Mediaeval
Features
The plan
of the church below shows it in
the later years before the
Reformation with the positions
of the features of the
church and the use of the
various spaces. The text
below describes the inside of
the church.
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The features inside the church at Harby in the later
years of the middle ages, before the split from Rome
in the Reformation,
were much the same as in other village churches.
The Harby font, as is shown by its style, is from the
Decorated period. It probably stood
in pre-reformation times as
was the custom of that time by the main entrance,
the south door. This symbolized the entering of the
individual to the church through baptism. The
inscription 1606 inscribed onto it later may be from
the time when it was moved in post-Reformation
times.
The walls were decorated with scriptural scenes and
possibly a last judgement. Eight coats of arms were
seen and described in
1622 but only one remained in 1790, located in the
“upper end of the north aisle”. The notes on the
Victorian restoration say they found evidence of
wall painting on the west wall of the nave. “In
cleaning all of tower in the church there had
clearly been colouring, red and blue, of
fresco but it came off with the mortar and
plaster so that it was impossible to make it
out. They however were figures.”
A Rood screen which
held a large sculpture of Christ on the Rood or
Cross stretched across the church between the nave
and
chancel.
The windows had stained glass.
Statues of the Saints, including St Mary the patron saint
of Harby were common. There would have been a statue
of St Mary in the
niche now empty half way up the west wall of the
tower.
Round the walls of the church were probably the stations
of the cross.
At the east end of the
chancel there was the aumbry on the north and
a piscina on the south wall.
There was an altar at the east end of the south aisle with a piscina on the south wall nearby. |
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