The Painted Church
During the early part of my career as an architectural photographer I was lucky enough to be asked to do the photography for both the 1066: English Romanesque Art exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1984 and the Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400 exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1987-88. This sparked a life-long interest in medieval art and architecture.
As part of my research before setting out to visit and photograph a new (to me) church, one of the websites I would always visit was paintedchurch.org, Medieval Wall Painting in the English Parish Church, a labour of love put together by Anne Marshall over a period of some 18 years. It featured detailed academic articles on several themes of medieval wall painting as well as articles on hundreds of individual paintings in hundreds of parish churches. I was very disappointed when it disappeared from the internet in 2018.
Luckily I discovered that much of the site still existed on the Internet Archive and by saving nearly 400 pages and the associated photography I have managed to resurrect the site. In the process of doing this I have also updated and redesigned the look of the site to make it compatible with desktop, tablet and mobile platforms. I have also replaced some of the older photographs with some of mine where it gives a clearer view of the paintings than the original.
I actually completed work on this quite a few months ago, but I didn’t want to republish the site without getting permission from Anne (or her family). Despite nearly six months of searching I haven’t been able to get in contact with Anne or with anyone who knows or knew her.
I have made the decision to make the site public in the hope that it will trigger some interest and maybe get me closer to getting in contact with Anne and getting her knowledge used again.
If Anne or any of Anne’s family would rather the site was taken offline, please get in touch with me via my any of my contact details on the home page of this website and I will do so.
My work has been very much a tribute to Anne Marshall. You can see the Painted Church website here.
