About
Years ago, I visited all but one of the 600+ churches in Devon. An interesting (and surprising) experience,
but in
particular, the quality and variety of the Devon medieval rood screens stood out. Many of these
beautiful screens still stand in Devon but unfortunately, a large number have lost their original
figurative
paintings. Web searches show
that
Devon rood
screen figures are not well represented on the internet. A shame. So this website now provides a visual
record of
these figurative medieval Devon
screens. There are just over 40 of these screens left.
The symbolism of some of the screen figures is sometimes unclear. This website has largely followed the Bond
and
Bede
interpretations. But there are other possibilities.
Richard Knights
Extra pages
References
- Roodscreens and Roodlofts : Vol 2 - Francis Bond and Dom Bede Camm - Pitman (1909)
- Representations of Sibyls on rood screens - Audrey Baker - Trans. Devon Assoc. 136, 71-97 (2004)
- The Stripping of the Altars - Eamon Duffy - Yale (2005)
- English panel paintings 1400-1558 - Audrey Baker - Archetype (2011)
- A Cloud of Witnessess - Diane Wilks - Azure (2011)
- The Church in Devon - Nicholas Orme - Impress (2013)
- Norfolk
Church
Screens - An Introduction
- Allan Barton (2012)
- East
Anglian medieval church screens. A brief guide to their physical history - Lucy Wrapson
-
Hamilton Kerr Institude, Bulletin 4 (2013)
- Medieval
Rood
screens, with special reference to Devon - Michael Aufrère Williams - PhD - Exeter
(2008)
- Medieval
Devon Roodscreens from the Fourteenth century to the Present Day - Michael Aufrère
Williams
-
TDH, 83, 1-13, (2014)
- The
Iconography of Medieval Devon Roodscreens - Michael Aufrère Williams -
TDH, 84, 17-34, (2015)
- Devon
Roodscreens after the Reformation: Destruction and Survival - Michael Aufrère
Williams
-
TDH,
87,
11-24,
(2018)
Most images in this website have been processed as follows:
- The colour saturation slightly increased.
- Some image sharpening.
- Resizing of the thumbnail images so as to align the smaller images into a common size for display
purposes. Thus a little distortion in some thumbnail images. But no distortion in the full blown images.
All the figures in the church view are displayed in order from the North to the South side
of the screen
as viewed from the nave. They follow a numerical order.
So figure 01 is the most northerly figure when looking at the screen from the nave ...
An example from part of the Alphington screen - left is north: