Welsh Journals

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FRESCOES IN CHURCHES. By MRS. COPE. The above subject is particularly fascinating and as frescoes have been discovered in Welsh Churches I should like particularly to draw attention to them with the hopes of further elucidating the subject. To uncover frescoes is no easy task; it requires patience and a very fine knife, and even then it is difficult to separate the layers of whitewash which lie one upon the other. Sometimes dozens of coats of whitewash conceal the colouring below, and then, when the picture is reached, the difficulty is to keep to that particular layer and not probe below to other colouring, for it is an undoubted fact that these pictures in course of time faded or chipped, and were renewed and the later colouring is neither the same in shade or outline, though I have little doubt that the subject was not altered. Besides pictures, the Consecration Crosses were painted or carved on the walls of Churches. I have seen fine specimens of these at Upton Grey in Hampshire and at Padworth in Berk- shire. While on the subject of crosses, I should like to call attention to a cross which is seldom or never absent on the right hand side of the main door of English Churches. It is the height of a man's hand, that is to say, about 3 or 4 feet from the ground, and is roughly drawn into the stone or chalk, and some- times has been carefully worked out. This Cross was, I believe, the Consecration Cross made by the Consecrating Bishop with the Holy Oil, and afterwards clearly cut in by the Priest in Charge in remembrance of the event,for it should be remembered that there was a yearly celebration of the Consecration of a Church, so that the exact spot originally consecrated needed to be preserved. There should be nine of these Crosses in a Church, but I have never found more than a few, nor has the subject ever been discussed and no reference,so far as I know, has ever been made to this tiny doorway Cross.