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36
BCD Special Report on
Historic Churches
18th annual edition
Reviving a Lost Art
Reconstructing medieval wall paintings at S
t
Teilo’s
Tom Organ
I
n the
100-acre parkland of St Fagans
Castle, a magnificent late 16th-century
manor house on the outskirts of Cardiff,
is one of the leading European open-air
museums. Donated to the people of Wales
by the Earl of Plymouth and opened in
November 1948, over 30 buildings have
been moved to the museum from various
parts of Wales, re-erected and restored.
The castle and grounds, together
with their fascinating collection, form
part of the National Museum of Wales,
commonly known as St Fagans, which
chronicles the historical lifestyle, culture
and architecture of the Welsh people.
One of the most impressive buildings in the
collection is the small parish church of St Teilo,
removed stone by stone from Llandeilo Tal-y-
bont and restored over the past 20 years. Staff
from St Fagans first visited the semi-derelict
church in 1984 to find the windows boarded up,
ivy covering much of the exterior and the roof
stripped of its slates. Roughly a decade earlier,
investigators from the Royal Commission on
the Ancient and Historical Monuments of
Wales had carried out a preliminary survey
of the building and noticed what appeared to
be traces of pigment or colour on one of the
walls. Sections of limewash had fallen away
where water had penetrated the building
exposing areas of painted decoration beneath.
After careful detective work museum
staff determined that sufficient evidence
remained for St Teilo’s to be recreated as it
would have looked just before the Reformation.
Not only had the whole structure – the
nave, chancel, north chapel, south aisle and
porch – been re-built by this time, but there
was exciting evidence for a complete scheme
of wall paintings that had been executed
only a few years before the Reformation,
the majority sometime between 1490 and
1530. Many layers of post-Reformation
limewash covered the medieval wall
paintings at St Teilo’s, Llandeilo Tal-y-bont,
protecting the paintings in the process.
The original wall paintings
The church was found to have wall paintings
from at least seven identifiable periods.
The oldest was an early 15th-century
depiction of St Catherine, dated stylistically
from her costume. Above this layer was
the early 16th-century scheme depicting
scenes from the story of the Passion along
with paintings of saints and angels.
At the Reformation all the figurative
paintings were obliterated with limewash.
Completed reconstruction of The Trinity wall painting (All photos by Tom Organ unless otherwise stated)
During the subsequent centuries a
number of Biblical texts and inscriptions
were painted including a massive Royal
Arms, and the remains of an 18th-century
Lord’s Prayer in English and the Ten
Commandments in two large arched panels.
The paintings that are of particular interest
are those painted between 1490 and 1530. The
Passion scenes are the most detailed to survive
in Wales and some of the most significant to
be discovered in Britain from the late medieval
period. The original paintings, detached,
conserved and stored at the museum, form
the basis for the recent reconstruction.
The original wall paintings were
fragmentary and incomplete – the scenes do
not form a linear narrative, but the elements
of a Passion cycle were clearly to be found
around the church. The recent restoration,
based on fragments of original painting, has
highlighted the power of the late-Medieval
scenes. The Mocking of Christ at his trial,
above the window in the middle of the north
aisle, shows Christ’s head, blood from the