CHURCH LARKING - Pickering Parish Church

 

The Church of St Peter & St Paul with its spire settled atop a short squat tower, still pokes its little righteous finger up above the surrounding town. Perched as it is on the top of a hillock. The churchyard once you climb up the stairs to it, is a surprisingly quiet and intimate enshrouded space. The church being encased on all sides by the walls of houses and masked by the large overhang of trees. This makes it impossible to stand back and get a clear view of what the whole exterior layout of the church looks like. It struck me as having had an incremental, almost organic evolution to its construction.  

Anglo-Saxon Font

Its founding is lost somewhere in Anglo-Saxon times, the only survival being the much used simple rustic bowl of the front. The stolid round pillars of its nave and transepts inform you of its Norman replacement. The chancel being extended and widened by five feet at a much later date, that gives the crossing a slightly eccentric funnel like appearance. But the real surprise and delight of Pickering Parish Church is when you raise your eyes up. To gaze on the space above its pillars, right up to and framing the clerestory, where a rare survival of late medieval wall paintings covers the entire area, on both sides of the nave. The subject matter varies from paintings of saints, St George, St Christopher, Martyrdom of St Edmund, St Thomas, St Catherine, St John the Baptist, to The Virgin Mary, Christ's Descent into Hell, Passion & Resurrection, The Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy.

St George

Martyrdom of St Edmund

Commissioned in 1450, these paintings probably took another decade to be completed. Within a hundred years of that date they were whitewashed over, during the Protestant Reformation, and completely forgotten about. To be rediscovered in 1852. There was some contention at the time between the vicar and the Bishop of the diocese, concerning their religious value. So it was not until 1876 that renovation and conservation could be carried out. Quite how extensively they were 'restored' by the Victorians is unclear, but they do have a remarkably clear and sharp appearance. Which must, to a degree, be due to their good fortune at being concealed untouched for nigh on three hundred years.

Roucliffe Chapel Effigies

The rest of the church is quite typical for churches in this area of Yorkshire. Solid honey coloured sandstone grit gives it a lot of warmth, but bequeaths it little by way of lofty elegance. It sits on its sacred ground with a self conscious air, as if all too aware of its squat weightiness, the simplicity of its presence. There are some fine pieces of carved dark wood beneath the tower, in the rood screen and side chapels. Two magnificent examples of medieval tomb carving in the Bruce and Roucliffe side chapels. A splendid Sedilia. Plus a quite unique 18th century pulpit executed in the style of Hepplewhite, beautifully varnished wood with intricately carved lattice-work. So there are other treasures to be found in this church, once the initial astonishment of the wall paintings wanes, and brings your eyes back down to see what lies beneath them.

The Sedilia

'The Hepplewhite' Pulpit