The southern end, which was designed as a Lady Chapel, has panel paintings of the Virgin Mary and three other female saints.They all have a connection with childbirth and babies, which may have had a special significance for the women of the parish; it has been suggested that during the Middle Ages, women who had recently given birth came to the altar to be blessed, signifying thanks for their survival and their return from their period of lying-in.

The Ranworth group is also related by the way the framed were jointed during construction, and the depiction of tiles and the use of similar and identical stencils in the panel paintings.

[2] A rood screen is a feature of Western Christian churches that was designed to divide the chancel from the nave, and so act to symbolically separate the laity from the clergy.

They rose from the floor to a beam upon which a large crucifix (or “rood”) and statues of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist were displayed.

There was sometimes a rood loft above the screen for holding candles, which could be large enough to enable singers to perform there on special occasions.

[7] The date for the creation of the rood screen at the Church of St Helen, Ranworth, was not documented in the Middle Ages.

Morant and John L’Estrange associated the screen with the 1419 will of Thomas Grym and its reference to the cancellarii (lattice-work) in the church.

[26] The Virgin Mary is shown with the infant Jesus on her lap as she breastfeeds him, an image that symbolised the spiritual nourishment given to worshippers by Christ.

The fourth panel shows St Margaret of Antioch holding a book in one hand and thrusting a staff into the throat of a dragon with the other.

The historian Eamon Duffy has suggested that during the Middle Ages, women came to this altar to be blessed at least one month after childbirth, as a way of giving thanks to God for their survival, and to signify their return to church life from their period of lying-in.

[28] The amateur artist Harriet Gunn and her sister Hannah visited Ranworth church four times in April 1839.

[29][note 1] The Reverend Richard Hart used a lithograph of Gunn's drawing of a bishop from the screen to illustrate a paper discussing the components of medieval vestments.

An illustrated monograph was produced by Winter, and an article for the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society was written by Morant and John L’Estrange.

[10] In 1937, the art historian Audrey Baker identified nine East Anglian parish churches with medieval panels related to those at Ranworth.

Wrapson considers the Ranworth group to consist of extant screens or fragments from Ranworth, Old Hunstanton, Thornham, Filby, Southwold [centre screen], North Elmham, St James Pockthorpe, North Walsham, and the St Apollonia panel.

Baker noted the painting of the flooring in the panels as typical of the Ranworth group, where tilings had been used in a purely decorative way, without any attempt to show perspective.