In the 1970s and 1980s I produced a series of booklets about the Royal Coats of Arms which were erected in many churches from Tudor times until the present day, chiefly to mark the monarch's position as Governor of the Church of England. These booklets (for a complete list see below) mainly consisted of inventories of the examples in various counties, but there was also one entitled Royal Arms in Churches: The Artists and Craftsmen. It listed all the names I could track down (via signatures, churchwardens' accounts, etc.) of the artists of these sometimes crude but often beautiful items, whose creators ranged all the way from the major iron foundries such as the Coalbrookdale Company, to itinerant painters, who could turn their hand to everything from a Royal Coat of Arms to an inn sign or a carriage. It was the travelling painters who particularly interested me, as a Royal Arms (or perhaps a hatchment) in a church is often the only surviving example of their work (their inn signs, being placed outside, having long weathered away).
To begin with, my booklets contained no illustrations at all, but the later ones included a few mostly black & white photographs. Now, in a very welcome development, C.B. Newham has taken one of my original county inventories, Royal Arms in the Churches of Cornwall, published in 1982, and revamped it so that each of my entries is accompanied by his superb colour photograph of the Royal Arms described (over 80 in total). He has also added new introductory and analytical material as well as a section on the delightfully quirky Cornish Ringers Boards. The resulting new, circa 125pp, book is available from C.B. Newham's lulu.com storefront here.
For the full text of two of my booklets, Royal Arms in Churches: The Artists and Craftsmen and Royal Arms in Churches: A Bibliography, click on the links below.
Rosemary Pardoe (c) 2007
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Last Altered: 20th July 2007.