Two months of churches

On my days out I visit any church I pass whose door is open. I’ve not come across anything spectacular recently, so here are small scale highlights from the past two months that include some obvious links - blue glass, boats and rivers.

St Thomas Church, Lymington. Left: George Cooper-Abbs 1946. Right: Tracey Sheppard 2024.

In Lymington, beside the sea, I liked the fish at the bottom of a Cooper-Abbs window where you can also see a clear example of his name and maker’s mark (above left). In the same church, the new inner doors etched and engraved by Tracey Sheppard have a full size sparrow and goldfinch on the tree branches that are astonishingly life like, full of textures and shades of white (above right). On the lower part of the doors (not shown) salt laden waves lap at the roots of the tree.

In St Saviour’s Pimlico there was a subtle window, predominantly pale blue, made up of separate scenes including a landscape with sheep and wolf in the bottom corner (below).

St Saviour Church, Pimlico. Baptistry window c. 1922.

In one of my local churches, Alton Barnes in Wiltshire, a south facing window has a number of memorial diamond panes designed and engraved by Laurence Whistler and his son Simon Whistler, with the later ones (from 2004) engraved by Frank Grenier. Here you can again find some sheep, also a paper boat that Laurence Whistler designed for his own memorial, being blown around by life (below right).

St Mary Church, Alton Barnes. Window with diamond panes by Laurence Whistler and Simon Whistler 1979 - 2001.

All Saints Church, Hove. Narthex windows by Martin Travers, 1932.

In All Saints Hove, I was delighted to find a series of small windows by Martin Travers in the Narthex, so outside the main body of this huge church. You are able to get close up to see the finely painted details in the figures that fill each of the window openings, with simple plain borders and this text below; Remember O Lord the souls of Thy servants Thomas Peacey priest Vicar of Hove 1879-1909 and Prebendary of Chichester Cathedral, born 16.IX.1846 died I.IV.1909 and Ellen Maria Conolly his wife, born 10.III.1854 died 22.X.1899. These windows were given in their memory by their loving and grateful children.

A window from 2023 installed in one of the windows in the Abbey Church, Beaulieu is dedicated to Edward John Barrington Douglass Scott Montagu (all one person) 1926-2015, founder of the National Motor Museum in the grounds of his stately home, Beaulieu Palace House. This window shows the Beaulieu river from the Abbey down to the sea, there are symbols of different aspects of the Christian faith included in the design but like so much new church glass the emphasis is on the natural world.

Abbey Church, Beaulieu. Nicholas Bechgaard, made by Salisbury Cathedral stained glass 2023.

I went to see a new set of windows that were installed at the bottom of the very tall north transept window in St Mary Redcliffe in 2023 to replace panels commemorating the Bristol slave trader Edward Colston. On the theme And who is thy neighbour? the artist chosen for the commission, Ealish Swift, has drawn scenes linked by water and showing Jesus as multiple ethnicities. These scenes include the Bristol Bus Boycott, which paved the way for the Race Relations Act of 1965, with Jesus as a fellow protester and radical and in the third panel (above right) a depiction of Jesus as a child refugee fleeing to Egypt. It is good to see meaningful events celebrated in stained glass, and also good to see new work that fits in with the old in terms of scale of figures, decorative borders and text, but that is so obviously of its own time.

St Mary Church, Redcliffe Bristol. Lower panels by Ealish Swift made by Holy Well glass 2023.

Nature Inspired Wallpaper

Above: 4 stages of my design for UCHL. Below: latest version with both sides of the corridor design.

So far this year I have been fully occupied with the design of a wallcovering for both sides of an 18 metre long corridor leading to the mortuary in University College Hospital, London. There are many things to consider when doing a commission like this. I’m now at the stage where I’ve responded to the brief (nature inspired but with lots of caveats), to the feedback on my design ideas from the working group and then to the different opinions on the latest version of my design (above). I was in need of inspiration to fortify myself for the next stage of the process, and happened to be in Brighton so I paid a visit to The Royal Pavilion.

Aquatint of The Long Gallery, Brighton Royal Pavilion published in 1826

Here, nature inspired wallpapers are everywhere, enlivened by geometric patterns on borders, carpets and ceilings. The blue and pink paper that covers the walls of the Long Gallery and the staircases at either end is a hand painted copy of the original, which was probably hand-painted in distemper by Frederick Crace around 1815, so produced in Britain but strongly influenced by work exported from China and seen elsewhere in the pavilion.

In 1823 local historian Richard Sickelmore described the Long Gallery as “one of the most superb apartments that art and fancy can produce and which, for richness in effect, and dazzling brilliance of decoration and design, is not to be equalled, perhaps, in Europe, if [not] the world”.

Brighton Royal Pavilion, details from the Long Gallery wallpaper (above) and from the staircase (below). Just shades of greyish blue on a pink background that glows and changes with the light conditions.

Brighton Royal Pavilion, The King’s apartments and detail of wallpaper

The other wallpapers that I like are in the bedrooms. White on green in King George IV’s apartments (above) and yellow on gold in his brothers’ bedrooms (below). These are also copies, but of designs from a slightly later date when the King was moved to the ground floor during John Nash’s transformation of the pavilion. The paper is a hand-painted copy of decorator Robert Jones’ original printed wallpaper from the 1820s - you can see brush marks in the white paint. This design features dragons and birds as well as flowers and a wonderful stripy scroll along the bottom.

Elements of the design are repeated in the version in the upstairs bedrooms that uses the chrome yellow that was a new and popular colour of the period - the colour of joy and madness that I often have to avoid (or sneak in small amounts of) in my designs for hospitals. Here bamboo is used as an edging, there is a trompe l’oeuil pattern at the bottom and, best of all, there are actual Chinese paintings on the yellow walls that are a series illustrating the production of cotton and tea.

Upstairs in Brighton Royal Pavilion, The Yellow Bow Rooms and detail of wallpaper.

So the next steps for me - try a version with dark foliage and then one with white. Like the plants in these papers, mine are not intended to be realistic but to break up the expanses of wall in a way that combines geometry with nature - nature being the source of so much pattern-making.

Tadley Pool

Tadley Health and Fitmess Centre, Hampshire: Pool windows from the outside and the inside.

I returned to Tadley Pool for the first time in 28 years to see if the windows I’d made were still there - the answer was yes and they were looking absolutely great. We were invited in to take photos before the inflatable fun session started (above right) and I thought, as I had at the time, what an odd place it was to have stained glass windows. Because of that and the fact that I’d never had any good photos of them, I’d had a bad opinion of these windows and was now taken aback by how much I liked the design and the colours. The late 1990s was a time when local authorities commissioned art for new public buildings, and it was evidently a good period for my work.

Two windows at Tadley pool 1998. Each 2.6 × 2.9 metres.

The windows were screen printed at Proto Studios which was located in Greenwich at the time, using old fashioned technology. I drew out the designs in black ink, these were photographed and made into screens resulting in a finish where I can recognise my own hand drawn lines. Each window has a different combination of a blue and a yellow with a third colour on the overlaps and a clear white line rather than a sandblasted white one. The screens for the edge panels were flipped for the panel opposite, making this commission one with a very effective use of a smallish budget.

Details of the centre panels

Sunshine through the corners, the clear lines stand out in the transmitted coloured light.

Small watercolour design for the windows.

Back in the studio I found the watercolour designs, tiny but close in feel to the final product. I’m now thinking of how much I can learn from looking back at the way I used to do things before computer technology intervened in the drawing up process and everyone’s work started looking slightly similar.

I also remembered the window I made as part of the same public art project in the nearest infants’ school, Bishopswood. The school colour was red and the theme was trees, as it was for the pool windows. The design was directly from eleven of the children’s drawings and I leaded the window up in the school so that the pupils could see how it was made, and handle (health and safety was also great in those days!) the glass pieces. This was a window that I always really liked, hopefully it’s still there too.

Bishopswood Infants School, Tadley. Window above the entrance doors.

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 Lawrence 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 House 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.