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osprey_archerI went to Pickering yesterday, to renew my search for the church with medieval wall paintings of St. Katherine. I found the church all right - I had found it on Wednesday - but I could not find the wall paintings. I walked all around the church inspecting the walls, but nothing; I walked up and down the aisles through the rows of half-size Christmas trees, decorated by the Sunday school and the parochial schools and a charity for disabled children and a local travel agency, a tree for peace and a tree for fallen soldiers and a tree for parents whose children had died.
But I couldn't find the wall paintings.
There was a tiny bookshop in the corner - really it was a bookshelf, with a few dozen books and a stack of postcards beside it. Unguarded, too, just all these books and a collection box and the cheerful certainty that anyone who took a book would donate the correct amount of money.
They had a pristine used copy of C. S. Lewis's The Four Loves for just a pound, so of course I got that. And I did pay - more than they asked, because their trust pleased me. And I snagged a couple postcards, including one showing the wall paintings, which was terribly frustrating, because I looked around again and still didn't see them.
So finally I gave up, and made to leave the church. But then I looked up - and there on the clerestory were the medieval wall paintings.
One imagines soldiers - Henry VIII's, or Oliver Cromwell's - storming through the church, pikes at the ready, looking for those heretical Papist paintings, and never noticing them because they, too, forgot to look up.
But I couldn't find the wall paintings.
There was a tiny bookshop in the corner - really it was a bookshelf, with a few dozen books and a stack of postcards beside it. Unguarded, too, just all these books and a collection box and the cheerful certainty that anyone who took a book would donate the correct amount of money.
They had a pristine used copy of C. S. Lewis's The Four Loves for just a pound, so of course I got that. And I did pay - more than they asked, because their trust pleased me. And I snagged a couple postcards, including one showing the wall paintings, which was terribly frustrating, because I looked around again and still didn't see them.
So finally I gave up, and made to leave the church. But then I looked up - and there on the clerestory were the medieval wall paintings.
One imagines soldiers - Henry VIII's, or Oliver Cromwell's - storming through the church, pikes at the ready, looking for those heretical Papist paintings, and never noticing them because they, too, forgot to look up.
