The fine timbered roof, which we admire today was first raised C.1400, supported by 12 stone corbels. Whether they also supported the earlier, lower roof we do not know.

In 1952, when the Rev. Oscar Muspratt was having the Church renovated, there was scarcely any trace of visible colour to any of the corbels, but there was sufficient outline of the original carving to identify seven of them. The remaining five were painted with arms thought appropriate to the history of the parish.

Three of the five ‘guesses’ are the corbels between the north porch and the chancel:

1)The Turville arms, nearest to the porch (on a demi-man with a high collar and spiky hair holding a shield) are those of the family who were the overlords of the Pennes (see Part 16) and who held the patronage of the church in its early years.

2) The Penn arms (on a demi-man in a cap and knitted pullover, holding a shield). The arms first appear in written records in about 1308 when the parliamentary Roll of Arms assigns ‘Argent, on a fess sable, 3 plates to Sire Johan de la Penne’. He was twice Knight of the Shire for Buckinghamshire but his forbears were also of the knightly class, and the arms are likely to date from the early years of heraldry at least a century earlier.

(The arms on the corbel were originally mistaken since the three plates or roundels should be silver rather than gold  – since corrected)

3) A symbol of the Holy Trinity. I suggested (Part 4) that the original dedication of the church may not have been to the Holy Trinity.

© Miles Green, August 1999.

The corbel holding up the roof on the south side of the nave, just above the pulpit, was painted with the Segrave arms during the 1952 restoration. This was an informed guess because insufficient carving and colour survived to identify the original design.

However it was a good guess because the Segraves were very important in Penn during the Middle Ages. Stephen de Segrave was Constable of Dover and Warden of the Cinque Ports at a time when the south coast was being continually harassed by French raiders. He was also Chief Justice of the Kings Bench in 1232 and Sheriff of both Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire from 1228 – 34.

Stephen’s second wife was related to the Turvilles and it seems to have been through her that he first held land in Penn. He soon acquired more when in 1222, Nicholas de la Penne was found guilty of murdering a neighbouring landowner over a dispute about pasturing a horse. Nicholas was hanged and his property in Penn, 1/4 knights fee, amounting to about a fifth of the parish, was confiscated by the King and given to Stephen de Segrave.

The new Segrave Manor took in Knotty Green and Forty Greeen including Bayline Farm and a 150 acre deer park with a hunting lodge at its centre which we now call Seagraves Farm. The Seagrave family never lived in Penn and their bailiff  lived in the manor house/farm on Church Road next to Watercroft which is still known as the Manor House.

The Penn family bought back Segraves Manor, in 1607, but separate manorial records were kept for two centuries thereafter.

Stephen de Segrave’s son, Gilbert, married Amabilia de Chaucumb whose family had founded Chacombe Priory in Northamptonshire, And it was to be Chacombe Priory which was to hold the rectory of Penn and appoint its priests for nearly three centuries until the Reformation.

It is good to note that a new housing development in Knotty Green has recently been called Chacombe Place.

© Miles Green, October 1999.

The next five corbels discussed below were all part of the original design for the new roof in c.1400.

The second corbel from the east end of the south wall, almost above the pulpit, shows the arms of the Bishop of Bayeux and there is a similar one on the north side of the nave. The Bishop was William the Conqueror’s half brother and held the manor at the time of the Domesday Book, although he lost his estates only two years later when he rebelled against his nephew, William Rufus. The builder of 1400 must have been aware of the Domesday entry for Taplow, and that it included Penn.

St. George is represented on the next corbel, an unsurprising choice at a time of war with France.

Next is very probably Edward III (1327-77). The corbel depicts a bearded and crowned king’s head and shoulders, a fine piece of portrait sculpture, not just a random conventional kingly type. Dr. Clive Rouse, a nationally acknowledged expert on such matters, suggested Edward Ill. He had been a generous benefactor of Penn tilers and was a famous warrior king.

The immediately adjacent corbel shows a grotesque man’s head, bearded and moustached, with a huge nose, wearing a red painted, stiffened  ‘cap of estate’, a sign of rank only one degree below a coronet which a king might wear on occasion. Dr Rouse suggested that this might well be a caricature of Richard II after his deposition, in 1399, by Henry of Lancaster who was Penn’s overlord at the time. Caricatures of this kind were quite common in churches.

© Miles Green, December 1999.

The Penn Doom

The painting of the Doom, or Last Judgement, which hangs high above the chancel arch may not seem impressive at first sight, but it is a very rare survival from the Middle Ages. There are only five of its type in the country.

It has hung in our Church for 600 years and is all that is left to remind us of the colourful images that so impressed the largely illiterate worshippers in the Catholic Church that served our predecessors. All such evidence of popery was forbidden after the Anglican Church was established and the painting, which was then fitted under the chancel arch, was whitewashed over in about 1550. A further layer of the lath and plaster was added, probably when the chancel arch was rebuilt in 1733.

1938: The boards of the Penn Doom roughly
reassembled and freed of lath and plaster and
some whitewash, immediately after discovery,
but before cleaning.

It was only rediscovered in 1938, quite by chance and in its present position, when workmen were repairing the roof. They broke up what they thought was old lath and plaster and piled it in the churchyard to be carted away. Some was taken to the local rubbish tip. One of the workmen was about to take some home for firewood when he noticed a face painted on its surface. He called the Vicar who called Dr. Clive Rouse, a very considerable expert in such matters, who at once realised its importance and after two days combing through the rubbish tip, recovered and assembled as many of the pieces as he could find.
(An extended article on the Penn Doom, Records of Buckinghamshire, Vol 44, 2004)

A painting of the Doom made by Dr. Clive Rouse. Pinxit 1939.

The Penn-Pennsylvania Fellowship have recently paid for a survey by Ruth Bubb, an expert conservator, who has recommended that it should be taken down to be repaired, cleaned and treated for woodworm. This would also allow a close technical examination by experts using X-rays, infra red reflectography and pigment analysis. One particular area of interest is that an earlier painting, more delicate in tone and line, underlies the simpler, bolder design, which we can see.

The PCC have decided to accept Ruth Bubb’s advice, and the Diocesan Advisory Committee has given their agreement. Application will be made to various grant-making bodies.

Extended Penn Doom article, Records of Bucks, 2004

© Miles Green, February 2000.
Photograph courtesy Eddie Morton, ARPS

When Kenneth Mumford, a newly arrived and very active Vicar, set about a general cleaning of  the church in the summer of 1938, our remarkable medieval painting of the Doom or Last Judgement, 12 ft wide and 6 feet 6 inches high, on sixteen oak boards, was found high up above the chancel arch, but unrecognised since covered in whitewash and by lath and plaster.

Clive Rouse, an expert on medieval church wall painting (of whom more later), wrote that the badly decayed oak boards were taken out of a ‘hole’ in the east bay of the roof above the tie-beam where they found the whitewashed oak boards covered in lath and plaster, which were further broken up and pitched outside into the churchyard ready to be carted away.

A fortnight later, a workman, Tom Randall, picked up a piece, and, taking the laths off, discovered what looked like the image of a bell inverted on it. As a result, Clive Rouse was eventually invited to go and see the find, which was set out in the old parish room.

After the laths and plaster had been removed, they saw the very dim and dingy outlines of a few figures; enough, however, to see that it was an object of the very greatest importance, and many weeks’ work resulted. What was eventually revealed was described by Clive Rouse, when he had restored the medieval oil pigment to its original freshness, as ‘the most spectacular thing of its kind in the country’, one of only five surviving medieval paintings of this type.

Kenneth Mumford died the following year after only two years in office – he had been badly gassed during the WW1 – and his obituary recorded that his associations and work in  connection with the Doom painting were great, so we must give him credit for ensuring its immediate survival and layout in the Parish Room. Herbert Druce (born in 1915) remembers it all very well and confirms that Revd Mumford played an important part in the discovery of the Doom. Clive Rouse wrote that he had spent two days combing through the rubbish tip and Herbert confirms that ‘a good many pieces were found in the dell used as a parish rubbish tip in the field off Gravelly Way’ (opposite what is now called Lions Farm). I have also seen a report that some boards had been used for a pig pen.

In 1547, an Order in Council required ‘the obliteration and destruction of popish and superstitious books and images so that the memory of them shall not remain in their churches or houses.’ It was at this stage that the Doom would have been covered by limewash with lath and plaster probably added in the 1730s when the chancel and chancel arch were widened and nave roof raised.

Clive Rouse was a remarkable man, an archaeologist of  national renown who specialised in medieval church wall paintings throughout Britain. He lived all his working life in Gerrards Cross – I went to talk to him there – and he was a regular contributor to Records of Buckinghamshire of which he was Editor or deputy Editor for 35 years from the 1930s and was later President of the Bucks Archaeological Society from 1969 to 1979. In the wider world, he was President of the Royal Archaeological Institute (1967-72), and the author of a multivolume series, ‘English medieval wall painting’. We were so fortunate to have such expertise on hand.

The Doom was taken down for analysis and conservation in 2002 and the next article will discuss the discoveries that were made.

Miles Green, The Penn Doom revisited, Part 1, January 2024

The Doom revisited, Part 2 – A Millennium project

In 1999, with the millennium looming, the Penn Trust offered to pay for a technical examination and full report on the Doom to establish whether any conservation measures were needed and to find out more about the painting. A working group was set up with Christopher White, John Wood, Sir Oliver Millar, and myself, for many discussions and decisions.

The initial examination was carried out in situ by Ruth E. Bubb, a conservator of paintings. In the light of her report, it was decided to remove the Doom to her studio near Banbury in order to facilitate cleaning and treatment and allow a close analysis using all the modern techniques available – detailed analyses of the paint layers, infra-red reflectography (detects underdrawings, reveals changes in composition, damages, fillings and retouches), X-radiographs and dendrochronology (tree ring analysis) were all carried out and revealed much of interest.

We saw in my previous article that Clive Rouse, the leading national authority on church wall painting, had assembled and restored the 16 oak boards, whitewashed and covered with lath and plaster, when they were found in 1938. They were of varying width with an overlapping chamfer on each side. He discovered that the painting was a palimpsest – an earlier work of great delicacy and more elaboration, executed he thought, in tempera (egg), had been overpainted by a later, but coarser painting in crude but brilliant oil colours. He deliberately removed some of the plain painted areas of the second painting in order to reveal some crucial elements of the first. He concluded that the original painting had been a true tympanum fitting under the upper part of the medieval chancel arch, extending up into its arched apex, and widening out to its sides.

Based on the style and methods used, he dated the Doom as a re-painting of about 1480 of an earlier painting of aboutDendrochronology subsequently told us that the oak panels came from a single local oak tree about 100 years old with a diameter of about 2ft 6ins, cut down between1414 andThe style suggests the earlier date which presumably coincided with the major restructuring of the nave to create high-level clerestory windows by raising the walls by some 6 feet and adding the magnificent new roof supported on new corbels.

The conservator replaced the plain wooden inserts, which fill gaps where parts of the original boards are missing, by better fitting ones, treated to make them less conspicuous. A new, much lighter, aluminium framework was designed to support the painting. All this painstaking and expensive work amounted to some £20,000 and was possible only with the generous support of specialist charities. The Doom was sent directly from the conservator to the Victoria and Albert  Museum for display for 3 months in their exhibition, The glory of Gothic: Art in England  1400-1547, and was returned to Penn early in January 2004 after a two-year absence.

We had arranged a celebratory reception and talks in the church and only a few days beforehand, with thought provoking synchronicity, a West Country picture dealer rang me out of the blue to say he had a water colour from Penn Church by a Clive Rouse, painted in the 1930s. He asked if I could tell him anything about it and assure him that it was not stolen. He was more than willing to bring it to the Doom celebration to see if anyone was interested in buying it.

This was the painting which now illustrates this article. It is so accurate, down to the last detail, that a knowledgeable local art dealer insisted that it must be a painted photograph. Ann Ballantyne, a close colleague of Clive Rouse, was horrified at the very idea! She said he never used a photograph – he used a caliper to transfer scale from the original to his drawing so that it was completely accurate. Indeed, Rouse’s obituary speaks of the meticulous  observation and accuracy of his measured water colour drawings of wall paintings, so good that they have been bequeathed to the Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House. The painting is exactly one quarter size of the original and mirrors every detail giving it the clear and bright image that the congregation would have seen when it was first raised.

Despite initial enthusiasm and a public notice, there were no offers to buy it, for reasons of both the cost and security risk if displayed publicly. I found that I could not bear the thought of losing such an important reminder of this marvellous project which had so enjoyably occupied my time and energies for several years, and when, after several weeks of unexpected silence, the picture dealer rang, it was to say that he accepted my offer. And so, with continuing thoughtprovoking synchronicity, it was on Good Friday and over the Easter weekend, the very subject of the Doom painting, that 20 years ago I organised its purchase.

Miles Green, April 2024

The corbel in the corner of the south wall of the nave, next to the organ, has the shield of the Curzon Howe family. It was a ‘guess’ during the 1952 restoration, painted over an unidentifiable earlier shield, but cannot have been an original device since the Curzon Howe alliance came into being only 200 years ago.

On the north wall, in the other corner by the organ, is the Mohun shield. This was identifiable in 1952. Sir John de Mohun (1320-75) was one of the Black Prince’s leading followers and one of the original Knights of Garter – his name and arms are still in St. George’s Chapel Windsor.

His connection with Penn was through his mother who was a Segrave. He married a neice of the Bishop of Lincoln who survived him by thirty years. We know she built and endows a chantry chapel in Canterbury and the unexpected Mohun shield in Penn may record a similar offering to Mother Church. The suggested date of c.1400 for our timber roof fits well.

Her connection with the Bishop of Lincoln may also explain the figure of a Bishop on the corbel near the north door. Alternatively the Bishop represented could be St. Hugh (1186-1200), the Bishop who began the rebuilding of Lincoln Cathedral.

© Miles Green, January 2000.