Chaldon "Doom Painting" or "Purgatorial ladder" , probably the oldest in the UK.

Chaldon “Doom Painting” has been featured in loads of books, especially chiIdren’s medieval history books and is stunning when you walk into the church and see it for the first time. It is possibly the oldest Doom painting in the UK, painted sometime around 1200 AD. It is unique, there is nothing to compare it with. Some people have suggested that it is part of the original mural but no-one has found any evidence to support this theory and looking around with my amateur eye, I couldn’t see anything that could be interpreted as being even a small bump in the white paintwork that could be concealing a fragment of another painting. The painting is believed to have been produced by an unnamed travelling monk who went from church to church. The painting is over 17 feet wide and 11 feet high. Only red and yellow ochre paints were used in the painting which again, makes it unusual. It is said to have been whitewashed when Cromwell and the puritans were in power and rediscovered in 1869.

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