INCISED DESIGN FOR GOTHIC WINDOW TRACERY, WYMONDHAM ABBEY, NORFOLK

Abstract

The building of new facilities at the east end of Wymondham Abbey, Norfolk, in 2014–15 involved re-opening a Romanesque arch. This had previously connected the nave’s north aisle with the north transept, and appears to have been blocked at the Dissolution when the transepts and eastern arm of the abbey church were demolished. As works progressed in 2014–15, a remarkable Gothic window tracery design was gradually revealed, incised on the early twelfth-century ashlar of the southern respond. The discovery is one of the most substantial and complete incised designs identified to date and, beyond being an important addition to the emerging corpus of incised designs on walls, it is significant for revealing use of black pigment to make the drawing more visible, for providing an insight into the lost monastic parts of the abbey and, most tantalisingly, for raising the possibility that Wymondham – like its nearby sister priory at Binham – was at the forefront of the development of bar tracery in England in the thirteenth century.