Norfolk in the United Kingdom is justly famed for its beautiful medieval churches, a number of which still retain pre-Reformation features like painted rood screens. Today, however, we are not going to look at a rood, but rather at a roof -- yes, you read that correctly.
Church roofs can be quite spectacular of course, especially on the continent where the strains of neo-iconoclasm weren't felt quite so distinctly over the centuries. This gave more time for their decoration and presevation. Today we are, however, going to look at the medeival parish church of the village of Cawston.
The church in question is St. Agnes' Church which dates to the 1400's, so it pre-dates the English Reformation, though not by very much. The exterior of the church is fairly typical for this place and time and the church also boasts one of the most spectacular examples of a medieval rood screen, painted, as they often were, with the images of various saints (including one of the earliest known depictions of a figure wearing eyeglasses, in this particular instance, the bespectacled saint is St. Matthew).
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| St. Matthew wearing eyeglasses (see right) |
We will focus on this rood and some other spectacular medieval rood screens in Norfolk in another future article, however it is the hammer-beamed roof that includes polychromed, full figured carvings of angels that draws our attention today.
Recently this roof has been cleaned and restored, which actually allowed people to gain a much closer view of these remarkable carvings than they otherwise would. Many of the coloured details have long since faded on these figures, but as you will see from some of the images, some remnants of their previous colouring is still yet visible today. There are two types of angels we can see here. First there are those which are found lower down, each holding a shield which would have borns arms and/or symbols.
Above these are the angels that I particularly wish to draw your attention two. Each of these if full figured and have four wings.
The full-figured angels that you see here are life-sized in height, each standing approximately six feet in height. One will note some of the red and gold detailing still visible, as well as the inclusion of peacock like designs on some of the feathers which seem to resemble eyes -- perhaps coming with reference to sacred scripture's description of cherubim as angels whose "whole body, and their necks, and their hands, and their wings... were full of eyes..." (Ezekiel 10:12)
In its heyday, when this church yet still had its newly painted rood screen (which, incidentally includes bits of glass that would reflect in the light, giving it a shimmering effect) as well as these painted ceiling figures and other painted depictions, it must have been quite a splendour to behold. Regardless, we are fortunate that at very least these incredible figures managed to survive the iconoclasm of the English reformation down to our own time, no doubt in part because of their relative inaccessibility.
We shall conclude here with a video by Dr. Allan Barton, an occasional contributor to LAJ and founder of The Antiquary. Allan provides even more details and some incredible views of the church and its roof by way of drone. (I would encourage readings to please consider supporting Dr. Barton by subscribing to his channel and / or his excellent periodical.)
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