In 1563, a year before his son was born, John Shakespeare was given an unpleasant job. As chamberlain of the Corporation of Stratford, he was tasked with erasing the popish murals in the local Guild Chapel. We assume he found it unpleasant because rather than destroying the art, he covered it up with limewash, to be stripped away by some future generation.
After John’s son William retired to Stratford, he lived opposite the Guild Chapel until his death in 1616. Four hundred years later, those covered murals are being revealed in their fullness. A major restoration project, titled Death Reawakened, finishes this month. The faith of Catholic England will be shown in the images which lived in our ancestors’ imaginations: depictions of the Last Judgment, the Crucifixion, the lives of St George and St Thomas Becket.
