Church Camping

Inside St Cuthbert’s church, Holmes Lacy, Herefordshire.

Church camping, otherwise known as champing, is an initiative by The Churches Conservation Trust where you can book to stay in one of the churches that they care for. We chose to champ in St. Cuthbert’s, Holme Lacy, in a bend on the river Wye near Hereford, a large church with magnificent marble monuments and a notable window by Henry Payne. You can see our sitting room above, half way along the south aisle, and our bedroom in the north aisle in front of a wooden screen and with a great view of the monuments and the aforementioned notable window.

Left: Monument to James Scudamore who died in 1668. Right: Tomb of Sibell and John Scudamore who died in 1571 with Henry Payne window in the background.

You’re not supposed to drag the camp beds around the church, otherwise I would have been tempted to sleep in the chancel with the Scudamores (above). It was fascinating to see these monuments and windows over a whole night and day as the light moved around the space which was light enough in the daytime (with no artificial lighting) and perfectly dark at night. We went to sleep and woke up discussing the mysterious Payne window (below), which shows the Archangel Michael with the scales of judgement, weighing souls.

East window by Henry Payne c.1920 and detail of right hand panel.

Detail of the Henry Payne window showing the weighing of souls.

There are some gorgeous details, particularly the tiny figures in the scales and in the angel’s drapery (above), but the design of the window is confusing. The angels seem to be jostling unnecessarily for space, with great big overlapping wings and behind, rising feet and heads popping up in unexpected places. The main problem is how dark the window appeared, there is a whole bank of trees in the churchyard outside blocking the early morning light.

In the north wall between our bedroom and the chancel is a great example of a medieval fragment window (below). Here you can also find gorgeous details, with heads and hands appearing unexpectedly. As we sat on our chairs in the evening with the light fading all around us, this one still glowed - its patchwork of colours and painted details perfectly illuminated as the stained glass windows along the east and south walls lost their colour to the darkness.

North chancel window made of fragments of medieval glass and detail.

Trees in stained glass

In this commission, finished but not yet installed, I have linked the glass door panels with the fanlight above by using a vertical design, based on trees. These are not trees with bare branches like the ones I’ve written about on a previous blog Drawing Branches. They are lollipop style decorative trees with clumps of leaves placed where the layout and balance of the design dictates.

The tree sections of door panels and stained glass fanlight photographed on my light box.

Rather than nature, I’ve drawn on historical stained glass as a guide. Not just the trees in medieval glass at, for example, Canterbury Cathedral (below left), but more particularly the trees you see in the backgrounds of Clayton and Bell windows (below right) with a jumble of different painted leaf forms making up the clumps.

Left: Adam Delving, Canterbury Cathedral c.1176. Right: Clayton & bell window from Sts. Peter & Paul, Wantage 1870s.

My trees have clumps made of four different patterns (below). The two on the left are not particularly like leaves, while the other two patterns each come in three different versions created with sandblasting, stencilling, scrafitto and painting. The client didn’t want any colour in the front door, instead there is tone, translucency and overlaps created by using both layers of glass in the double glazed units.

The four leaf patterns.

Decommissioned

I made this work for The University of Winchester in 2000, when it was known as King Alfred’s College. The architects Feilden Clegg had designed a three storey staircase fin for the library’s new extension that was clad in glass panels, a total of 156 panels covering an area of 52 square metres. I hadn’t been back to see the work in the intervening twenty three years, but knew it was one of my best commissions as I remember the moment when the first panel was screwed to the framework at the bottom of the staircase, it looked great and I knew the whole thing would work. The head of estates at the college wrote at the time,

“Thank you very much for your recent visit to the College in completing your amazing work of art. We all love it, and I’m delighted to report that amongst a community of 5000 students and staff I’ve yet to hear one negative comment!”

Staircase fin at The Martial Rose Library, University of Winchester

Above and below: photographs from my recent visit. Some of the lights aren’t working and there is some dust inside, but otherwise the glass looks absolutely great - properly intergrated into the architecture and with beautiful colours, textures and details in the enamel. It was fabricated, like a lot of my work from that period, at Proto Studios, but all the framework, fittings and lighting were designed by the architects.

The recent visit however was rather depressing. The library is having an overhaul and the central staircase is being retired, with the glass going into storage. Against my better judgement I wrote to complain - the decision had already been made on technical rather than aesthetic grounds with no chance of it being overturned. This sort of thing has happened to quite a few of my commissions, I don’t mind some of them going but this one was really good! When I told people the sad story on twitter and instagram I received very supportive comments ranging from shock and outrage to resignation and a more philosophical approach which I think is the right way to go - this is from a fellow stained glass artist,

“I am sorry for you Sasha. It's lovely and thus such a waste, but it's a problem we all have to face. The art is in the dedication of the making.”

Collage design for the commission.

What I do have is the final artwork for the piece, in the form of a collage (above). In fact I have a well organised paper file that includes details, sketches and photographs of all of my commissioned works, and a separate portfolio for my best drawings and designs which is a very cheering thought.

Arts Together

I planned a project for Arts Together, a charity that brings together professional artists and older people for weekly art workshops across Wiltshire. The focus was on glass painting and the aim was for each person to have their own stained glass panel at the end without them having to do any glass cutting, leading or soldering for which you need more than the average older person’s strength.

Twelve completed stained glass panels by members of the Pewsey group run by Arts Together.

As you can see from the completed panels (above), they turned out to be varied and original, reflecting the preferences and interests of each member. In week one participants removed the paint, scraffito style, with sticks, brushes and cotton buds and no real idea how the glass would look after firing, even more so in week two when they added enamels that become transparent when fired. This made the work experimental as did the fact that this was a new project and I had no examples to show, therefore nothing for people to copy - I love it when people draw from something in their head rather than from something on their phone.

The stages over the five week period are shown in the photos below.

Week one: scraffito on pieces of glass covered with black iron oxide paint. Carol, Norman, Liz.

Weeks two & three: add enamel paint, start painting borders. Centre shows glass before firing in my kiln. Cis, Janet.

Weeks three & four: (above and below) paint borders, choose coloured glass to add in. Vanessa, Helena, Helena.

Between weeks four & five I leaded and soldered each panel. Derek, Ruth, Ruth.

Week five: (no pictures as we were too busy) cementing.

Oxfordshire South ex Berkshire

Left, Oxfordshire now. Right, Oxfordshire then.

There is a corner of Oxfordshire bordered on its north and east edges by the River Thames that used to be Berkshire (as shown in the maps above) and that leads to confusion when using old guidebooks to local churches. Here are three in that area, all with great stained glass windows.

All Saints, North Moreton. The St Nicholas Window in Stapleton’s Chantry Chapel.

All Saints church in North Moreton has a complete window, the St Nicholas Window, of early fourteenth century glass in a beautiful and highly crafted chantry chapel built in 1299 at the behest of the Lord of the manor Miles de Stapleton. The top tracery of the window is interesting, being a very early example of a fishscale design, its glass is heraldic with yellow stars. The window is complete because it was effectively restored under the guidance of Charles Winston in the 1850s. Many of the heads had been vandalised and the pieces of glass that were inserted are obvious to spot but not intrusive, their muted colours were given a milky surface so they don’t jump out. You can see this approach on the empty shields in the top tracery and the scenes from the lives of Saints Nicholas and Paul (above centre). There are many marvellous parts of original glass painting, such as the miraculous draught of fishes at the bottom of the second column which illustrates scenes from the life of St Peter (above right).

Medieval glass is still in place in windows in the north and south aisles too, with a St Christopher (below left) a delicately painted crucifixion (below centre) and a grisaille cross (below right) in the kitchen area that’s right behind the south door.

North Moreton, medieval stained glass in the aisles and the kitchen.

St Andrew’s, East Hagbourne, 14th Century glass in the north aisle, and fragment windows.

The fourteenth century glass in St Andrew’s Church, East Hagbourne consists of two scenes, a nativity and a virgin and child (above left), and other fragments reset in to the tracery in combination with some really bright colours. The brightest and best on the north east corner is hidden away behind a curtain in the vestry (above right).

This church has a light but rich atmosphere, with yellowish windows in the other two east windows. I was particularly taken with the pierced screen at the bottom of the Perpendicular east window (below centre) and with the Lady Chapel where everything is well considered and harmonious. The stained glass is by Burlison and Grylls from 1939.

East Hagbourne, east window and detail, east window in the Lady Chapel.

St James, Radley. North aisle window, west window.

We went to is St James’, Radley mainly to see the four tree trunks that act as columns in the south aisle. It’s a small church and as extraordinary as it sounds with dark wood all around and a domestic feel emphasised, when we were there, by the sound of a ticking clock. The stained glass glows from every window, with arms and crowns on backgrounds of silver stained quarries. There are some older sections of glass, for example the angel between two royal coats-of-arms (above left) and the sixteenth century portrait of Henry VII up in the bell tower (above centre and right). But most of the glass is either very restored or else supplemented very skillfully by Thomas Willement in the 1840s.

The hand of the skillful rearranger of glass was evident in all three churches and a different approach was taken in each one. I normally go guidebookless so as not to get too annoyed by inaccurate descriptions of the stained glass process but there are a couple of things I’d like to point out.

1. When the original paint has come off the glass it hasn’t ‘faded’ although it may have come off due to a number of reasons. It may be, as in the North Moreton window, a newer piece of glass used as a replacement for a broken piece by the restorer.

2. Stained glass windows are nothing like jigsaws.

Radley, heraldic glass in the aisle windows.