Local History: The Wenhaston Doom

The Wenhaston Doom (at St Peter's Church, Wenhaston, Suffolk) is a remarkable survival of a type of church decoration once common in the Middle Ages but largely destroyed during the iconoclastic excesses of the English Reformation during the reign of Edward VI in the mid 16th century. 

The painting depicts the Day of Judgement (or Doomsday) in a relatively simplistic style that could be easily understood by a largely illiterate congregation. The painting originally stood on the rood beam (or candle beam) separating the nave, where the congregation sat, and the chancel, which was the preserve of the clergy. The blank pieces of planking, including the cross shaped one in the centre, would have originally had a carved central crucifix (the rood) and statues of the Virgin Mary and St John the Evangelist in front of them. (In effect, the Doom was painted onto the boarding with the statues in situ.)

The statues and the cross were destroyed during the Reformation however the painting (which was only completed circa AD1520 – about 25 years before the Reformation entered its iconoclastic phase) survived because it was whitewashed over – and then forgotten about for nearly 350 years. In fact it was forgotten to such an extent that during the Victorian era someone hacked a lump out of the left side of the picture to insert heating pipes.

Then, sometime during 1892 the oak planking, on which the Doom was painted, was removed during church reconstruction work and left outside awaiting hacking up into floorboards and firewood. Fortunately that night it rained and the water started to dissolve the whitewash and disclose the painting beneath it. And so The Doom was rediscovered and subsequently restored.

The middle of my photos shows the archangel St Michael weighing the souls of the resurrected, with the Devil waiting by his side to claim those found wanting. My final picture (partially obscured by an uplighter that was in use in the church the day I visited it) shows the damned being pushed into the Mouth of Hell, depicted as a giant sea-beast (the Leviathan).

The scroll in the Devil's hand reads "Now for what is lacking may you give pardon for sin," while the lettering on the board attached to the bottom of the Doom is based on Chapter 13 of St Paul's Epistle to the Romans... "Let every soule Submit unto the authoryteye of the higher powers for there is no power but of God. The Powers that be are ordeyned of God but they that resest or are against the ordinance of God shall receive to them selves utter damnation. For rulers are not fearfull to them that do good but to them that do evyll for he is the minister of God."