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Identification of the painting is certain because of its inscription, still visible. This, painted in Lombardic capitals, begins at the left on the green-painted soffit of the arch, at the level of Beckets right hand. It reads: S. TO (on the red background, beside the saints fingers) MA (on the red background at the right of his head [obscured]) and finally S (on the green soffit at the right). Sometime before 1925, JC Wall drew the painting, and his drawing² (right) shows the inscription when it was less faded and obscure.
I suspect that there may once have been more to this inscription. Some small, white cursive shapes are faintly detectable on the red background to the right of Beckets crozier, on the level of his right elbow. There is something like a faint O and below that perhaps a P. If so, the inscription might originally have continued...ORA (TE) PRO NOBIS. Quite possible, especially if this is in effect an altarpiece, and an indication of the enormously high regard in which Becket and his intercessory powers were held.

¹Quoted here from the leaflet in the church. Dowsings Journal is now online, and his activities in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire are documented at Digiatlas : The Journal of William Dowsing. NB. This is an amended link to a new location.
²JC Wall, Medieval Wall Paintings, (nd, before 1925), Talbot & Co., London, Fig. 76, p.181. It is possible that a relative of JC Wall, or a representative of the interests of Talbot & Co. still holds copyright in this drawing, if so, I hope that they will contact me. But I reproduce the drawing in the certainty that Wall himself would have been delighted to see it here.

© Anne Marshall 2001