EASTER, like Christmas, is a long-standing Christian festival when considerable numbers of the population attend the church services of various faiths. Those services could include a solemn commemoration of the Crucifixion on Good Friday or the joyful atmosphere of Easter Sunday, with others in between.

With that in mind, it is interesting to look around some of our older and more historic churches, and then to ponder what happened to them in the past in an attempt to discover just what kind of varied history they endured. For example, what memorable events could an old church have witnessed? The Reformation? Royal visits? Wars? Natural disasters? Births, deaths, funerals and marriages? Or even fairs and markets in the church grounds?

I have especially in mind four ancient churches in this region – in fact, all are in North Yorkshire but have a common and uniting factor. All are, or have been, graced with remarkable wall paintings or other noted artworks that pre-date the Reformation. This gives us some idea of their age for the paintings pre-dated the Reformation by several centuries.

The churches are at Wensley in Wensleydale, Easby in Swaledale, Pickering in Ryedale and the old church of St Hilda on the North York Moors at Egton, near Whitby.

Certainly these Yorkshire churches are not the only ones in England to have such paintings. Lots more have wall paintings both ancient and modern. My rough check suggests there may be around 200 with a large concentration in Norfolk. Several modern Catholic churches have splendid wall paintings and in many instances some of the surviving medieval paintings remain in remarkably good condition.

In very broad terms, the themes are very similar to one another in all the churches. They feature scenes from the Old and New Testaments, perhaps with some religious myths such as St George and the Dragon. Images of well-known saints or apostles are shown too, along with important traditions such as the Seven Acts of Mercy.

Holy Trinity at Wensley, now described as redundant, is noted for its art work, much of which is in brass and wood and said to be the finest in England. There are furnishings bearing exquisite carvings plus some armorial bearings. This church also displays interesting fragments of wall paintings. On the north wall are the figures of Jacob and Esau with the head of a horse and on the east pillars of the arcades are the Archangels Gabriel and Michael, Satan being cast out of heaven and two figures who are believed to be Adam and Eve.

Whilst Wensley church is outstanding for its brass work and wood carvings, the church of St Peter and St Paul at Pickering is renowned for its amazing array of wall-paintings. In his Buildings of England series of books, Nikolaus Pevsner wrote that the Pickering wall paintings were the most complete of any in English churches.

These paintings have a chequered history. Like many others, they were concealed as a result of the Reformation. The nine-year-old King Edward VI, son of Henry VIII, was the first English sovereign to be brought up as a Protestant and because he was a child, he received the advice of his Protector. One of Edward’s actions, as the first Protestant King of England, was to make the Catholic mass illegal by the Act of Uniformity passed in 1549.

He also ordered that England’s churches be rendered impossible for Catholic services to be held within them by having all altars, icons and statues of saints removed and destroyed, and all church walls to be covered with whitewash to conceal any religious wall paintings. One outcome was that some churches were so badly damaged that they were too dangerous to use. One was at Egton – see later – and even today the results of those attacks can be seen in old discarded stones lying in church porches and the grounds, or stored on interior window ledges.

However, so far as Pickering church is concerned, many of its huge range of artworks are spectacular, particularly St Christopher carrying the Infant Christ, the Martyrdom of St Edmund and the Martyrdom of St Thomas a Becket. All the images are stunning and a guide book provides an explanation of what can be seen. As ordered by the boy king, these treasurers were covered with whitewash and remained hidden until 1851, when the vicar accidentally uncovered some of the paintings.

He had no idea such treasurers were concealed within his church but, being a staunch defenders of the new faith, he recognised these as the work of Catholics and hastily recovered them with yellow paint. There can be no doubt damage was caused to some of the works but the paintings remained hidden until 1880 when they were rediscovered. With great care, they were restored and now adorn the entire north and south walls of the nave, even between the arches and windows.

Another wonderful display of wall paintings is within St Agatha’s Church at Easby, near Richmond. The church stands within the grounds of Easby Abbey and may have been built earlier than the abbey. Sadly, the old church was closed when I called but its history and display of wall paintings is well documented. They depict stories from the Old Testament such as the Creation of Eve, Adam and Eve in their nakedness and “Temptation”. The New Testament is featured in The Annunciation, the Nativity and Adoration of the Magi with many other memorable scenes.

Paintings said to have been in the old church of St Hilda, Egton, may have been armorial bearings but I have been unable to trace them.

This tiny old church had become so severely damaged during the removal of its Catholic artefacts and eradication of its past links with the nationally renowned Bishopric of Papists and family of the martyr, Nicholas Postgate, that it was demolished in 1878. Some architectural gems (particularly its Norman pillars) were salvaged and re-used to build the new St Hilda’s on Egton Bank.

In general terms, so far as the remarkable paintings are concerned, I have never seen the names of any artist or group of artists being given credit for this remarkable series either in Yorkshire or further afield. They are truly great works of art whose creators clearly possessed a wide knowledge of the Bible but the completed paintings were probably the only illustrations ever seen by many of the population.

Many paintings were ruthlessly destroyed because the English authorities mistakenly thought they were a form of superstition and that Catholics worshipped the paintings and statues. In fact, they were marvellous teaching aids and were no more worshipped than formal statutes of sovereigns, prime ministers and famous people, or symbolic works of art hanging on our walls and admired both at home and in galleries.

So who were the artists? Clearly there were many at work on these paintings around the country, so could they have been monks?