Alright, we’ll come clean, this isn’t new news. Indeed, it’s about 530 years old. But the fact that images of St George and his dragon-management exploits are emerging from beneath the limewash of a Vale of Glamorgan church is well worth noting. After five hundred years, St George is coming clean on the south wall of St Cadoc’s church, Llancarfan.
Presently the subject of an Heritage Lottery Funding bid, several wonderful mediaeval images already astonish the visitors. These paintings, created in an outburst of decorative worship around 1480, were whited out again only 70 years later. It was then that the ten-year-old despot, Edward VI, banished from Britain’s churches ‘all shrines, pictures, paintings . . . so that there remain no memory of the same’.
Now, thanks to initial rescue consolidation by leading conservationists, visitors can view a fascinating revelation in progress. Already visible is the armoured foot of St. George, and his lance, piercing the mouth of a clearly disgruntled dragon. Other jigsaw glimpses of the wall-height knight will join up as funding is forthcoming.
Mind you, rising damp apart, George does need to expedite his dragon slaying. That’s because also revealed are a worried queen, a ginger-bearded king, and (best of all) a charming princess with her lamb, both clearly being served up for the dragon’s dinner. These images are the current highlight of the discoveries, and have recently topped the bill in a CADW publication on Medieval Craftsmen in Wales.
A Welsh icon? Well, debate runs hotly as to why St. George finds himself in this neck of Wales – a riddle that, one suspects, will not be solved even with more uncovering of the paintings. But to date, only two such George images have emerged on Welsh church walls, while there are nearly a hundred in England.
Meanwhile, if a dragon-purging knight isn’t enough to tempt visitors, they can also puzzle over an intriguing array of our other images – including a man in a woolly hat, a skeleton in a shroud, and the tantalizing hint of Seven Deadly Sins!
By Ian Fell
Stabilising the dragon's mouth
