[4333] All Saints, Nettleham : East Window

All Saints, Nettleham, Lincolnshire.

East Window, 1971.

By John Hayward (1929-2007).

 

John David Hayward (1929-2007) was a stained-glass artist who designed and made nearly 200 windows throughout Britain and abroad. From 1974, he devoted himself to glass, but before that he also designed and made what he called “other things” for church interiors.

 

He was born in Tooting into a Methodist family and was educated at Tooting Bec Grammar School. Later, at St Martin’s School of Art, he was impressed by Seurat and Piero della Francesca, who used the device of figures in a landscape as a language to express ideas. Another intriguing study was images of the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna.

 

Although offered a place at the Royal College of Art, he decided to join Faithcraft, designing church furniture and arranging whole interiors where glass was one important element. He was influenced by the architectural principles of Laurence King and Cachemaille-Day, who were interested in the Liturgical Movement, which was concerned with what churches were for, not what they should look like. In 1961 he became freelance and set up a studio in Bletchingley, close to the headquarters of the Southwark Ordination Course.

 

There was a great demand for artists in the post-war church-building boom, and his first major commission was a scheme of windows for the ruined Wren church St Mary-le-Bow. It was the beginning of 13 years when he worked on glass and “other things”. After 1974, the demand for new church furniture declined, but churches still wanted stained glass, and he created a stream of windows. He always worked alone.

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