It was just over 18 years ago that I spent several months visiting a number of medieval churches in East Anglia to photograph their painted rood screens. At the time I was working on the rood screens as part of my research for my Master’s dissertation. Often my mother accompanied me and helped out with the photographs. I was surveying the painted details found within the cloth of gold worn by the saints and prophets. She would patiently hold a cardboard scale slightly in front of the painted motifs embellishing the robes depicted on the screens. It was in the days just before digital cameras became widely available (and affordable!) and I had to wait for my film to return from the developers before I knew if my prints were a fair record for my work.
Following my recent house move my dissertation has surfaced. Looking for fresh inspiration I scrutinised the photographs I used to illustrate my text. What a disappointment! At the time I wrote and produced my dissertation the finished printed version appeared good enough, but compared to my photos today they are, well, of exceedingly poor quality.
There are six rood screens in East Anglia that are particularly fine and are known as the ‘Ranworth Group’. These late-fifteenth-century screens include from Norfolk; St Helen’s, Ranworth; All Saints’, Filby; St Mary’s, Old Hunstanton; All Saints’, Thornham; St Mary’s, North Elmham and from Suffolk, St Edmund’s, Southwold. Maybe one day I will be back up on the North Norfolk coast and visit Old Hunstanton and Thornham again, but for my immediate needs Southwold is my nearest resource. (I have already been back to, rephotographed and worked from Ranworth – see here.)
It is the case that the Ranworth screen is by far the best preserved, but Southwold is also in a reasonable condition despite some Victorian renovation work. All six rood screens of the Ranworth Group appear to have been made and painted by a single workshop. The designs and motifs for the cloth of gold used to adorn the saints and prophets probably came from the same pattern source book. If you look carefully at the examples above (Page 27 -apologies for the poor quality) you can see a dog with collar attacking a nesting swan. This motif is found clearly on five of the painted screens, the exception being North Elmham which was too dark and damaged to see the detail clearly. All measured 6 x 7 cm suggesting the motif was traced from an original source. There are other motifs and stencilled patterns that are also seen repeated on the rood screens, including the screen at St Edmund’s, Southwold, providing consistent evidence to support the long held view that a well-respected artisan workshop from Norwich created these masterpieces during the period 1470 – 1500.
Earlier this week I went back to Southwold to rephotograph its glorious rood screen and you can see from the image below that modern technology, a better camera and a better lens have enabled me to record this treasured medieval art as it should be done.
Share this:
Agnes Ashe 
Absolutely fascinating, I would love to look at them all with my own eyes having seen your photographs. Sadly it needs a car which I no longer have access to.
Ah that is a shame. The screen is definitely better in real life as is the whole church setting.
You know an off-season long weekend in Southwold would be very pleasant. It is possible to take the train from Liverpool St to Halesworth then get a bus or a taxi to Southwold. Just don’t attempt it when the Latitude Festival is taking place!!!!
Yes, don’t digital cameras, even quite modest ones,make a difference? And the rood screens of East Anglia are indeed quite something.
You know snapping a quick picture of any old thing these days is so taken for granted that my daughter recently bought a disposable film camera on purpose to slow it all down. She told me that for the ubiquitous group shot her contemporaries behave differently when they know it’s a film photo. I think I will stick to my digital for the invaluable immediate review facility. Nothing worse than getting back a pack of prints that are underexposed/overexposed and/or are out of focus.
Indeed there isn’t. But I really like your daughter’s thoughts on this one. There was a lot to be said for having to be very selective, then waiting for the film to be finished, then developed. It prolonged the expectation … and the disappointment when it all went wrong.
I still have a dozen B&W photographs taken on a box brownie when I was eleven. Most of them are in focus and surprisingly clear. Isn’t the detail on those rood screens amazing? They must have been stunning when new.