Withcote Chapel
Withcote Chapel is a place I'd wanted to visit for many years and finally getting to see it for myself was no disappointment!
This small Tudor building was originally built in the 1530s as the private chapel of the adjoining manor, but later served as the parish church of Withcote, though with so few living in the parish it has long ceased in this role and is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust.
It is a simple late medieval single-chambered structure, battlemented and pinnacled ironstone without, light and plastered within, in fact the interior feels as though it belongs to an entirely different era altogether, having been remodelled in 1744 in Georgian fashion, whitewashed under a flat plaster ceiling with wooden panelling and reredos.
However, it is the glass for which Withcote is justly famed, of the four windows on each side three retain the bulk of their original Renaissance stained glass, six windows in all making this one of the last and most complete surviving schemes of 16th century church glass in the country (so late in fact its manufacture and execution probably coincided with the Reformation rather than predated it).
The glass is believed to have been made in 1536-7 under the direction of king's glazier Galyon Hone, one of a group of artists of Flemish origin whose advanced Renaissance style brought them royal patronage and were based in Southwark (to avoid conflict with indigenous glaziers in the City). Hone is better known for his work on the great windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
Originally the scheme depicted twelve prophets on the south side balanced by the twelve Apostles to the north; eighteen of the original twenty-four figures remain in varying degrees of preservation but many are more or less complete (only the two westernmost windows are devoid of figurative glass). At the top of each light is a display of Tudor heraldry surrounded by rich Renaissance ornament.
Withcote Chapel is a delight, a little gem of a building hidden away in the Leicestershire countryside filled with splendid 16th century glass. It isn't an easy place to find but will greatly reward the effort to do so and is normally open to visitors daily.
Withcote Chapel
Withcote Chapel is a place I'd wanted to visit for many years and finally getting to see it for myself was no disappointment!
This small Tudor building was originally built in the 1530s as the private chapel of the adjoining manor, but later served as the parish church of Withcote, though with so few living in the parish it has long ceased in this role and is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust.
It is a simple late medieval single-chambered structure, battlemented and pinnacled ironstone without, light and plastered within, in fact the interior feels as though it belongs to an entirely different era altogether, having been remodelled in 1744 in Georgian fashion, whitewashed under a flat plaster ceiling with wooden panelling and reredos.
However, it is the glass for which Withcote is justly famed, of the four windows on each side three retain the bulk of their original Renaissance stained glass, six windows in all making this one of the last and most complete surviving schemes of 16th century church glass in the country (so late in fact its manufacture and execution probably coincided with the Reformation rather than predated it).
The glass is believed to have been made in 1536-7 under the direction of king's glazier Galyon Hone, one of a group of artists of Flemish origin whose advanced Renaissance style brought them royal patronage and were based in Southwark (to avoid conflict with indigenous glaziers in the City). Hone is better known for his work on the great windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
Originally the scheme depicted twelve prophets on the south side balanced by the twelve Apostles to the north; eighteen of the original twenty-four figures remain in varying degrees of preservation but many are more or less complete (only the two westernmost windows are devoid of figurative glass). At the top of each light is a display of Tudor heraldry surrounded by rich Renaissance ornament.
Withcote Chapel is a delight, a little gem of a building hidden away in the Leicestershire countryside filled with splendid 16th century glass. It isn't an easy place to find but will greatly reward the effort to do so and is normally open to visitors daily.