angels

Drayton and Yarnton, Oxfordshire / November 27, 2021 by Sasha Ward

When we decorated our cellar Ray set some of his relief plaster panels, made about twenty years ago, into the walls. It may not be obvious why from the photo above, but I like to think of the link these have to altar pieces, particularly those carved in Nottingham alabaster from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. We went to St. Peter’s church in Drayton, Oxfordshire to see a set of particularly fine examples of the genre which had survived because they were buried for safety and rediscovered when a vault was dug out in 1814.

Fifteenth century altar piece in St Peter’s church, Drayton, Oxfordshire

There are six scenes crowded with dynamic figures, heads, animals and angels. The panels, some with missing sections, are about 40 cms. tall with traces of paint visible and are mounted in the wall behind an altar. I was so captivated that I couldn’t really be bothered with the (nineteenth and twentieth century) stained glass in the church, but we did find a guide book that told us about a similar Nottingham alabaster altar piece in St. Bartholomew’s at Yarnton, only 15 miles away - a church I knew by name but couldn’t remember why.

The two end panels of the Drayton altar piece

Fifteenth century altar piece in St Bartholomew’s church, Yarnton, Oxfordshire

This altar piece (above) with two of the six panels missing, proved much less exciting than the Drayton one mainly because of the way that the panels are mounted, surrounded by heavy stone, and lit with a dim yellow light. However, every window in the church is filled with fragments of the most fantastic medieval english and continental stained glass, most of it given by alderman William Fletcher, Mayor of Oxford, in 1813. We stayed for a long time, admiring the details and the style of the figures so in keeping with the altar piece; I was delighted not to have my medieval reverie interrupted by any more modern glass here.

Yarnton church: East window (above the Nottingham alabaster altar piece) mainly English C15th and detail.

Two more depictions of the virgin and child (with other painted fragments) in the north windows of Yarnton church.

Details from the north west window of Yarnton church.

Left, The only C15th pieces that are in their original position in the top tracery, north window. Right, Head and birds in the sanctuary window, Yarnton.

To me, the most exciting windows are the reset angels in deep alcoves, lit by sunshine in the south west corner of the church (below). The windows are small enough for the mainly fifteenth century pieces to make a complete picture in each one, with some pattern, some objects ( a wheel or a surveillance camera, a football or a flower?) some border pieces, some incongruous bird and animal segments, fritillaries and bluebells. The faces that loom out of the bottom of the right hand window (bottom picture) have a particular other worldly quality - there is nothing in the centuries of stained glass painting that I would rather see.

Angel windows in the south wall of Yarnton church.

The two angel windows in Yarnton church.

Details of painted glass in the bottom of the left hand angel window

Detail from the bottom of right hand angel window

Finding Details / October 17, 2019 by Sasha Ward

People are always telling me that their favourite church windows are the simple leaded lights in pale coloured glass that allow you to see the world outside. In St Mary, Warwick, most of the aisle windows are of this type (above) showing off some great shapes in the tracery. However there is one window in the regimental chapel that is filled with light fresh colours in the upper part and delicate local details in the lower (below) where rows of soldiers march across the panes. As a lover of skilled glass painting, I always look out for a good bit of detail, then get drawn into an appreciation of the whole window in terms of colour and composition, and after that I think about the subject matter and what it means.

Regimental chapel windows, St Mary, Warwick by Philip Chatwin 1952.

The main visit of the day was to the beautiful church at Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire, which has a superb collection of windows by Morris & Co from different periods and with panels by most of the artists associated with the firm. By all accounts the best is the west window (below), although it’s difficult to get close enough and to see past a huge sign partly covering the bottom of the three princes in the fiery furnace. The fiery flames around the Burne-Jones figures are what drew me in here, then I appreciated the overall glow of the predominantly brown painting (so difficult to persuade clients they want a brown window but so good to see!) and only then did I think about the subject matter.

West window, All Saints, Middleton Cheney, Edward Burne-Jones 1870.

In fact the best subject matter was only revealed by the camera’s zoom lens, where I saw that the shadowy angels are sharp and delicate figures holding globes showing the first days of the creation, a classic Burne-Jones device. The backgrounds to the figures, which are painted on large pieces of glass in brown iron oxide and silver stain, are not clear but covered in a scaley pattern that modulates the incoming light.

Row of creation windows from the centre of the west window, Middleton Cheney.

The east window (below) includes details designed by William Morris, Philip Webb, Ford Madox Brown, Simeon Soloman and Edward Burne-Jones. The overall design of this window is striking and subtle in a different way, with the usual gorgeous backgrounds, familiar figures (such as WM posing as St Peter) and angels in the tracery. The detail I picked out is at the top where Burne-Jones’ brown and yellow crowned heads make a wonderful patterned ring around a piece of rich dark red glass with the adored lamb on top.

East window, All Saints, Middleton Cheney by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. 1865.

There are a pair of windows in the chancel (below) where you can get close and really appreciate the quality of Burne-Jones’ stained glass figures . These are from a later period and show scenes from the life of Christ. The one that caught my eye again uses the most sombre colour scheme, with the white robes of Lazarus standing out from a rocky background, all beautifully painted with contour lines and shading.

North chancel window, All Saints, Middleton Cheney, with details by Burne-Jones 1892.

East window, St Peters, Barford by Holland of Warwick 1845.

Last stop of the day and another example of rows of figures in the church in the Warwickshire village of Barford. The east window (above) is in a colour scheme typical of its period and overwhelming as a whole. But when you break down the colour combination, and repeat it in different variations along the row of angels at the bottom of the window it begins to work, with the patterns and symbols linking the glass pieces together and with a slightly different expression on the face of each angel.

Angels from the bottom of the Barford window

From Glass to Needlework / April 10, 2019 by Sasha Ward

Window of the risen Christ and detail showing the little gold head, John Hayward, 1968.

There’s lots of good twentieth century stained glass in the Church of St Mary and St Bartholomew, Hampton in Arden in the West Midlands. The window shown here is by John Hayward - with the unmistakable figures in profile, some hidden in backgrounds made of crisscross lines on blocks of colour. As usual, I prefer the details and the minor characters, for example the little gold head under Christ’s arm, to the overall composition. But the window looks great in its setting (below) with a wonderful bit of coordinated interior decor (how un church like!) in the embroidered cushions on the long bench leading up to the window.

View of the church interior, looking east from the entrance door, showing long bench on the south wall.

There is an impressive information booklet that goes with the needlework, such as you never get for a stained glass window. Not only subject matter - “it depicts the risen Christ, holding aloft the flag, with his angels going out to bring the light of the resurrection to the souls of the departed” - but also details on the design and manufacture, with acknowledgements not only to the donors but also to the frame maker, design tracer, upholsterer and suppliers of the materials (John Cordwell, Robin Watkin, Parkes of Earlsdon and stitches of Solihull). The village needlewomen tell us they made a panel each and the project lasted from 2002-5 (!!!). They write “We were once again privileged to have the inspiration of the Reverend John de Wit, our priest in charge 1994 - 2004, for the design. It was decided that this should link with the window and thus bring the while concept into the body of the church….. One of the challenges has been to maintain the continuity of the designs because they flow from one panel to another and this had to be so exact for the joining of the sections” The concept and the linear version of the design works really well, although inevitably the bench was covered with leaflets and boxes when I was there.

Glass angel by John Hayward, needlepoint angel by Janet Hardcastle

It is interesting to compare the stained glass angels to the needlepoint ones, the hand positions show you which is which. More from the booklet “The canvas on which we worked uses ten stitches to the inch, which made the depiction of the details very taxing. For instance, one stitch in the face of an angel can make a huge difference to the expression!”

Needlepoint angels by Marjorie Iles and Janet Griffiths

Victorian Medieval / September 15, 2016 by Sasha Ward

Rosalind Grimshaw window in Urchfont church, 2000.

I visited St. Michael and All Angels church in Urchfont because my excellent guidebook from Wiltshire Historic Churches Trust mentioned a millennium window there by Rosalind Grimshaw. It's a small window but really expressive with good colour and glass. The whole church is lovely and its stained glass rich and varied. The patterned windows on the south side look great from both inside and out - with columns of big satisfying circles - until you think what wonderful medieval glass might have been there originally.

Victorian patterned windows on the south side

This set us thinking about how to answer the question (of the frequently asked variety), why is medieval stained glass the best? It's too dangerous to mention the quality of the glass itself, because that leads people to believe the myth that you can't get good glass anymore, although when you look at the angel detail from the large south window you can see how harsh and brittle looking the coloured glass is in these particular Victorian windows.

Moving down into the chancel, the angels at the tops of the windows become more interesting, and older. The pair on either side of the altar (below), six winged seraphim holding crowns, are beautiful - with a captivating expression that is so obviously medieval.

The information in the church describes, as usual, the stained glass as either "medieval", "victorian" or "modern", with the sub group of "imitation medieval" for the beautifully coloured patterned windows underneath the seraphim (below right). This convention of copying the medieval window style is the reason why they could never be as good as the originals. Those seraphim were made by people who believed in the work they were doing. The sincerity comes across in the expression of the figures, while the style and workmanship of the windows perfectly compliments the medieval building for which they were made.

Face of the seraph: window on north side of chancel - chancel built around 1340

Click on any of the photos to enlarge them

Cirencester Angels / March 25, 2015 by Sasha Ward

I don't know much about angelology and there's so much to learn. I've been visiting and taking photographs of the windows in Cirencester Parish Church; in many of the top lights there are yellow stained glass angels from various periods which are interesting to compare.

Trinity Chapel - two of four windows                                          Click on any of these pictures to enlarge. — Trinity Chapel - two of four windows Click on any of these pictures to enlarge.

In my opinion, the medieval angels are easily the best and I have read that the glass in Cirencester once rivalled the famous early sixteenth century windows of nearby Fairford. Two different guides told me with great relish that most of the medieval windows here were deliberately broken by the "women of Cirencester" as they tried to get supplies to the soldiers holed up inside the church during the Civil War.

The most fantastic angels are the seraphim with peacock feather wings, below right, all the better in my eyes for the breaks and random insertions. They are also the favourite of W.T. Beeby writing for The Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society in 1916.

"Their wings, six in number, cover the greater portion of their body, and are wonderfully feathered, with many eyes as of peacock's feathers, and the yellow stain used in the designs is very clear and brilliant. Mr. James Powell, of Whitefriars, than whom there could have been no better judge, thought the colouring of these seraphim as beautiful as any he had seen. They furnish an excellent instance of the brilliance and vivacity of good fifteenth century glass".

Trinity Chapel - details of medieval angels                                 Lady Chapel - Seraphim with peacock feather wings — Trinity Chapel - details of medieval angels Lady Chapel - Seraphim with peacock feather wings

North aisle, west window - Victorian glass by Hardman                                                      De… — North aisle, west window - Victorian glass by Hardman Details

South window - Victorian glass by Hardman                                                        &n… — South window - Victorian glass by Hardman Detail

The yellow angels theme was continued in the top tracery lights in a number of Hardman windows, two examples are shown above. These angels standing on wheels puts them in the third ranking Order of Angels, two ranks below the seraphim.

The guides in the church, the same ones who slandered the women of Cirencester, have all told me that the Hugh Easton window (below) is their favourite. Surely it's not because of these military yellow angels with the boring clear backgrounds, maybe it's the rest of the window which I haven't shown because the point of this piece is to look up at the intricate shapes in the tracery and marvel at the ingenious ways that angels have been fitted in to them.