 George Gilbert Scott and Frances Skidmore's Hereford screen was an integral part of the new Victorian installation at Hereford Cathedral. It was first on display at the International Exhibition at South Kensington in 1862, and then it was around a century until the cathedral decided that it was going to be dismantled, and then it came back here to South Kensington, restored by the V&A in the 1980s and 90s. This is a choir screen rather than a rude screen. In its original position, it was between the nave and the portion of the cathedral in which the choir sits, just west of the sanctuary where the high altar is. It's not a rude screen because a rude screen in pre-Reformation Britain and in medieval understanding was a screen on which the corpus, the body of Christ, would be stretched out on the cross. Between his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Saint John the Evangelist. Here, we're looking at something quite different, and it is not the suffering or the passion of Christ that is being emphasised. Rather, it's Christ's resurrection. And as you can see, the centrepiece of this screen, which is writhing with organic life in metalwork and in all kinds of different motifs, fruits, flowers, plants of various kinds, together with hard stones and a little bit of text, the centre of all of this is the image of Christ. Within something called a mandorla, which is a full body halo with a series of waves articulating in a very matte and restrained way in metalwork the three dimensionality of the glorious body of the resurrected Christ. The resurrected Christ is welcoming, is hospitable, is glorified. And yet, he's doing something very particular with his body. He's not blessing as such. He is displaying his wounds. And if you look carefully at the image of Christ here, you can see the pricks of nails in his hands. And yet, it is a reassuring figure of triumph, of invitation and of the truth of the resurrection that was being depicted here by Scott and Skidmore. And we can see these very powerful, very beautiful musical angels on either side welcoming as well as lauding the presence of Christ as he would have appeared at first on the screen in South Kensington in the International Exhibition and then, finally, in Hereford Cathedral. There are a couple of details that it's helpful to focus on here in order to give us a better sense of what the theological, what the religious significance is of this screen. One is the way in which it is covered with fruit and flowers and these floral images were profoundly important for Victorians. Most of the flowers on this screen are not immediately identifiable. You don't necessarily have the proliferation of really specific flower types. You won't necessarily find something that immediately strikes you as a passion flower or a rose or a lily. We do have some acanthine forms up in the columns, but generally speaking, the kinds of floral forms that we find here are celebrating the plasticity and the organic wildness of ironwork that we put into a sense of order in order to express a micro-architectural, glorious environment of life, vitality and fruitfulness within which the resurrected Christ displaying those wounds is present. The other thing to consider in detail looking at this screen are the hard stones which are projecting out from elements that we can see most clearly midway between the base of the screen and the tops of those little capitals consisting with life with these beautiful and rather exciting metalwork details. Those hard stones anticipated something that Scott would do later, not very far from here for the Albert Memorial. There, too, religious language in visual terms and in ornamental terms was incredibly important for this monument for the prince and Prince Albert was profoundly important in this place in particular as well as in the British Empire in what he could do to bring together the global interests in art, manufacture, design and industry here to the heart of London. So when he died, which was a great shock, Scott was asked to design the memorial and the way in which he did this incorporated semi-precious stones like these. They, too, present here as glinting, glimmering contrasts to the use of metalwork either in these matte tones of reds and russets and greens or with the brilliant light of this really very bright, brassy effect. What these stones are doing is they are reminding us of the beauty of the earth in relation to the vitality of the Lord of life and the profound understanding of Christianity as being very much about the revelation of God in creation as well as the incarnation of Christ, whose resurrected body we see in the center here of this monumental Gothic revival choir screen. The final element in the screen's design that helps us to understand the relationship between theology, architecture and ornament in this profoundly important object sitting as it does liturgically between the nave and the choir and the sanctuary beyond is the relationship between image and text. There are two instances in the screen where text is particularly prominent and important. On the western side, on the doors here, which would be open for communicants to be able to come through for the celebration of the Eucharist to receive the body and blood at the high altar, we see it written, Gloria in Excelsis Deo, Glory to God in the highest. This is not something that the resurrected Christ says. This is his worshiper's response to Christ. And it's a very specific liturgical phrase. Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth are the first words of the Gloria, which is sung as part of the celebration of Holy Communion by the congregation. So these gates, even when those words are not being spoken by a congregation, are reminding people of how to react, how to respond worshipfully and devotionally to the presence of the resurrected Christ in their midst as he is here on the screen directly above, displaying his wounds glorified following the tragedy of his death on the cross. And it is that top element which brings us to the next section of text crucially important in understanding the theological significance of the screen. On the reverse of the resurrected Christ in the Mandorla, there is not another body. We don't have another figure of Christ on this side. No apostles or saints, no angels. We have something else. Three letters, I, H, S. One way of perceiving these letters is that they are three letters that make up the name of Christ. Another way is that they indicate the phrase in Latin, Jesus hominem salvator. The idea that Jesus Christ is the incarnate God, the man who saves, fully human and fully divine. The choir screen overall tells us a great deal about the relationship between the resurrected Christ, the Gothic revival and Victorian priorities for this sacred space of Hereford Cathedral. Overall, what the screen is offering us here is a very distinctive portrait of Jesus Christ in the midst of the people. And as such, it's profoundly unique, not only in its materials, but also in its theological message, its religious content, proclaiming the glorious resurrection of God in text as well as an image for the people of God in Victorian Britain.