Last Judgement

Step back now to the centre of the nave and look up at the chancel arch. Imagine you had just arrived as a Priest in Willingham at around 1420. You wanted a painting that would really get over to your illiterate congregation the stark choice of Heaven or Hell in the after-life. You would obviously want to put it in the most dramatic setting in the church. Where better than the chancel arch, the focal point for the congregation? So this is where we have ’The Last Judgement’. On the left. of the Arch is Heaven.
There is St. Peter, in the centre of the arc formed between the lower 2 wooden angels in the roof. He is holding one of those wonderful medieval hand-made keys Behind him is the rosy glow of Paradise . Below him are the naked figures of lots of young women rising from their graves in the dark green background above them. They are the ones who have deserved their place in Heaven for eternity. Look carefully at the figures of the women at the front, and you will see that they are actually fleshed skeletons. And can you see a mitred bishop in the middle of the women, just in front of St. Peter?
To the right of the Arch is Hell, with the tormented faces of the damned being pulled down into eternal hell-fire with a red-hot chain by the devil we saw earlier on the adjacent wall. Originally, there would have been the figure of Christ at the top of the arch, sitting in judgement. This part of the picture was unfortunately obliterated when the window you see there was knocked through in 1613 to let light into the second-hand roof fitted then. This splendid double hammer beam oak roof that you can now see is believed to have come from an old monastery at Barnwell in Cambridge But the gain of the roof was at the expense of the centre of The Last Judgement painting!
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