The Garden Museum

Courtyard of The Garden Museum with view of east window. Interior view of east window with bottom half of the figures obscured by interior wall, glass by Francis Stephens (1953).

The Garden Museum in St Mary’s Church, Lambeth was the world’s first museum dedicated to the history of gardens and gardening. Due to changing population in the area the church was made redundant in 1972 and condemned for demolition, this was only fourteen years after the installation of a series of windows (made from 1953 - 58) by Francis Stephens that replaced the ones destroyed in the blitz.

The churchyard contains the tomb of John Tradescant and his son John who were gardeners, plant collectors and creators of their own public botanical garden in Lambeth in the 1620s. Building on this legacy, Rosemary and John Nicholson saved the building from demolition and established the Tradescant Trust, opening the church as The Museum of Gardening History in 1977. Since then it has undergone a complete transformation inside and outside, with new gardens by Christopher Bradley-Hole and Dan Pearson and an interior remodelled by the architects Dow Jones in 2008 and 2015.

Interior of The Garden Museum looking west. Exterior view of west window by Francis Stephens.

The remodelled interior keeps a central space for events (above left), with a separate exhibition gallery and a display space on a mezzanine level that wraps inside the outer walls without touching them. The clear glass windows are visible to let in daylight, but nearly all the stained glass is partly obscured. I went outside to see Francis Stephen’s west window from 1958 (above right), drawn by the top of two globes just visible above the gallery walls. These illustrate Stephen’s interest in missionary work but also hint at the world wide travels of the Tradescants.

The only stained glass that you can really see is in the baptistry at the museum’s entrance, although a carved stone has been put at its base (below left). Above is a scene showing the apostles at Pentecost, below are rituals of the church across different lands: the detail shows a confirmation and a baptism scene with the people drawn in a style that I remember from picture books of that period depicting ‘children around the world’.

Baptistry window by Francis Stephens (1957) and detail.

Stained glass windows often get blocked off or moved, particularly as tastes change or the subject matter is irrelevant to the new use of a building - so fair enough with the treatment of these 1950s Francis Stephens windows. But there was a window commissioned by Rosemary Nicholson in 1981 for the new museum - The Tradescant Window by the great stained glass artist Lawrence Lee - that nobody thought was worth highlighting in the latest remodelling of the Garden Museum. It is behind the wall of the exhibition gallery in the north west corner of the church, so when you get up on the mezzanine level you can look at the top tracery and down the length of the window - a hopeless view as you can see in the photo below left. There’s not even a sign acknowledging the window or its maker.

The Tradescant window by Lawrence Lee (1981). Left: looking down. Right: kneeling down in front of a display case and looking through a glass balustrade to the centre of the window.

I read that it was one of Lee’s favourite windows - it does look wonderful and it’s a treat to get up to the top tracery and see the plants close up including a red columbine (bottom right) and the three petalled flowers of the plant tradescantia around the initials JJT for father and son. Lee wrote about the window: The central circle is the world as seen from outer space – a symbol of a world-wide interest in plants promoted by the Tradescants …. The square area below is a symbol of order and may also be thought of as an enclosed garden …. Though these elements are the main subject matter of the window, the spectator should first see it as an evocation of nature through colour and design, and not be too concerned with literal explanations. This is something I always like to hear!

I was particularly interested in the way that Lee used the central mullion as a part of the design, with the tree stems growing alongside it, and the branches higher up organically crossing the tracery shapes. I’m amazed that this window wasn’t used as a centre piece of the museum, but it’s still there and I hope that the walls around it will come down one day.

Above and below: details in the tracery from The Tradescant window.

The Appreciation of Stained Glass

On a beautiful day in Dorset, here I am in front of a cricket pitch on my way into Milton Abbey to appreciate some stained glass. Once inside, the abbey opens into a magnificent tall transept. On the north side is a monument to the Damers underneath a heraldic window bordered by roses and on the south side a huge tree of Jesse window designed by AWN Pugin and made by Hardmans, in typically vivid colours.

Left, south transept window above monument to Joseph & Caroline Damer. Right, Tree of Jesse window by Pugin, 1847.

However, I was not in Milton Abbas for the abbey but rather to see a Lawrence Lee window in St James Church in the famous landscaped village street. I’ve never knowingly seen a Lee window, but he wrote a book “The Appreciation of Stained Glass” which was one in the series on the appreciation of the arts published by the Oxford University Press. That was in 1977, the year that I went to the Central School of Art to do my Foundation Course and to learn how to make stained glass properly - in preparation I read Lee’s book thoroughly. Re reading it now I can see where I picked up many of my stained glass dos and don’ts based on the study of church windows - in particular lots of don’ts and harsh opinions on celebrated twentieth century windows.

Left, in front of the 1970 Lee window (I usually need a chair for taking photos). Right, the top of the window

I particularly like his chapter on (glass) painting which is one of the few to show an example of his own work, a distinctive head of St. Columba. Just from those few images I would have recognised these figures anywhere, and I’ve concluded that it’s his figures I particularly like, when usually it’s the figures in a window that I hate. These, St Catherine and the Virgin Mary shown below, remind me of inky black and white book illustration of the same period. Here is a passage from the painting chapter that is good to bear in mind when on these church visiting trips :

“The argument will always go on between those who make and those who talk about what is made - and it is very useful to both parties that it should be so. I believe, however, that in the context of this Appreciation of the Arts Series we ought to instruct ourselves to look, filtering out as far as possible any purely mental questions about dates, styles, authenticities and so on (all that is fun afterwards), so that appreciation becomes an impulsion of our physical self toward’s the artists work. We must literally pick up from the very point at which the glass painter’s brush left the glass, seeing what he saw as he laid it aside for firing.”

Lawrence Lee details - left, St Catherine and right, The Virgin and child.

Tom Denny window, St Mary, Tarrant Hinton 2000

Our route home went through Tarrant Hinton, so we made a stop to see a Tom Denny window. I have seen so much of his work recently that it’s beginning to grow on me - the leading patterns so particular that you can spot one in a church even when driving past. The presence of this small window, on a Dorset landscape theme, is huge with an overall golden glow. Here are some wise words from Denny:

“Colour is the most immediate thing about glass; most of your problems are solved if the colour is right for the place. Although I don’t aim to make glass look as if it were made hundreds of years ago, a happy by-product of the way I work - etching, plating and staining - not only enriches the surface, but creates a visual fragility equivalent to old glass.” From an interview with Tom Denny in Contemporary Stained Glass Artists by Kate Baden Fuller, A & C Black 2006.

I forgot to take the outside of the Tarrant Hinton window, so I’ve shown one in Leicester (below) from inside and out. You can see the irregular look of the lead pattern, and also the way that he draws his figures (animals in the Dorset window) as if they are knitted in to the backgrounds. That part of his work hasn’t grown on me yet, perhaps it’s the hardest thing to do well.

One of two Tom Denny 2016 windows in Leicester Cathedral from the inside and the outside.