From Burghclere to Bramley

Route map - between Newbury, Berkshire and Basingstoke, Hampshire.

I planned a drive to some churches I had read about in the towns and villages south of Newbury and north of Basingstoke, travelling from west to east as shown in the map above. It proved to be a good day trip that also included views of Watership Down, the woods around Tadley - the site of two of my commissions from 1998 - and the Roman town of Silchester.

1. Ascension Church, Burghclere. Window by Martin Travers 1943

First stop was Ascension Church, Burghclere, a big flint church with lots of good things inside, for example the wooden rood screen viewed from the chancel in the photo above. As usual I was there for the stained glass and in particular a second world war memorial window by Martin Travers. This window looked to me totally successful; in the depiction of the saints (George and Richard of Chichester) the integration of the arms (Eton College, Christchurch College Oxford, the Elkington family crest, the Rifle Brigade crest, Mailed Fist of the 6th Armoured Division, Crusader’s sword of the First Army) and above all the wonderful hand drawn lettering (above right).

2. St Mary, Kingsclere. Windows by Laurence Lee 1965 (left) and William Wailes 1849 (right).

Next was St Mary’s Kingsclere, an even bigger flint faced church with many styles of stained glass in its windows. The patterned grisaille glass by William Wailes seemed to work best with the architecture of the church, like the east window shown above right. In the south transept is the one I’d come to see (above left) a three light window from 1965 by Martin Traver’s pupil Lawrence Lee. I think of this as essentially a formal design, not abstract as I can see a landscape through the organic white grid, and with two patterns - landscape and grid - working with each other and their surroundings. The church leaflet tells us that the window commemorates the racehorse trainer Captain Peter Hastings-Bass, and that it contains pictures of vaguely suggested celestial creatures, also a sparrow-hawk, a red-legged partridge, a rugby ball, racehorses and the white horse of Uffington stretching across the base.

3. St Katherine, Wolverton. 4. St Paul, Tadley.

Next came two churches that were shut, but both with very interesting architectural forms. St Katherine, Wolverton (above left) has at its heart an old flint and wood church that was entirely encased with local hand-made brick in 1717. There is a tall tower, curves at the east end and crow stepped gables on the transepts.

The brick church of St Paul, Tadley built in 1966 (above centre and right) has a separate tower and a dramatic glazed west wall with low key doors in the centre. Through these I could see the beautiful wall of dalle de verre set in concrete stretching around three angled walls at the opposite end of the church. These are the work of Brian Milne who was a pupil of Lawrence Lee at the Royal College of Art from 1959 - 1963. He worked across various media on public art projects in the 1960s and 70s before setting up his stained glass studio in Suffolk which operated from 1983 until his death in 1996.

5. St Mary, Silchester. Window by Jon Callan 2005.

Then to St Mary’s, Silchester, a church built on an early sacred site within the Roman walls of Silchester - there is a great walk around the walls that includes the impressive site of an amphitheatre. Inside the church is a delicate wooden screen in front of 13th century wall paintings, recently conserved, and medieval carvings (above centre and left). Behind the font in the north wall is a 2005 window by Jon Callan entitled ‘Carpe Diem’. It’s a memorial window to Andrew Culbert and Sophie Wilsdon, as we learn from a plaque on the wall and a laminated A4 sheet that partly obscures the window and that includes a picture of the window itself. To me this is essentially a contemporary looking landscape with some obvious religious symbolism (cross, column of light) and some birds shoved in. The laminated sheet however tells us, The window is an abstract design intended to encourage people to put their own interpretation upon the spiritual meaning behind it. It then goes on to describe the design in terms of what it represents. I’m finding out that the word ‘abstract’ is beginning to mean the opposite of what it used to, that is something that had no basis in representation.

6. St James, Bramley. Window of C16th Flemish glass fragments. C12th wall painting of the murder of Thomas Becket.

The last church, St James, Bramley, contained the best things of the day. It is an interesting building with additions from many periods, it has a screen, monuments, wall plaques, medieval wall paintings and lots of medieval stained glass. In the Brocas chapel, added to the church by John Soane in 1802, is a large window that was set in 1889 by Burlison and Grylls with 16th century Flemish fragments, all delicately painted and presented on a subtle patterned background (above left and right). In the north aisle is a window with earlier glass, at the top are radiant suns of the Hose of York, dating from 1461 - 1483, while below are tiny figures of musicians and saints, including Saint Catherine (below right), these are thought to be from the 13th century. Next to the window is a well preserved, because painted over rather than destroyed during the Reformation, mural of St Christopher. The best of the wall paintings is on the opposite wall (above), Thomas Becket’s murder is one of several martyrdoms depicted, with the familiar flourish of red flowers all around.

St James, Bramley. Window with C13th-C15th English glass fragments. C16th wall painting of St Christopher.

Heaton, Butler and Bayne

St Margaret of Antioch, Chilmark, Wiltshire. Ascension window by Heaton, Butler and Bayne 1866.

I’ve been on the lookout for early, that is mid 1860s, HB&B windows since I saw the ones in Kintbury, Berkshire and marvelled at their beauty and their colour combinations that glow even through the extensive paintwork - I wrote about them here. In late summer I visited the church at Chilmark, Wiltshire which is full of HB&B windows, but as the sun was glaring through the glass in the best one (the south facing Ascension window, above) the fine details, particularly on the faces, were difficult to make out. Painted hair - curly, flowing or facial is a speciality.

St Mary Spring Grove, Isleworth. West window, with details by Heaton, Butler & Bayne c. 1866.

Then I visited a large neo gothic church in West London, St Mary Spring Grove, with early windows by HB&B in the porch, west, east and side chapel windows - all of them magnificent and designed by Robert Bayne who was chief designer for the firm at this period. The west windows behind the font (above) are small and low down making it easy to appreciate the well drawn figures, the hair, and the patterns in the foliage and interiors. The scenes above show The Presentation and The Three Marys at the Tomb.

St Mary Spring Grove. South chapel, with crucifixion window by Heaton, Butler & Bayne c. 1866.

The crucifixion window in the south transept chapel (above) is also great. I’m starting to recognise the distinctive shape of HB&B heads in profile, like the angels above the cross and Mary in the nativity panel next to it. These and also some of the clothing, for example that red hat, seem to point forward to the elaborate stained glass of Harry Clarke.

St Mary Spring Grove. East window. Below, details from the east window by Heaton, Butler & Bayne 1865.

The East window shows Christ in Majesty on a rainbow rising over a floral panel, with the haloed heads of saints and angels all around. There is the same purple, red and green combination that I loved at Kintbury Church. Although the details (below) are wonderful, it is really the composition of the whole enormous window that makes it work so well, it was effective even in the dim early evening light making it the best window that I’ve seen for ages.

St Mary Spring Grove. Details from the East Window.

St Mary Spring Grove, north aisle window by Veronica Whall, 1948.

For comparison, here are two windows by Veronica Whall in the same church. People love Veronica Whall - because she’s the daughter of Christopher, and a woman working in the arts and crafts tradition? These two windows have plenty of great details and are made of gorgeous glass, but I saw passages of wishy-washy paintwork, particularly on those pale quarries - a background design device that I never like as it lets in so much light and leaves the (overly sentimental) figures stranded. These two windows didn’t work at all in the dim evening light - but the details, as always, look good on the screen (right, above and below).

St Mary Spring Grove, south aisle window by Veronica Whall, 1949.

Detour to Droitwich

Droitwich Town mural by Philippa Threlfall and Kennedy Collings, made in 1976 and restored this year by the artist.

I’ve been to some really interesting places just because they are a stopping off point on the way to somewhere else - like Droitwich Spa, seven minutes drive from the M5 and therefore on our route up the motorway on Christmas Eve this year. In the centre is the town’s cherished mosaic mural, beautifully made by Philippa Threlfall in 1979; her work was widely commissioned for public art projects from the 1960s up to the present day. I knew there were six churches in the town and the picture of the Catholic Church with its tall exotic looking bell tower, at top right in the mural, sent us straight there.

Inside the Church of the Sacred Heart and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire.

The Roman Catholic Church of of the Sacred Heart and St Catherine of Alexandria was designed (in the early Christian style) by F Barry Peacock and commissioned by Walter Loveridge Hodgkinson, it opened in 1921. There are photographs showing white walls when the church opened, now they are covered in mosaic, mostly executed from 1922 - 1932 by the experienced mosaicists Maurice Josey and Fred Oates to a design by Gabriel Pippet. These are mosaics made with glass tesserae that sparkle when you turn the lights on, their design unmistakably influenced by Pippet’s time spent in Rome and Ravenna, down to the row of beasts (supposedly hart) that trot around the curve of the apse as the sheep do in St Apollinanare, Ravenna. The lower walls are lined with grey, green and blue marble that creates a beautiful surface.

In the photos of the small side chapels (below) you can see how the gold on the back of the tesserae glows behind the Nativity scene and the mosaic of the church itself. On the north side the middle row of mosaics shows the Life of the Virgin, those on the south side illustrate the life of St Richard of Chichester (also know as Richard de Wych) who was born near Droitwich.

Left: Nativity scene in the south aisle. Right: North aisle with nativity above and mosaic image of the church below.

The Chapel of Our Lady with St Francis mosaic and initials of the mosaics’ designer and maker.

Two squarish vaulted chapels with their own apses are smothered with the most lavish designs. On the north east corner the Chapel of Our Lady is mostly golden, with scenes from the life of St Francis of Assisi that is filled with plants and birds. Next to that I found the initials of designer and maker - OPUS G.P. & M.J. (above right). On the opposite south east corner of the church is the Chapel of St Catherine, in predominantly deep blue tesserae, with angels flying towards the wheel in the centre of the ceiling (below right).

The Chapel of St Catherine

Which brings me to the windows, that are not made of white glass as it appears in the photos where the numerous electric lights are shining on to the walls. They are in fact leaded lights in a lovely range of pale coloured hand blown glass. The ones on the lower level are leaded in a few different scale patterns (below right from St Catherine’s Chapel) while the higher level ones use linked circles. The most ambitious window is on the west wall (below left) surrounded by flying angels above a row of saints. These subtle and satisfying window designs are perfect partners for the mosaic patterns that surround them and extend right into the window reveals.

Left: West Wall with the Nine Choirs of Angels in flight. Right: Window detail from St Catherine’s Chapel.

Mouth Blown Glass Sheet

The traditional way to make coloured glass for stained glass artists to use is by blowing it, first into a bubble which is elongated by swinging it, then cutting the ends off to make a cylinder which is cut down the middle and then flattened into a sheet. These stages are shown in illustrations from different eras of glassmaking above and below.

When I started making stained glass windows you could buy sheets of glass known as ‘antique glass’ (because it was made by the antique mouth blowing method) made in Sunderland by Hartley Wood and Company. However Hartley Woods closed in 1997 and we started buying glass that was made in mainly Germany, France, America or Poland. When the company English Antique Glass stopped blowing sheet glass in 2022 ‘mouth blown sheet glass making’ was declared to be extinct in the UK by the Heritage Crafts Red List, where stained glass is listed as a still viable craft.

Eliot Walker and assistant Ryan working in the hot glass workshop at Blowfish Glass, Stourbridge.

On a mission to change this situation, the glassblower Eliot Walker (with Blowfish Glass) has started blowing sheet for stained glass on the site of the Red House Glass Cone in Stourbridge’s historic glass quarter. He learnt the tricks of the trade at Fremont Glass in Seattle, using a method suitable for small scale production. I took these photos (above and below) on a recent visitors’ day demonstration, a mesmerising watch that I would recommend to anyone.

The stages of turning a glass bubble into a cylinder.

The most fascinating part is not the blowing but the turning of the cylinder into the sheet - a process I will never describe in that airy way again when people ask me how the coloured glass I use is made. The cylinder was cold when it was cut (above right), Eliot then had to carry it with his tongs to the hot kiln, where the glass leaped around in a strange spiral before settling down (below left) and then being smoothed (bashed down rather) with a damp stick. The glass sheets that are made by this process are smooth and even, around 3mm thick, but contain beautiful colours and markings (below).

Left: The cylinder is flattened in the kiln. Right: six blown glass sheets on the Blowfish Gallery wall.

A box of offcuts: Left, as blown. Right, after flattening in my kiln (& with other coloured glass scraps added).

I’ve been adding antique glass into my smaller scale work recently, and have been running out of the streakies in my glass scrap boxes. So I bought a box of offcuts at Blowfish Glass that were the pieces from the slot that was cut down the middle or from the neck or base of the cylinder. The glass is easy to cut and mostly flashed (meaning the colours are in layers that can be removed) so will be ideal for sandblasting and maybe painting.

Two new pieces: Piece One, Piece Two

Before putting them away I couldn’t resist trying out a few pieces in combination with other glasses. I made four small pieces with an offcut in each one as follows:

Piece One: When I put the orange/green streaky next to a plain pale purple the combination was electric. Grey round the edge for a calming border.

Piece Two: The most lovely piece of cylinder neck glass - how would the streaky colours look next to black or white glass in comparison to the grey that I often use?

Piece Three: A panel that needed a border, miraculous colours that enhance the original piece.

Piece Four: This one was made to look like a window. The chunky glass from the cylinder bottom becomes a piece of sky or landscape next to the detailed painting that I did for an example panel.

Two old pieces with new glass added: Piece Three, Piece Four

An Introduction to Hans Feibusch

Left: The Baptism of Christ Chichester Cathedral 1951. Right: The Ascension Bishop’s Palace, Chichester 1953.

I first saw the work of Hans Feibusch in Chichester Cathedral where his painting, The Baptism of Christ, is part of a significant collection of mid twentieth century artworks. The Baptism of Christ (above left) is called a mural although it doesn’t really look like one, it is framed in white and about the size of a small door - indeed it was initially commissioned to cover up the site of a door in the baptistry. Feibusch was championed by George Bell, the bishop of Chichester who was active as a member of the House of Lords during World War II and who had a particular interest in helping German refugees especially those, like Hans Feibusch, who were Jewish. As a result Feibusch’s work was commissioned for churches throughout the south of England, particularly in Sussex. The mural in the chapel of the Bishop’s Palace in Chichester (above right) is an example I particularly like, with its coloured window and group of people on the left of the fragmented composition.

Left: St Mary’s Church, Goring-by-Sea. Right: Detail of angel from mural on the chancel arch.

I wasn’t keen when I first saw his work, with figures in a style somewhere between neo classical and expressionist, but in light and bright colour combinations. As I’ve seen more examples recently I have found that they really do work as murals, enhancing but not dominating the architecture. At Goring-by-Sea (above and below) the figures seem to float on the chancel wall in a colour range that is more restrained than usual. The details of wings and drapery in the angels that surround Christ in Majesty are decorative and expressive, uplifting even.

Christ in Majesty St Mary’s, Goring-by-Sea 1954.

Left: St John’s Church, Waterloo. Right The Crucifixion 1951.

Among the numerous Feibusch works in London churches, are two in St John’s Church, Waterloo (above and below), installed after the war on the east wall as an alternative to the window that had been blown out during the war. St John’s, built in the Greek Revival style with a facade like a temple, was built in 1822-24 and was restored again in 2022 resulting in a white interior with some imaginative interior walls between which the Feibusch murals take centre stage. The Crucifixion (above right) is a wonderful piece of expressionist painting, in this work you can see his early German influences, in particular Max Beckmann. Underneath is a smaller mural, Adoration of the Shepherds (below right) with figures on the same scale but seemingly cropped and crowded into the gilded frame. It is hard to get the feeling of intimacy from this work when you are looking at it from a distance and as a slightly incongruous part of an interior scheme.

Left: Inside St John’s, Waterloo. Right: Adoration of the Shepherds 1951.

St Alban the Martyr, Holborn. Left: Exterior (west elevation) Right: Interior, lower west wall.

Feibusch’s largest single work is in the church where he worshipped, St Alban the Martyr in Holborn. This is a magnificent, soaring church designed by Butterfield on a cramped site and built in 1861-3. After World War Two bombing it was partially rebuilt and restored by Adrian Gilbert Scott, with the mural and the stations of the cross added by Feibusch in 1966. It remains an Anglo-Catholic church (as described on the church entrance wall, above centre), inside it is quite simple with elegant decoration on the floor, ceilings, walls and in the fittings, rather than being an attempt to recreate the superb detail that was in the original Butterfield interior.

St Alban, Holborn. Looking east with The Trinity in Glory 1966

The Trinity in Glory mural on the east wall (where there was never a window) is over 15 metres tall, a pointed arch filled with figures that circle around the risen Christ, some recognizable people from the church at the time but also in Feibusch’s words “a continuous upward-flowing stream of anonymous worshippers.” The way these figures, in the familiar Feibusch pastel colours, are ordered in overlapping groups rather than with the depth of perspective reminds me of other decorative art forms, like tapestry or even stained glass. When I was there the low sun through a row of clerestory windows threw shapes of light on the mural’s surface that looked just like flying doves, particularly the one over the head of St Alban in the photo below right. A fellow artist, Phyllis Bray, worked with him on many of these murals, I wonder how much of the feel and touch of the painting was hers.

St Alban, Holborn. Left: Details showing the sanctuary and chapel beyond. Right: figure of St Alban in the mural.

There is also a sequence of Stations of the Cross around the nave of the church, beautifully set into the stone walls at regular intervals. Here Feibusch’s more expressionist side returns, with dramatic faces and moody landscape backgrounds. Behind the crucified Christ at number XII (below right) you see a gorgeous sky above a teeming crowd of people in a desolate looking landscape.

In old age, after seeing a film about the Holocaust, Feibusch produced a series of paintings which sought to recapture that nightmare – “the hunting, the running away, the fall into terror”. He formally left the Church of England in 1992, unable to accept the doctrine of the Trinity and shortly before his death, just four weeks before his 100th birthday in 1998, said: ‘I am just a very tired old Jew.’ He was buried with full Jewish rites at Golders Green Cemetery.

Extract from Hans Feibusch: A focus on the website of St John’s Church, Waterloo, where you will find a good biography of the artist.

St Alban, Holborn. Left: North aisle showing 4 of 14 Stations of the Cross. Right: Station XII in the south aisle 1966.