Stained glass knights

click photo to enlarge

There is not as much medieval stained glass in England as might be expected. Many continental European countries that saw land warfare in WW1 and WW2 suffered great losses. Similarly, those that were the subject of heavy and systematic aerial bombing lost much in the major cities. England experienced no ground warfare, but was heavily bombed. However, though these major wars did destroy some of our remaining old stained glass they were not the main cause of its disappearance. That had happened much earlier in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Protestant Reformation produced national protestant churches that either replaced or complemented the existing Roman Catholic religion. Its clergy and congregations often saw stained glass as idolatrous. It did not fit with the new churches' ideas of what should be found in a building dedicated to worship. Consequently much was broken and disposed of, and much was sold. In England the Dissolution of the Monasteries following Henry VIII's assumption of the role of head of the church of England saw the deliberate destruction of monastic abbeys, priories, convents, friaries etc, with their wealth being seized by the crown and their property sold. In the following years zealots and iconoclasts before and during the English Civil War smashed yet more ancient glass in cathedrals and parish churches. But, this wanton destruction notwithstanding, today it is not unusual to come across re-assembled fragments, some whole windows and a few quite complete schemes.

Today's photograph shows part of a window, one of seven of the fourteenth century, in the chancel clerestory at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire. The heraldry of the knights' surcoats suggests a date of around 1340. The families represented are, from left to right, Fitzroy, de Clare, le Despenser and Fitzhamon. It is thought that the donor was Eleanor de Clare (d.1337) and the scheme was supervised by her son, Hugh le Despenser. Most of this glass is original. Some re-assembled fragments can be seen in the shields of the four shapes across the bottom of the image. The windows were restored to their present beauty by Kempe & Co. in 1923-4.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 161mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 1600
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Kyme Priory

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I've often wondered how different our view of English Gothic architecture would be if Henry VIII hadn't broken with Rome, passed the Act of Supremacy (1534) setting him at the head of the English church, and passed the two Acts (1536 and 1539) that suppressed the monasteries. Instead of cathedrals and parish churches (in the main) being the buildings that define and trace Gothic architecture, we'd also have large, complete, monasteries, abbeys and priories with their major churches and ancillary buildings added to the mix. And, these buildings would have been added to beyond the Gothic period, up to the present day perhaps, making them some of the most significant religious buildings in Britain.

However, there are things that we would have lost. The romantic, crumbling, Cistercian ruins of places such as Rievaulx Abbey and Fountain's Abbey would not have been there to inspire our painters and poets: William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" wouldn't have seen the light of day. Money that was channelled into other churches and cathedrals would have been used for monasteries, and the absence of the "quarries" that the redundant sites became, that provided building stone for nearby houses and farms would have resulted in quite different vernacular architecture in the areas surrounding these great churches. Furthermore, we wouldn't have seen fragments of these large buildings escaping destruction to provide the parish church for the place in which they were located, as happened with many, including Bolton Abbey and Kyme Priory, Lincolnshire (see today's photograph).

The present church of St Mary & All Saints at South Kyme is made from the west end of the south aisle and part of the south section of the nave of the priory. The rest of the Augustinian structure was swept away at the Dissolution. The building we see today was tidied up in 1888 by C. H. Fowler. The remains of architectural interest include the fine Norman south doorway, an original south porch, C14 windows, C15 glass fragments, some fascinating monuments, a headless Virgin in a niche above the porch entrance, and some very interesting pieces of Anglo-Saxon carving with work similar to the designs on Celtic and Irish illuminated manuscripts, suggesting a date of C7 or C8.

My photograph was taken on a late afternoon in January as the sun was heading for the horizon. The over-sized windows hint at the structure that gave birth to the village's present parish church, but Fowler's transformation pulls the design together very well, and the untrained eye might see it as a modest village church topped with a bell-cote because the funds wouldn't run to a tower. A black and white treatment seemed to suit the location and composition better than colour, and I increased the contrast with the digital equivalent of a red filter.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On