Rachel has just reminded me how much I love spending time in ancient churches, and through my work - and in this case H.I.'s work - I have been lucky enough to have spent a lot of time in them.
Some of you will have seen this before, but the above is the 'Doom Board' of St James the Great in Dauntsey, Wiltshire. It was painted hundreds of years ago to frighten the locals into living a good life, but was taken down and hidden for safety during the Reformation. This is how it survived when so many other ecclesiastical artworks were destroyed.
When they decided to put it up again over the rood screen, H.I. got the dream job of filling in the missing panels with abstract marks in the same colour arrangement as the surrounding painting. This had never been done before or since, and the project won a national award for the architect in charge.
I got the job of preparing the oak boards ready for painting (hot gesso and rabbit skin size) and I also painted the cloud motif on the lime plaster in the space where the old boards did not quite fit a later roof line. More importantly, I got the job of H.I.'s assistant and chauffeur, so I had weeks of spare time just daydreaming in and out of the church on hot, Summer afternoons. Do you know 'A Month in the Country'? Well it was like that except I never got to shag the vicar's wife.
All the other times I have spent prolonged periods in churches, I have had to work too hard for my liking, with no time to daydream or explore. Maybe I should join the National Trust like a real old man, and have the oak leaf sticker on the windscreen of my car.
Thank you for your visit Tom - I had trouble getting through to your blog as blogger said you had a private profile, but with trial and error I suddenly succeeded.
ReplyDeleteI am making a note of this church - strange as it may seem, I love Doom Walls and would really like to see the details in this board. I am very impressed that you worked on it too.
I have been in the NT long before I became an 'oldie' - those were the days when you had the place almost to yourself. If you should ever decide to join, let me know, and I can give you a tip on how to get the cheapest annual subscription possible.
Have you clicked on the photo? Can you give me the tips anyway?
DeleteYes, I have done now. The details are terrific, it always looks as if they are having much more fun down in the den of iniquity rather than up in the celestial heights.
DeleteTo get a senior membership of NT you have to have been an ordinary member for the past 10 years and the last five consecutively before you reach 60. However, if you join the Scottish NT you get senior membership straight away, and the membership is also cheaper. The card gives you access to all of the English properties too. The only thing is that you get a Scottish property brochure and not an English one. If you know a member of the NT they would give you their previous years book as you get a new one every year, and entrance details etc very rarely alter and are checkable anyway online. I have lots of old books and could readily oblige.
Excellent. Thank you Rosemary. I think I may go for an Irish passport at the same time. Re the sinners going up not down, it looks to me as though if you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you have to be trained in dressage before you try.
DeleteI just checked. You save £13 by pretending to be Scottish on the senior joint membership. Maybe that covers the cost of the relevant brochures?
DeleteOh hang on, you said that we would have had to be a member for 10 years on the English one. Got it.
DeleteGood - by the way you don't have to pretend to be Scottish - anyone can join.
DeleteYou can actually get an English NT users handbook on Amazon posted for less than £3.
What a great job to have had and to have seen it coming back to life in front of her eyes, or paint brush. It reminds me of seeing fresco wall paintings in Macedonian churches cleaned and in the process of coming back. It was always dark inside the churches so you couldn't see much though and some were still in the process of being worked on with scaffolding in place but I never saw anyone actually doing the work.
ReplyDeleteYes - that was literally a once in a lifetime job. There are only five medieval doom boards in the whole country.
DeleteYou don't usually let on specific pieces you've worked on, so this was an interesting post. I "embiggened" (is that the term you've used before?) the picture and had a look at the details. It would appear that one will encounter a Chinese dragon when one goes to Hell. -Jenn
ReplyDeleteThis work is in the public domain. Yes, that is a high resolution picture and withstands quite a lot of embiggening. The people who painted those things were usually travelling artists, going fro church to church around the country.
DeleteWhat a wonderful thing to have been involved in.
ReplyDeleteI remember you showing us the Doom Boatd before ......a beautiful piece of restoration.by H.I.
ReplyDeleteDid you manage to shag anyone else’s wife ?!!!! XXXX
It wasn't restoration actually, just filling the gaps. There were a few horsey girls around in the lane, but too fast for me. They were on horseback.
DeleteWell known fact to take into consideration:
ReplyDeleteNational Trust cafes always have delicious cakes.
Better than W.I.?
DeleteI'd not heard of a Doom Board before. Yes, rather a gruesome thing to be contemplating if you were a yokel in your Sunday best. It sounds like an amazing job and even better that you got to loaf around on it as well. I'm a bit confused, H.I. isn't your squeeze?
ReplyDeleteThe vicar hated the Doom Board, but what does he know about heaven and hell? H.I. is my predestined life partner. The others are squeezes.
DeleteJust remarkable work, I don't know a lot about Doom Boards but I would like to learn more.
ReplyDeleteSome of these paintings were straight on to the walls of the church and some have been rediscovered after having been painted over. The Victorians did a lot of damage too when 're-decorating'.
DeleteI remember previous posts about when you worked on this project with H.I. Your hours of poking about unearthed some other loafers initials carved into a block of the foundation. Or so I remember. One lovely fact of an injury to the head is the way truth runs over and over itself, and I am not fussed. So, lounging over lunch on the green lawns, you found something old in the stone foundation, and I believe it was initials.
ReplyDeleteThere are bored schoolboys' initials carved into the wooden pews dating from the 1600s, and I re-discovered a rudimentary sundial right outside the main porch. Loafing can be fun!
Delete