![]() What does this juxtaposing of holiness and the infernal mean? What has been revealed is that figures of Apostles, delicately carved with emblematic detail, stand under larger looming heads-and-shoulders of semi-human and demonic figures, bearing the weight of the roof. Pevsner’s guide to Norfolk says they stand below canopies, but it’s more interesting than that. they are carved the wrong way round, with the demon overcoming each of the smaller apostles, when it should be the other way round. However, on one particular day in 2012 they were indeed ‘found’ by an historian who was studying the medieval glass…… so now they are famous!….having been safely ‘in situ’ for nye on 600 years. There are 12 demons carvings and they were, in a sense, ‘lost’….but not really….in fact, they have been there all the time but, because of the poor light entering the roof area, the carvings are almost impossible to see. Then there are the demons which are very difficult to see for the roof is so dark that the visitor may miss these and even the large dark angels. If you look carefully at the above photo, you can see what is now known as the “unknown” glories, the carved buttresses, while in between and over head are the angels, with more angels in the south aisle and the Lynn Chapel off the north aisle. They flock about the roof beams, more than 100 of them, some bearing musical instruments, others the instruments of the Passion. St Clements is a church thick with angels. It was a prosperous place in the second quarter of the 15th century from when it remains a somewhat curious church that demands attention. The church was built of limestone from the Lincolnshire Wold and mostly likely came to site by the river. The church stands amid the fens and dykes below the Wash, between the rivers Nene and Great Ouse, close to the Cambridgeshire border. The church of St Clement, Outwell, was started in the 13th century and expanded in the 14th and 15th centuries when the roof was raised and its carvings installed.
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