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.