Angels, saints, demons and devils unveiled

The Times - November 14, 2006

LONDON: The earliest and largest series of church wall paintings known to have survived in Britain is to be unveiled to the public after being discovered in an isolated English church.

Figures of demons and devils, as well as depictions of God, Christ, saints and martyrs, are among images painted in about 1090, three years after the death of William the Conqueror.

Their survival is astonishing because the efforts of Henry VIII, the damp climate and the Victorian penchant for stripping church interiors ensured the obliteration of early paintings that once covered the walls and ceilings of most British churches.

The paintings were lost for centuries beneath layers of plaster. A wall of ivy then engulfed the roofless building of St Mary's Church at Houghton-on-the-Hill, on the outskirts of North Pickenham, near Swaffham in Norfolk, eastern England. Until recently the church had been little used since the 1930s.

The first image was discovered a decade ago by Bob Davey, an engineer, who noticed patches of red ochre showing through the ivy-covered ruins.

Preventing the paintings from falling down, as well as uncovering and conserving them, has been a painstaking process. Over the past 10 years, more and more images have emerged - most recently a Noah's Ark and a Wheel of Fortune.

Although the Anglo-Saxons are known to have painted many of their church walls, the only example to have survived - in a church at Nether Wallop in Hampshire, southwest England, dating from about 1000 - is a small fragment of an angel.

Tobit Curteis, a leading wall paintings specialist who is heading the team of conservators, said: "This is the biggest find of wall paintings in the past few decades. What's important about them is that they bridge the gap between the few fragments of Anglo-Saxon paintings we've got and quite a few 12th-century schemes. There's absolutely nothing like this until the 12th century. That's why everyone's so excited."

The images include a seated figure of God with ornate drapery falling over his knees, a figure of Christ on the Cross, and the Holy Ghost in the form of a haloed dove. Mr Curteis said this type of Trinity was known in later Romanesque art but unheard of at this date.

The paintings feature groups of saints and martyrs as well as figures tumbling into hell and trumpeting angels raising the dead from their tombs.

To the left of a figure of Christ are horned red figures - a series of demons holding scrolls. These images are original in Britain, Mr Curteis said, adding that the only known parallel can be found in a 12th-century church in the south of France.