THE approaching Easter is a long-standing Christian festival when considerable numbers attend church services.

Those services could include a solemn commemoration of the Crucifixion on Good Friday or the joyful atmosphere of Easter Sunday. With that in mind, it is interesting to look at our historic churches to ponder the memorable events they have witnessed. The Reformation? Royal visits? Wars? Natural disasters? Births, deaths, funerals and marriages? Even fairs and markets in churchyards?

I have especially in mind four ancient churches. All are in North Yorkshire with a uniting factor. All have been graced with remarkable wall paintings or other artworks that pre-date the Reformation. This gives some idea of their age for the paintings may pre-date the Reformation by several centuries.

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

They are not the only ones to have such paintings and my rough check suggests about 200, with a large concentration in Norfolk. Several modern Catholic churches have splendid wall paintings too.

In very broad terms the themes are very similar in all the churches. They feature scenes from the Old and New Testaments, religious myths such as St George and the Dragon, images of saints or apostles and traditions such as the Seven Acts of Mercy.

Holy Trinity at Wensley, now redundant, is noted for its brass and wood carvings, said to be the finest in England. This church also displays fragments of wall paintings. The North wall carries the figures of Jacob and Esau with the head of a horse and on the east pillars are the Archangels Gabriel and Michael, Satan being cast out of heaven and two figures believed to be Adam and Eve.

The church of St Peter and Paul, in Pickering, is renowned for its array of wall paintings. In his “Buildings of England” Nikolaus Pevsner wrote that the Pickering wall paintings were the most complete of any in English churches. The paintings have a chequered history. Like others, they were concealed at the Reformation by order of the nine-year old child-king Edward VI, son of Henry VIII and first Protestant English sovereign.

Because he was a child, he worked with a Protector and one of his first actions was to make the Catholic Mass illegal by the Act of Uniformity passed in 1549. He ordered England’s churches be rendered impossible for Catholic services to be held. All altars, icons and statues of saints were removed and destroyed with church walls covered with whitewash to conceal any wall paintings. Some churches were so badly damaged that they were too dangerous to use. One was at Egton. Pickering’s wall paintings are spectacular.

As ordered by the boy king, however, these treasures were covered with whitewash and hidden until 1851 when the vicar accidentally uncovered them. Unaware that such treasurers had been concealed, but being a staunch defender of the new faith, he hastily covered them with paint. The paintings remained hidden until 1880 when they were re-discovered and restored; they adorn the entire north and south walls of the nave.

Another display is in St Agatha’s Church in Easby, near Richmond. In the grounds of Easby Abbey, it may have been built earlier than the abbey and its wall paintings depict stories from the Old Testament such as the Creation and Adam and Eve.

The New Testament features in The Annunciation, Nativity and Adoration of the Magi with other scenes.

Paintings in St Hilda, in Egton, may have been armorial bearings, but I have been unable to trace them. This tiny old church was so damaged during removal of its Catholic artefacts and its links with the renowned Bishopric of Papists with the martyr, Nicholas Postgate, that it was demolished in 1878. Some architectural gems such as its Norman pillars were salvaged and re-used in the new Anglican St Hilda’s Church in Egton Bank.

I have never seen names of any artist or group of artists being given credit for the paintings either in Yorkshire or further afield. They are truly works of art whose creators possessed a wide knowledge of the Bible, and the paintings were probably the only illustrations seen by many of the population. Many paintings were 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 no more worshipped than statutes or portraits of sovereigns, prime ministers and famous people.

So, who were the artists? Clearly many worked on these paintings, so could they have been monks?