LATE 15TH/EARLY 16TH CENTURY

The Christian symbols of the Passion and the style of tracery depicted on this bench-end fragment can be found in Cornish churches, especially the church at Poughill. The Poughill bench-ends are perhaps the best preserved examples from the most elaborate group of late medieval bench-ends in the West of England. Similar sets, probably constructed by the same itinerant carvers, survive in various states of completion in parish churches distributed throughout North Cornwall and North Devon.
Two related bench-ends are in the collection of The Victoria and Albert Museum and are illustrated and discussed in Charles Tracy, English Medieval Furniture and Woodwork, London, 1988, pp., 116-117, cats. 201, 202, pls. 72a-b.