THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 156 Since its rediscovery in the 19th century, ‘the Dauntsey Doom’ in the church of St James the Great, Dauntsey, has been an object of interest. Knowledge of the painted medieval tympanum was greatly expanded by research carried out during recent restoration work. Popular focus however continues to remain on the most visible layer, a depiction of the Last Judgment. This article examines the paint schemes of the tympanum and suggests a possible relationship for the first two paint schemes regarding religious patronage and belief in a late medieval Wiltshire church. The earlier paint schemes and possible contexts of the Dauntsey Doom by James Plumtree Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine, vol. 107 (2014), pp. 156–162 Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Nádor u. 9, H-1051, Budapest, Hungary Introduction The Daunstey Doom (Figure 1) in St James the Great, Dauntsey, is a rare example of a medieval painted tympanum on wood. The two rows of vertical wooden panels were discovered in the chancel arch during the incumbency of George Biedermann (1829-59) and exhibited at the third general meeting of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society held at Chippenham in 1855 (WANHM 1856, 14). Though the object was examined by antiquarian societies in the 19 th century (Winwood 1881, 272-3; WANHM 1883, 24), literature on the Dauntsey tympanum is scarce. In the early years of the 20th century, articles by F. Bligh Bond and F. H. Manley discussed the feature and compared it to other surviving tympanums depicting the Last Judgment and noted its use as a roodscreen (Bligh Bond 1903; Manley 1910); in the second half of the 20th century, brief mentions in guidebooks frequently relished the depiction of damnation and suffering (Cheetham and Piper 1968, 89; Woodruffe 1982, 161). The recent removal of the boards from St James for restoration provided an opportunity for close examination. Recent scholarship on similar church fabric dividing chancel from nave in East Anglia has noted that roodscreens ‘have a special value for historians of the English parish, since they were overwhelmingly the most important single focus imagery in the people’s part of the Church (Duffy 1997, 136),’ and that they ‘were important to different people at different times and for different reasons (Lunnon 2010, 127).’ The aim of this paper is to present the subsequent images displayed on the Dauntsey tympanum revealed during restoration and to suggest possible contexts for the neglected first two paint schemes. The boards The unpainted side of the twenty-one panels – four of which have split lengthways – were examined during the restoration. Dendrochronological dating by Ian Tyers concluded that the trees were felled between 1369 and 1399 (Tyers 2006, 11), matching the 14th century date for much of the architecture of St James. The carpentry employed to turn the poor quality locally sourced oak into panels was crude, with signs of trestle sawing visible (Dawes 2005, 1; Meadows 2006).