![Burying the Dead (?7 Works of Mercy), Lathbury [79KB]](lathbur3.jpg)
All the paintings at Lathbury - and there are many - are fragmentary and very confusing. There is though, a subject painted high above the nave arcade which seems to be the Seven Works of Mercy. The photograph at the left shows the clearest part of it, Burying the Dead. Several people, in attitudes of mourning, stand around a bier (it has trestle legs in green) on which lies a shrouded body. The confused details above probably belong to a later, superimposed subject.
There are a few other details, spread over a large area of wall, which seem to be part of the other six Works of Mercy; for example nearby is part of a barrel-vaulted building with a man perhaps in pilgrim’s garb standing in its doorway and two men kneeling outside. There are also other subjects; one of them a Virgin sheltering souls under her cloak which was probably related to a Weighing of Souls and the fragmentary Doom over the chancel arch. I will try to show some of these details here in due course.
28/6/2001