Lost Altar Cloth, St Mary the Virgin, Martham
Watercolour, gold paint and ink (black) on paper, 21.1 cm x 14.9 cm.
Inscription in ink, bottom left of subject monogram ‘CJWW.
There was a time, long ago, that the altar at St Mary’s was adorned with a magnificent embroidered medieval cloth, part of which is shown above. It was there c1851 when the Reverend Edward Samuel TAYLOR (1826-1863) recorded it in his description of the church before a major restoration took place in 1856. Rev. TAYLOR was a casual curate at the church in 1851/52 whilst mainly working at Rollesby and Ormesby St Margaret.
The Altar Cloth was a late 15th-century textile believed to have been made up of pieces of velvet church vestments. It consisted of medieval embroidery figured with varieties of cherubim holding scrolls with inscriptions and elaborate flowers featuring different colours. There is a four-winged cherubim standing on a wheel that is very similar to one on the altar cloth at Forest Hill, Oxfordshire. Some patterns of the flowers exactly resemble the pattern on a pulpit fall at Southgate House, Derbyshire, that dates from a similar period.
This magnificent treasure is known to have survived the 1856 restoration right through to modern times because the present church elders recall that it was accidentally thrown away during a clear-out by someone who didn’t know what it was. A major disaster to lose such a rare and important treasure and impossible to replace.
Luckily, the renowned Suffolk artist Cornelius Jansen Walter WINTER (1817-1891), who is famous for his landscapes, portraits and animals must have visited Martham because another of his talents was sketching the architecture of churches and he drew the examples of the original cloth shown on this page.
‘Altar Cloth, Martham Church’ by Cornelius Jansson Walter Winter pen and ink, c1856. 26 cm x 24.6cm; signed in black ink lower left of subject with monogram ‘CJWW. del’; in black ink lower margin ‘Old Altar Cloth, Martham Church, Norfolk, 1856’.
These sketches have been saved by the Norfolk Museum Service, that has kindly allowed me to use them here under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. International Licence arrangements.