REFORMATION
The Reformation brought about large scale changes with all links to the Roman Catholic church being removed. The nave walls, which had in all likelihood been covered with religious paintings to act as visual aids to the faith, were whitewashed while statues, crucifixes, candlesticks, vestments. altars etc. were destroyed and the mellow mediaeval stained-glass was smashed. Fortunately St. George’s retains glimpses of its pre-Reformation interior, with the presence of a wall-painting fragment in the porch above the south door, original stained-glass window fragments in the east end of the south aisle and the west end of the north aisle, the quatrefoil-shaped holy water stoup (by the inner entrance to the south door) and the damaged piscina (in the south wall of St. Katherine’s Chapel). This latter feature was a drain for the disposal of water used for washing the sacred vessels after the mass.
The uneven floor in the former Lady Chapel in the north aisle is generally attributed to the stabling there of Cromwell’s horses during the English Civil War (1642-1651) and it is indeed a tragedy that the east window here was blocked, rather than repaired, some time after 1888. By this time the north aisle had found use as the village school although the raised platform on which the altar once stood remains in situ. Today used as a storage space, this quietest area of the church is sadly neglected.
