View allAll Photos Tagged Window
St Giles, Risby, Suffolk
Risby is a pretty village not far from the A14 and the sprawl of Bury St Edmunds, but to stand on the village green you would not know that either were there. The church is set along the road to Bury in a tight sleeve of a churchyard. It is a long church, the nave and chancel mostly of the late 13th and early 14th Century, so at the very height of the English Decorated period. By way of contrast, the tower is a rugged Norman affair, the solid arcading at the top quite different from that of elegant Little Saxham a couple of miles across the A14.
Back at the start of the 21st Century, St Giles was one of the very last Suffolk churches I ticked off on my first journey around the county, and I had not been back since. Since I have revisited just about every Suffolk church in that time, it means that I have been away from Risby church for longer than just about any other in the county. Back in 2003 it had been the very first church I ever photographed with a digital camera, a strange thought now.
You step into a church which is full of interest, although it seems to be little-known. Risby church has a little of everything. Fortunately, this does not seem to have been a wealthy or populous place in the 19th Century, so the Victorians saw no need to add aisles. Because of their restraint, Risby church has a surviving expanse of wall paintings along the north side of the narrow nave. A couple of features stand out, including Mary Magdalene kneeling to anoint the feet of Christ, and a sombre cleric who is probably St Thomas of Canterbury. An axe head pokes from what might have been a martyrdom scene. A sequence of the life of Christ has faded within living memory.
On the south side of the nave, one window contains four panels of continental glass. The two lower pieces depict Christ healing a lame man and a blind man. The roundels above, although faded, are more interesting. One shows St Hubert's vision of the crucifixion between the antlers of the stag he is hunting, and the other appears to show St Paul debating with Festus before Herod Agrippa.
The medieval glass at Risby survived into the 17th Century, because we have the fascinating detail of a receipt given in May 1644 by the iconoclast John Crow to the Risby churchwardens for the forty shillings fine they had paid for not destroying it as required by the parliamentary ordinance. It seems to have been smashed soon after, but in the 19th Century the wife of the rector, Samuel Alderson, recovered fragments from the churchyard, and these were used in 1850 to create composite figures in the east and south chancel windows. The plaque beside them refers to their restoration in the 1920s. It's not the kind of thing we would do nowadays, but it is very effective. The male figure in the south window has an arrow, so was probably intended as St Edmund, although he is flanked by two As and has part of a banner of St Andrew. The female figure is flanked by two Ms, typical of a Blessed Virgin scene, but she has part of a wheel and was probably intended to look like St Catherine. Both figures have 20th Century heads. In the east window, one figure is made to look like a king and the other a bishop with a 14th Century head. The figure of St John is almost wholly 19th Century apart from the hands, but the angels either side are made up of 15th Century fragments. Perhaps best of all is the Pelican in her Piety towards the bottom, reflecting back the one on the font. She is flanked by a censing angel and an agnus dei.
As with many fonts in the middle of the 16th Century, Risby's was plastered over to hide idolatrous imagery. When the plaster was removed in the 1890s, a beautiful Annunciation scene was revealed, as well as a striking Pelican in her Piety. East of the font is an exquisitely lovely rood screen, tall and narrow, with just three lights each side of the entrance. It is flanked by image niches backed with gold gessowork.
The tower arch is lower than Little Saxham's, but as there another opening sits above it, and was probably the original entrance to the tower, with a ladder which could be drawn up. The view westwards is memorable, the creamy light from the mostly clear windows falling softly over fifteenth century benches, one with a fragment of a 15th Century lady kneeling on its bench end, perhaps a survival of another annunciation scene.
The Victorian bench ends further east are tall and proud, carved in rich profusions of fruit, flowers and foliage, each one different. Mortlock tells us that they were the work of the rector, Samuel Alderson, and it was his successor, Thomas Abraham who oversaw the thankfully restrained restoration in the 1880s. Having paid for this, Abraham not unreasonably had the chancel glass dedicated to earlier members of his family. The best is probably by Clayton & Bell, depicting Miriam and St Cecilia and dedicated to Ellen Abraham who died at Florence in 1880. The Baptism of Christ is a typical work of Kempe & Co. The third, a curious and interesting little panel set in the low side window and depicting the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, seems older, but is possibly by Kempe & Co as well. The firm came back in the 1890s to produce another typical piece depicting St Peter and St Paul for the Wastell family in the nave.
Neat and tidy, "Linwood" is a small Edwardian villa in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon which stands proudly behind its brick fence. It is named after either a little village in Renfrewshire, Scotland, or Lincolnshire, England. As Essendon had a high population of immigrants and first generation Australians around the turn of the Twentieth Century, it would not be inappropriate to assume that the owners who built this villa were Scottish or English, and may have come from Linwood. The name is written in very stylised Art Nouveau script on a brass cartouche set in midway up the street facing facade to the right of the bay window.
Built around the turn of the Twentieth Century, this small villa has been built in the Queen Anne style, which was mostly a residential style inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement in England, but also encompassed some of the more stylised elements of Art Nouveau, which gave it an more decorative look. The red brick from which the villa is built is in keeping with the Arts and Crafts movement, as is the choice of terracotta tiling. Yet the stylised fretwork of the enclosed verandah, the terracotta finial atop the villa's front gable and the stained glass windows are Art Nouveau in design.
Queen Anne style was most popular around the time of Federation. With complex roofline structures and undulating facades, many Queen Anne houses fell out of fashion at the beginning of the modern era, and were demolished.
Essendon was established in the 1860s and became an area of affluence and therefore only had middle-class, upper middle-class and some very wealthy citizens. Smaller than other houses in the area, this villa was built for an aspiring middle-class family. This villa would have required only the assistance of a live-in domestic and perhaps the enlisted service of a "daily" woman to maintain it.
East window in All Saints at Lullington, Derbyshire. A magnificent example of the work of the renowned Belgian Studio of J.B.Capronnier 1862.
This was a complete surprise to me, and the real treasure of this church. The medallions show various scenes from the Old & New Testaments and are superbly executed, much use being made of enamels to get the flesh tints for the beautifully detailed figures.
Sadly most of my pictures of individual scenes did not come out well, the light being poor; I could have done with a tripod and didn't want to delay the keyholder further by getting closer and more engrossed in the glass.
St Ann, Manchester, 1709-12.
Memorial Window to the Rt Rev James Fraser (1818-1885), Bishop of Manchester 1870-85.
Designed by Frederic James Shields (1833-1911).
Made by Heaton Butler & Bayne, 1889.
Detail.
Clement Heaton (1824-1882).
James Butler (1830-1913).
Robert Turnill Bayne (1837-1915).
Clement Heaton, the son of a Methodist minister in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, was in 1851 a glass painter for William Holland of Warwick. He was in London by 1853 and briefly in business alone before going into partnership with James Butler in 1855. Around 1860 the two briefly shared premises with Clayton and Bell, an association of lasting importance, as the third member of the firm, Robert Turnill Bayne, who was also from Warwick and became chief designer in 1862, was an employee of theirs. Heaton pioneered the use of softer colours, but Bayne’s advent brought the firm to widespread attention. Most of their earlier glass was gothic in style, but the firm adapted to later influences, notably that of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The firm was used widely by Sir Arthur Blomfield, but in later years less of its output was glass for churches. Heaton’s son Clement John joined for a short time, but fell out with his partners. The firm continued until 1953 under descendants of other partners, after which most of its archives were destroyed for lack of interest.
Amongst other important commissions, Frederic Shields designed the windows in the Chancel of St Ann's Church, Manchester. He drew out a complete scheme for the church's stained glass based upon the theme of a Shepherd. The east windows behind the altar and the north and south aisles all have this theme, and were the work of Heaton, Butler & Bayne.
.
Thursday, April 5 2012
+1 in comments.
This is one of many broken windows on this old barn, I absolutely love it.
Buying Warped Tour tickets today wooo
Great set of windows in the Christ Episcopal Church in Middletown, New Jersey. Lovely historical building with a very old cemetery.