| Retable. Like a reredos, a
retable is a screen behind an altar.
However, it also has a shelf on it, for a row of candles,
a cross, etc. Very few survived the wrath of the Anglican
reformers in the 1540s, and any pre-Reformation ones are
not likely to be in their original church. That is
certainly the case with Suffolk's most famous one, that
at Thornham Parva, which,
ironically, has lost its shelf, which is now in the
Musée de Cluny in Paris. The Anglo-catholic movement of the late 19th and early 20th century held that a row of 6 candles behind the altar was essential, and their churches all had to have retables. There is an excellent one from the 1890s, still in use for its original purpose, at Ipswich St Bartholomew. |