INTRODUCTION

In the spring of 2009, a project took place to conserve a series of medieval wall paintings in the church of St Mary the Virgin, Lakenheath. In addition to the process of physical conservation, this Heritage Lottery-funded project allowed the examination of the documentary and building history of the church. The aim was to examine the wall paintings as more than simple examples of medieval art and to place them within the wider context of the parish's history. The results were both surprising and more far-reaching than anyone had first anticipated.

Before work began, the belief was that the paintings in St Mary's consisted of three or four independent and typical decorative schemes and that there was little new awaiting discovery. However, conservation revealed that the walls of the church contained at least five separate paint schemes, the earliest dating from c.1220–30, and that several of these schemes appeared to have found their inspiration in, or been reflections of, local conflict. The parish landscape had become a contested one and the church building, acting as both a physical and spiritual focus for that landscape, had been drawn into a conflict where religious belief, economics and regional politics all came together to strain at the community's very bonds.