Doom (Click the image to enlarge)

The most common location for the placement of a wall painting illustrating Doomsday (also referred to as Doom or Judgement Day) was over the chancel arch, serving as reminder that everyone will be judged and will have to account for their actions on earth and face either eternal damnation or passage into heaven, separating the good from the bad.

The scene is based upon the description of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25 and is similar to the painting above the chancel arch in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Coventry. Christ is seen seated on a rainbow with his feet on a representation of the world as a footstool with the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist on either side of him.

The bottom of the painting shows the dead rising up to be judged before Christ and are either welcomed to paradise on the left of the painting by St Peter who is shown holding the keys to the gates of heaven or sent into eternal damnation on the right of the painting. The depiction on hell to the right of the painting shows sinners being rounded up by a series of horned beasts and devils that wield clubs or flesh hooks and taken through a beast like entrance down into hell where they are boiled in a cauldron, hung by hooks on the walls or burned.