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.

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.

Georges and Dragons

Left, late fifteenth century St George in St George’s Church, Kelmscott. Right, St George by Veronica Whall 1928 in Christ Church Eastbourne,

Over the years I’ve been collecting St George windows, a saint easy to identify from the red cross that is his emblem, his suit of armour and the dragon that always appears at his feet. In the more dynamic versions he is spearing the dragon from his horse, the similarities of the pose in versions made almost 500 years apart, shown above, are striking.

Left, St George by Jones & Willis 1905 in St George, Orcheston. Centre, St George by Morris and Co. 1860s in St Nicholas Beaudesert, Henley in Arden. Right, St George by Theodora Salusbury c. 1920 in All Saints, Newton Linford.

More often he is standing more or less on the dragon, holding a shield and a spear. What really interests me are the dragons which are always at the bottom of the windows and therefore easy to examine and photograph. In every example I have from the 1860s to the 1930s (above and below) the dragon is made of luscious streaky glass in a range of rich colours, purples, pinks, greens and blues. They are lovely but confusing pictorially as the deep colours jump forward, even when the dragon is in the background.

Left, dragon by C.E. Kempe in St David 1898, Moreton in Marsh. Right, dragon by Morris of Westminster 1930 in St Barnabas, Swindon.

Left, dragon by Aldam, Heaton & Co. in St Michael and All Angels, Brinkworth. Right, dragon in St Oswald, Lythe.

Some of the loveliest dragons are at the feet of the Archangel Michael instead. In the two examples above their long jaws and scales show up better on paler streaky glass, and in the two examples below (left and middle) you know it’s St Michael not from the inscription but from his wings. In one of my favourite sets of local windows there is a beautiful dragon made of red flashed glass at the feet of St Margaret (below right).

Left, St Michael in St John the Baptist, Kingston Lisle by Heaton, Butler and Bayne 1911. Centre, St Michael by Powell & Sons 1919 in St Michael, Highworth. Right, St Margaret by Heaton, Butler and Bayne in St Nicholas, Grafton 1888.

There is a really effective window of St Michael in one of the large, beautiful arched windows of Romsey Abbey (below). The lighting in the alcove made it difficult to get a good photograph of the glass, which is delicately coloured and dynamic with a swirl of feathers and banners as the blue and green streaky dragon gets speared.

St Michael by C.E. Kempe 1897 in Romsey Abbey.