Medieval wall painting found under castle plaster
Durham UniversityA 700-year-old medieval wall painting has been discovered during renovations of a castle.
The painting, which experts believe dates back to the late 13th or early 14th Century, was discovered behind wall panelling and plasterwork at Durham Castle during refurbishments.
It depicts a red flower and a stem and was probably commissioned by a previous Bishop of Durham, academics said.
"The idea that the decoration from 700 years ago would still be there was just absolutely phenomenal," Durham University researcher Andrew Ferrara said.
Ferrara said as part of the castle's renovation works, the team had been given the opportunity to study how the building had been put together.
This involved removing a few sections of plaster from the castle's walls so they could understand the makeup of the wall itself.
"I took off this layer and then suddenly I saw these little red lines," he said.
"A foot to the left or a foot to the right - we would have missed it. We struck gold."
Durham UniversityFerrara said the survival of the painting was most likely to due to "happenstance" as it had been painted on to plasterwork which had been difficult to scrape off during the previous centuries.
Medieval wall paintings can be found around the country, but Ferrara said finding one in Durham Castle, which had experienced so much change over the centuries, was "exceptional".
The researchers were able to date the artwork by comparing it to other paintings.
Ferrara said the painting was probably commissioned by the Bishop of Durham, though they did not know which one, and they believed it would have likely extended across the entire room.
"You have to imagine going into a huge room and it would have been covered in this really incredible and bright coloured wall decoration," he said.
"It really underscores that sort of power and status the Bishop of Durham had during the medieval period."
Ferrara said the room had since been re-panelled with a small cut-out so the wall painting could still be seen.
The university, which owns Durham Castle, was now figuring out whether the painting could be incorporated into public tours of the site, he said.