisation/dac.shtml and www.peterboroughdiocesanregistry.co.uk/dac.html. Accessed May 2012.75 Potter Heigham and Carleton Rode, both figurative rood screens, have both had their frameworks repainted in this way. In the case of Potter Heigham, repainting occurred after Pauline Plummer gave an estimate for cleaning in the 1970s. The housepaint there was ordered to be removed. The housepaint applied to the muntins at Carleton Rode has more recently been removed.76 Bat excrement is acidic and corrodes both paint and varnish. See S. Paine, ‘The effects of bat excreta on wall paintings’, The Conservator, vol. 17, 1993, pp. 3–10.77 Vallance (note 4), p. 94.78 Pauline Plummer has been inspecting and noting painted screens requiring emergency consolidation work for many years. In 2008-09 she was funded by the Barbara Whatmore Trust to consolidate more than 25 Norfolk rood screens, and work on a further 8 was planned for 2012. Funding, however, is limited, and she has had to restrict her consolidation mainly to the dado panels of screens and to figurative examples in order to safeguard the greatest number of painted screens.

AuthorLucy Wrapson graduated from the University of Cambridge in History of Art, afterwards receiving a scholarship at Collegio Ghislieri, University of Pavia, Italy. She then attended the Courtauld Institute of Art, receiving a MA in Early Sienese Painting in 2002 and a Diploma in the Conservation of Easel Paintings in 2005. Since 2005, she has been based at the Hamilton Kerr Institute. From 2009 to 2012 Lucy was the Research Associate for a Leverhulme Trust funded project examining the methods and materials of East Anglian screens.

East Anglian medieval church screens: a brief guide to their physical history

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