Around Winchester

Highlights from a church crawling trip that began on our side of Winchester (the north west) dipped into the south of the city, then continued along the River Itchen travelling north east.

St Peter & St Paul, King’s Somborne from the west end. St Michael window, John Hayward 1996.

The village of King’s Somborne has a late John Hayward window in the belfry at the west end of the church (above). In an interesting note framed and hung on the wall of the belfry Hayward writes

‘The subject matter is suggested by the life and career of Sir Thomas Sopwith, his great interest in flight and the crucial role played by his brain-child, the Hawker Hurricane in the 1939-45 war. The window is dominated by the white flying figure of Archangel Michael who overcomes the darker figure of Satan - an “upside down man” - who in the course of the struggle loses his crown…….The subject is set low in the window to take account of the height above ground level and its position above the porch. it is kept deliberately light in this dark church and much of the colour is derived from the use of silver stain to give a variety of yellows and golds against which the subject is set.’

You can see how well this positioning of the subject, set against a subtle leaded grid, works when you notice the height of the window in the church. The colour and the painted detail are, as always in his work, wonderful.

All Saints, Little Somborne

Next was Little Somborne with the graves of Thomas and his wife Phyllis Sopwith at the front of the church (above). The building has Saxon origins and a Norman chancel, where pillars seem to record what used to be there. It makes a pair with the church of St Mary at Ashley just two miles away (below) built to serve a Norman castle that no longer exists. There is just a fragment of a 13th century wall painting beside a window on the south wall. Both churches are looked after by The Churches Conservation Trust and are therefore plain inside and out and very tasteful.

St Mary, Ashley

St Cross, Winchester

Next into the southern suburbs of Winchester to the hospital and the church of St Cross, although it’s of a cathedral like scale, founded in the 1100s at the same time as the almshouses across the quadrangle. The architecture is Norman, with huge pillars and rounded arches surrounded by zigzagging. High up in the chancel are stained glass figures using old glass fragments (above centre and right), with another particularly good example in the east wall of the north transept (below left). The church was carefully and colourfully restored by Butterfield from 1859, with windows in the nave by Wailes, at a later date more stained glass windows were commissioned including a pair in the north chapel that I particularly like of Saints Michael and George (below right and lower panel).

St Cross, Winchester. Centre, north transept wall with zigzagging. Right, St Michael, James Powell & Sons 1917. Below, detail of St George window, James Powell & Sons 1917.

St Mary, Avington. East window detail, James Powell & Sons 1914

We followed the route of the River Itchen from the east of Winchester to a string of villages with interesting churches. The 18th century brick church at Avington (above) is lovely from the outside and the inside, with a blue ceiling, tall rounded mahogany box pews and a dove above the pulpit. The stained glass crucifixion detail in the east window (above right), again a window by Powells, has a view of a town in the background, solid and effective against the clear background.

St Mary, Itchen Stoke, chancel and south wall.

You may have noticed that although it is August and a heatwave is on, there is no sunshine. This may mean that I’ll have to go back to my favourite church of the day, St Mary’s at Itchen Stoke. It’s a tiny version inspired by Sainte Chapelle in Paris, which I remember as a contrast in lighting (and therefore a demonstration of how stained glass works) as the wall of windows on the south side were illuminated by the sun, while the wall of windows on the north side looked black because more light was reflected off the surface than was coming through them. Here at Itchen Stoke there was a dull pink light as all the windows glowed with stained glass patterns where red and blue glass predominate. The lower walls are decorated with subtle 3d tile panels, and the patterns continue on to the cast iron pew ends and the tiled floors. Best of all is the rose window above the entrance doors (below) that contains sections of 13th century glass around its edges. Built in 1866, It is one of only two churches designed by the engineer and architect Henry Conybeare and the only one still standing.

Rose window at west end of St Mary, Itchen Stoke.

Example Panels

Here are nine of the panels I’ve made over the years to demonstrate the craft of stained glass when I’m teaching. I say craft because the art bit is something and somewhere else - sometimes I make an example panel that doesn’t look nice at all. I’ve found that the best ones are more or less square and about the same size, these nine range from 125mm to 190mm square.

Above left: To show glass paints on different types of glass in a copper section framework.

Above centre: Using colour sample offcuts on clear & etched glass, to show curves & straight lines.

Above right: From straight lines to gentle curves, with colours linking across lead lines.

Above left: Opaque, coloured & enamelled glass with some simple sand blasting.

Above centre: Graduating colour & pattern along the J, sandblasted border on enamelled yellow.

Above right: Off cuts of coloured streaky glass in an effective colour combination.

Above left: Using cast glass chunks and the thinnest possible lead.

Above centre: Patchwork style pieces with a vibrant copper foiled centre.

Above right: To show two styles of scraffito painting with layers of enamel colours in the centre.

Volcano Club Headquarters, Levenshulme

Installation day at Volcano Club HQ, glass always looks brighter reflected in the mirror.

A new front door and surround made the installation of this fanlight an easy job, with pop in plastic beading and two extra pairs of hands to help. The hallway is narrow and we didn’t want to lose much light, so the fanlight is mostly done with transparent enamels and the colours on the vinyl door panels fade off towards the top where they line up with the clear bottom of the fanlight. Of course it doesn’t look clear in the photos as you can always see what’s through the glass and the colours change accordingly. Much of the day was spent waiting for the black and blue cars parked right outside the house to move so I could get a good photo.

Afternoon light and black car through the fanlight and door panels

The design links the windows together with two straight pine trees that peep into the bottom of the fanlight like eyes with sandblasted, therefore very white, brows above them. The colours are the house colours of pink, orange and green with blue for the lake above and to give the illusion of a blue sky when really you are looking at the white inside of the porch.

Details of the vinyl door panels

The textures are just as important as the colours. The rippled side of the glass is on the outside of the door panels, leaving a flat surface to stick the vinyls on to and no need to make any of the colours opaque. The textures on my fanlight glass were so good that I decided to put the decorated side of the glass on surface 4 of the double glazed unit - that is facing in to the interior rather than protected inside the unit (on surface 2) which is the usual practice.

Details from the fanlight: textures made with sandblasting, brushes, rollers and the qualities of the different enamels I used.

In case you’re in doubt, it’s Mount Fuji. There is a selection of Fuji merchadise in the Volcano Club collection, including the crumpled t-shirt, face mask, sweet packet and enamel brooch shown below, next to the hair clip which makes the best use of the distinctive triangle with the white top, which on my glass is clear.

Mount Fuji merchandise

The Parish Church of St Neot, Cornwall

Left: St Neot, south porch. Right: Interior, looking east.

Welcome to our ancient parish church in the village of St Neot, nestling on the southern edge of Bodmin Moor. You have probably come to view our magnificent late medieval stained glass, the most complete set of parish church windows after Fairford in Gloucestershire are the opening words of the church guidebook, which goes on to describe the church as a magnificent example of what can be achieved with intractable granite. Although the visitor is urged to look around at other objects of historical interest, I had eyes only for the glass. Every window is filled with stained glass, not all of it in its original position but all of it heavily restored by John Hedgeland in the 1820s. In my account of the windows I have started in the south east corner with the Creation window then circled clockwise around to Hedgeland’s Last Supper window behind the altar.

Left: South east corner with Creation and Noah windows. Right: Top of Creation window.

Left: Creation window detail, Death of Adam. Right: Bottom of Creation window.

The Creation window retains 95% of its original 1480s glass. In its tracery (above right) is a set of the nine orders of angels, the panels below show the early history of the world from God marking out the sun in the sky with a pair of compasses at top left to God commanding Noah to make the Ark at bottom right. The detail above shows the death of Adam, with his son Seth putting pips from the Tree of Life under his tongue.

It’s obvious that the next window, the story of Noah, has sections by Hedgeland - look at that light blue glass - the tracery lights and most of the scenes in the bottom row are replacements. The Ark, shown in the detail below (c.1480) is a fifteenth century sailing boat with Noah, his wife and pairs of animals inside while the dove and the raven fly away.

Left: Noah window detail, Noah and his wife on the Ark. Right: Noah window.

Row of windows along the south aisle.

It is remarkable that so much of this fifteenth and sixteenth century glass has survived the vandalism that took out a lot of the stained glass in English churches. The suggested reason for this is that most of the windows depict saints chosen by private donors with their families commemorated below, thereby representing local pride and an interest in keeping the windows safe. Those in the south aisle are named for the donor families - Borlase, Martyn, Mutton, Callaway and Tubbe (above). The last two of these windows are not in their original positions, similarly some of the donor panels that would have been on the north side of the church and therefore with the donors facing the altar. A row of these lovely little figures with interesting backgrounds and a request for the saint to pray for them is shown below.

Details of donor panels from the bottom of the south aisle windows.

Left & Centre: details of St George’s window, he is torn with rakes, he is thrown into a cauldron of molten lead. Right: St George’s window.

I’ve missed out a couple of later windows at the west end of the church, before coming to the north west corner with windows depicting the Saints George and Neot in sequences of scenes from their lives. The St George window (above) dated from 1500 to 1510 has episodes in his life not seen elsewhere; in scenes 7 to 11 he is tortured in different ways before being beheaded in the final panel.

Left: North aisle. Right, St Neot window.

Like all the windows in the slightly later north aisle, the St Neot window has a plainer shape with straight tops. The story telling in this glass, dated 1530 and given by the young men of the parish, is wonderfully simple and repetitive, strip cartoon style, with a consistent castellated background. It seems to me the most legible of the windows, with the Hedgeland additions blending in to the colour scheme. The last scene shows St Neot on a visit to Rome being blessed by the Pope, said to be Marinus (882 - 884). There is some confusion about St Neot as the stories about a Cornish hermit and a Saxon saint were mixed together after the Cornish St Neot’s bones were taken to Huntingdonshire following the Saxon conquest of Cornwall, only the right arm remains in the sepulchre in this church.

Lower half of St Neot window. In panels 5 to 8 Neot is lying in bed, his servant Barius cooks fish from the well, then throws them back where they return to life. In panels 9 to 11 a robber steals Neot’s cattle, stags come voluntarily to take their place before the robber repents and returns the stolen oxen.

Row of windows in north aisle.

The next three windows return to the scheme of saints and donors and are named for the donors - Young Women’s, Wives’ and Harry’s. They present a consistent row of ordered proportion and tone, with a series of richly coloured gowns at the bottom of the first two windows and patterned settings for the Harry family in the third.

Details of donor panels from the bottom of the north aisle windows.

Left: Redemption window. Right, detail of Redemption window.

The three last windows in my sequence, Redemption, Acts and the Last Supper were designed by John Hedgeland, the latter based on a German woodcut of 1491 that he found in the British Museum. Redemption and Acts were moved from the south aisle and are now rather hidden behind the organ in the vestry, while the Last Supper window in the chancel has itself been recently restored and includes original glass in the tracery. These are all interesting windows with shapes in the bands of lettering and the canopies and a colour balance that ties them in to the rest of the windows in the church. The painting of the figures is free and lively, the work of the skilled glass painter James Henry Nixon who worked with Benjamin Baillie and John Hedgeland on this complete restoration scheme.

I am indebted to the facsimile copy of a 1937 guide to the windows by G. McN. Rushforth which gives thorough descriptions of each panel and an account of what used to be where that I bought in the church alongside the afore mentioned church guidebook.

Left: North east corner of the church with Acts window. Right: Last Supper window.

Edington Priory and Other Kitchens

Edington Priory Church, Wiltshire.

Being inside Edington Priory Church made me feel as if I were in a town, with different things to see round every corner. It was built from 1352 - 1361 by William of Edington, a local man who became Bishop of Winchester and who spent his money on this wonderful large church. There is a noticeable change of style from the chancel to the slightly later and plainer nave and west end, with periods of embellishment and restoration up to the twentieth century. It has plaster ceilings in three different styles, Jacobean woodwork in the screens, fine monuments and new fittings exquisitely blended in - I’m thinking in particular of the rows of lights below the gorgeous red and white ceiling that look as if they have been sprayed the same colour as the stonework (below right).

Edington Priory Church with monuments and plaster ceilings.

The gorgeous red and white ceiling pattern that is dated 1663 changes to a section of intricate 18th century fan vaulting, and then to a delicate Gothic white pattern in the chancel. Through the carved rood screen, then past a fine Jacobean communion rail in front of the altar, is a blue and gold reredos from the 1930s with figures carved by Christopher Webb (below right) an artist who is better known for his stained glass.

Edington Priory Church; looking through to the reredos with carving of the devotional poet George Herbert holding a mandolin..

Edington Priory Church; the Lady Chapel with 14th century stained glass.

The best stained glass is in the Lady Chapel (above), that is a rare fourteenth century crucifixion window restored in 1971 by the York Glaziers Trust. There are lovely photogenic details in every part of the building, like this small angel (below left) above your head in the chancel, see how the electric cable has also been sprayed stone colour. And being in a Wiltshire church, of course we have one of those kitchens with a sloping wooden cover, squeezed in between the tombs of two medieval knights that were formerly in Imber church and now lie in the south west corner at Edington (below right).

Edington Priory Church; stone angel, kitchen between the tombs of two medieval knights.

Left: St Mary’s Church, Garsington, Oxfordshire. Right: St Mary’s Church, Collingbourne Kingston, Wiltshire.

I last wrote about kitchens in churches on my blog in 2022, since then I’ve found and photographed about twenty more. Here is an update with six of the most extreme examples, starting with the kitchen in the south west corner of Garsington church that is watched over by Lady Ottoline Morrell in a carving by Eric Gill (above left). Only occasionally are the church kitchens hidden away - I know enough by now to guess that the doors seamlessly extending from the panelling of the organ in Collingbourne Kingston church (above right) would have a well equipped one inside including the drying dishcloth that features in many of my photos.

Left: Congleton United Reformed Church, Cheshire. Right: St Mary Magdalene Church, Hullavington, Wiltshire.

Sometimes the catering takes over the space with the monuments and stained glass just filling in the gaps between the sink - always with a dramatic hook shaped tap - the piles of chairs and the folding tables. In one of Europe’s oldest wooden churches at Marton (below right) I particularly enjoyed seeing an old school tea urn in front of a painting of Moses and some lovely fragments of glass in the windows. Best of all was the real play kitchen with the right kind of tap in Christ Church, Eastbourne (below right) that had been brought out for a children’s session as if to parody the whole idea of having a kitchen in a church.

Left: Church of St James & St Paul, Marton, Cheshire. Right: Christ Church, Eastbourne, Sussex.