What Lies Beneath

This photograph involves the potential unearthing of a mystery. I only quite recently realised that the walls of the sanctuary of the church, around the old high altar which is now only used a couple of times a year, are lined in a spongy material painted white. At first I couldn't work out what this was in aid of. Then I took a closer look at an old postcard of the church interior, dating from about 1910, which had been sent to us from Germany of all places a couple of years ago. This shows that the walls either side of the chancel (presumably the unseen south wall would be identical to the north) were lined with decorative tiles. The east wall, behind the altar, is also decorated with a dark ground and a lighter repeated pattern, although you can't tell from the photograph whether this is tiling, paintwork or possibly fabric. I don't think it can be the last, as the decoration runs right up to the stone rail and there's nothing to hang fabric from. Later on this wall was covered in curtain which hung from a brass rail put there for the purpose.

Then yesterday we had a scout round the chancel and discovered a tiny patch along the floor where the foam board, whatever it is, has come away and the gap painted over with lashings of white emulsion. Some of the paint has flaked revealing dark reddish-brown ceramic. It flakes off quite easily, actually, with a bit of encouragement.

This means the original Victorian tiles are presumably still there behind the foamboard. When and why they were covered up is anyone's guess. Part of me would dearly like to hack all the wretched foam off the walls and uncover the Victorian splendour again - an urge only just restrained by the thought that the tiles might not be quite so splendid in reality as in my imagination. Not only may time and several decades of glued-on foamboard not been kind to them, but perhaps there may have been a perfectly good reason for their obscuration in the first place. It is, however, so very, very tempting. I have a Stanley knife in my toolbox.