Rood Screen
The Rood Screen, is one of the most splendid in Cornwall and even in the entire West Country. It may well have come from a Devon workshop and dates back to medieval times. Judging by the two coats of arms carved on the original beam it was the gift of the Killigrew family and the Godolphins of Boskenna, possibly to celebrate the marriage of John Godolphin to Elizabeth Killigrew in the mid to late 15th century. Their son, also John, was Sheriff of Cornwall in 1504. It is interesting to note that the wood carver has put a dolphin on the crest of the Godolphin shield instead of an eagle displ:sa: perhaps because the Killigrew arms also consist of a double headed eagle. In 1814, when the church was restored, it was cut down and some of the pieces thrown into the tower. Others were stored in a chest in the vestry.
The Lady Chapel section has two completely new bays and one odd panel of original dado, two sections of transom and two posts. Here are to be found a fire-breathing hound and a left hand (whose?). The running ornament is original. The paint on two thirds of the height of one bay of dado and the panel to the right is original.
The Aaron's rod on the transom, in the north bay of the nave, has some rare azurite blue paint. There is more blue in the tracery, vaulting and running ornament. Azurite was widely used in medieval painting but it cannot be mixed with oil like other pigments. It was used in a water soluble glue medium which has been destroyed in nearly every screen by washing with water or linseed oil.
The lower trail does not repeat itself anywhere: there are black stags with golden antlers, spotted green serpents devouring unhappy little beasts, greedy black demons stuffing their red mouths with blue and gold striped birds, more gold birds pecking at fruit, and sometimes demon faces stalking them through the foliage, the odd human face, brown and blue cows with gilded horns, a great white hound with a gold collar and two smaller black ones pulling down a black deer with golden antlers, followed by the hunter slipping another hound from the leash, a speckled unicorn fighting with a winged dragon and innumerable other strange fauna tightly entwined together across the entire width of the church.
photo: Pete Snaden
It will be noticed that there is some disagreement about the height of the screen vaulting; the top of the stairs in the Lady Chapel is nearly three feet below the present floor of the vault. It may mean that the original screen was about three feet lower than the present. Acknowledgment is due to Anna Hulbert for details of the screen given in a paper written in October 1975. |