Harry Stammers in Wiltshire / December 10, 2024 by Sasha Ward

St Mary’s Church, Whaddon, Witshire. Left: Entrance porch. Right: Inside, facing east.

Here we are in Whaddon Church on a stormy day beside the River Avon in Wiltshire (above). The church is down a windy dead end road - I’d seen the Harry Stammers window there only from the outside because it was, as churches so frequently are, locked. This time, I made an appointment and took along some friends to chat with the key holder and take photos of me taking photos of the window that we all admired so much (below).

The subject matter is from Matthew chapter 13 verses 24 & 25: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came & sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away’. In the window the good sower and his enemy have the same posture and are placed on similar backgrounds but with dramatically different colour combinations that emphasise the contrast of day and night, light and dark. There are areas of loose brushwork that contrast with sharply painted plants and the familiar Stammers style cartouches for the lettering (below). The window is dedicated to the memory of George Merrett a local lay preacher who walked across the fields every Sunday, on the day we were there the fields were flooded and the windy road almost impassable.

Detail of the Whaddon window with Harry Stammer’s mark.

In Holt, only a mile across the river but quite a long way round by road, is another Harry Stammers window. Again I’d made an appointment and again the key holder was surprised that we were more interested in the Stammers window than the other ones - in both churches they are by Horwood from about 1880. This is an early Stammers work, with the figures and cartouches suspended on a standard background of white glass quarries and no maker’s mark to be seen. There are few indications here of how his later style would develop, and had already started developing by the time he was commissioned to make the Whaddon window four years later.

United Reformed Church, Holt, Wiltshire. Window by Harry Stammers in the south aisle 1946.

The Holt window is dedicated to St Cecilia, and in memory of another much loved local character, Daisy M. Tucker, who was choirmistress and also organiser of the local sewing bee - hence the bees (below left) or so the much repeated story goes.

St Mary, Wilton, Wiltshire. Harry Stammers window 1952 and detail with his mark.

The other Stammers window I know of in Wiltshire is in St Mary’s Church in Wilton (near Salisbury) and now in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust. In this window, although St Edith and St Monica are also floating on those clear background quarries, the composition fills more of the space and the style of the figures, particularly in the sections below them, is veering away from the naturalistic. Here is the same contrast between light and dark and the monochrome figures that you find in the Whaddon window and that he used so much in his later work.

Wilton. Left: St Monica. Right: scene below with monochrome figures.

St Peter’s Church, Over Wallop, Hampshire. Left: Detail of St Michael in left hand panel. Right: Window by Harry Stammers 1956, on the wall is the flag of The Glider Pilot Regiment.

Four years later Stammers made a window for St Peter’s Church in Over Wallop, just over the Wiltshire border into Hampshire. It tells the sad story of three members of the same family, Joan Mary Grece, Group Captain C.M.M. Grece and her uncle H.D. Harman who were killed flying together in 1954. The picture of their plane (below) gives this window a 1950s ‘Festival of Britain’ feel, and like much of his work from this period the window design is crisp and graphic.

I’ve always wondered if the practice of using white glass backgrounds that was so common in this period of stained glass and that lets in too much light was done for cost cutting reasons. I say this because that was why I started using so much clear glass myself, especially when I was a student. The Whaddon window, so small and so satisfying in its all over composition, rather reinforces my suspicions.

Harry Stammers, Lady Chapel / February 20, 2017 by Sasha Ward

On entering St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol                                              Bursting into prayer inside The Lady Chapel — On entering St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol Bursting into prayer inside The Lady Chapel

If you need your faith in twentieth century stained glass restored, go and see Harry Stammers' windows for The Lady Chapel in St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. Even on entering the church the colour is overpowering, the windows are amazing from a distance and so amazing when you are in the chapel that people were bursting into prayer in front of them. I have included a photo of every window here, but still they do not convey how well the stained glass, rich and beautiful both in overall design and in the detailed painting, works in its setting. There is a complete set of five large windows made from 1960-65, the colours becoming stronger from the front to the back (east) wall, where the central nativity window is filled with colour and detail arranged in a satisfying pattern of blocks and columns.

Angels at the top of the nativity window

After much reflection, I chose the red and yellow angels (above) as my favourite part of the scheme: it's the part that sings out from a distance and is full of the silverstain/red flashed glass pattern-making that is a distinguishing characteristic of the work of Harry Stammers (see Jane Brocket's blog on the subject here).

Other sections that fascinated me were Mary lying on straw (below) painted in exactly the way that I show grass and straw in my coloured glass, and the three blue columns that turn into figures when you look at them closely (below right).

Details from the centre and the bottom right of the nativity window

Windows 2 & 4 (either side of the nativity window)

The other four windows contain large amounts of clear glass, something that I hold against a lot of mid twentieth century stained glass, especially in churches where these types of windows are contrasted with older, less transparent ones. However, here the white and tinted glass sections are not cut into diamond-shaped quarries only, there are some beautifully designed passages where the diamonds change into irregular shapes as they border the blocks of colour.

North facing window from inside and outside

The high ratio of transparent glass, coupled with the crisp linear painting style, also allows some of the images to be read from the outside, at least on the north side where the light shines right through the chapel.

The whole series of windows shows the life of Mary alongside other female saints, figures from familiar bible stories and groups of people dressed in the clothes of the 1950s and 60s. But I find, as usual, that I am more interested in the abstract/pattern-making qualities that you can find in every panel - like the towers of diamonds pointing to the fabulous jade green triangle (below left). Right at the bottom is a section full of shapes covered in a network of lines and brush marks, so that each piece of blue glass is like a beautiful miniature painting.