[115186] St Helena, Willoughby : Captain John Smith Window

St Helena, Willoughby, Lincolnshire.

Window commemorating Captain John Smith (1579-1631).

By Francis Skeat (1909-2000), c1974.

John the son of George Smith was baptized here the 9th of January 1580.

Detail.

 

Captain John Smith is regarded as one of the country’’s most famous explorers. The son of an ordinary yeoman farmer, Smith had great ambition and courage and rose through the ranks of English society to become the Captain of Cavalry with his own coat of arms – the mark of a ‘gentleman’.

 

In 1607 Captain John Smith became an important leader of the first permanent settlement in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia. He ensured his survival by building a relationship with Virginian Indians – one of whom was the legendary Pocahontas, who saved Smith’s live when he was due to be executed by her father.

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Francis Walter Skeat was born in St Albans in 1909. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters, and a member of the Art Workers Guild

 

At the age of eighteen, he was apprenticed to Harry Scott Bridgwater who was a leading mezzotint engraver. Skeat was a follower of Sir John Ninian Comper and, after exhibiting at the Paris salon in 1932, he returned to St Albans in 1933. In 1934, he became a pupil of Christopher Webb, who had a studio in St Albans. Webb encouraged him to work in stained glass. He later worked for Mowbray & Co in Oxford and for J Wippell & Co in Exeter. He also designed glass for Barton, Kinder & Alderson.

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