Nearly-400-Year-Old Paintings Found Behind Kitchen Walls

Herbie J Pilato

https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=16wwe2_0lRi7nEG00
Photo byLuke Budworth

According to journalist Andy Corbley and The Good News Network (GNN), "In York, a seemingly normal apartment was hiding a historic secret for centuries until a kitchen remodeling exposed it to the light of day."

As Corbley continued to report, "29-year-old Luke Budworth received a call from the men putting a new kitchen into his apartment. It read 'did you know there was a painting behind here?'”

"It wasn’t a painting," noted, "...nor a bit of leftover Victorian wallpaper as Budworth had originally suspected, but rather a frieze dating back hundreds of years ago depicting a Biblical scene. The kitchen remodeling was finished before Budworth could see for himself, but after doing a little investigation in the open-plan living space he discovered another frieze. He contacted Historic England, the largest historical preservation society in the country, to see if they were able to make sense of the discovery."

"Over time," Corbley went on to document, "...Budworth came to learn that York had once been encircled by a wall, and his second-floor apartment was built using some of this wall. The ground floor is taken up by a cafe and charity bookshop which is listed as being a Grade II Georgian building from 1747.

"Yet his discovery dates even further back. Historic England gave him and his partner a full-size replica of the frieze to hang on the wall, and Budworth used the Biblical imagery as a reference and managed to find a picture exceedingly similar from a book called Emblems written in 1635 written by the poet Francis Quarles.

"Historic England explained that pictures such as those in the frieze fell out of fashion by the year 1700, so the work was done between those two dates, potentially placing it nearly 400 years old," Corbley chronicled.

“They raise various questions about the ages of the buildings in this row of historic homes and the history of Micklegate itself,” Historic England told CNN. “Finds like this tell us that our historic homes have many secrets and we’ve been pleased to work with this homeowner on looking after these murals for the future.”

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Herbie J Pilato is the author of several books about pop culture including RETRO ACTIVE TELEVISION, THE 12 BEST SECRETS OF CHRISTMAS, MARY: THE MARY TYLER MOORE STORY, TWITCH UPON A STAR, GLAMOUR, GIDGETS AND THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, DASHING, DARING AND DEBONAIR, and NBC & ME: MY LIFE AS A PAGE IN A BOOK, among others. He's also a TV writer/producer, and has worked for Reelz, Bravo, E!, TLC, and hosted THEN AGAIN WITH HERBIE J PILATO, the hit classic TV talk show (which premiered on Amazon Prime in 2019).

Los Angeles, CA
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