British And Irish Stained Glass (1811–1918)

A revival of the art and craft of stained-glass window manufacture took place in early 19th-century Britain, beginning with an armorial window created by Thomas Willement in 1811–12. The revival led to stained-glass windows becoming such a common and popular form of coloured pictorial representation that many thousands of people, most of whom would never commission or purchase a painting, contributed to the commission and purchase of stained-glass windows for their parish church.

Within 50 years of the beginnings of commercial manufacture in the 1830s, British stained glass grew into an enormous and specialised industry, with important centres in Newcastle upon Tyne, Birmingham, Whitechapel in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Norwich and Dublin. The industry also flourished in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. By 1900 British windows had been installed in Copenhagen, Venice, Athens, Bangalore, Nagasaki, Manila and Wellington. After the Great War from 1914 to 1918, stained glass design was to change radically.

Background

Following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, many churches, abbeys and cathedrals were built, initially in the Norman or Romanesque style, then in the increasingly elaborate and decorative Gothic style. In these churches the windows were generally either large or in multiples so that the light within the building was maximised. The windows were glazed, frequently with coloured glass held in place by strips of lead. Because flat glass could only be manufactured in small pieces, the method of glazing lent itself to patterning. The pictorial representation of biblical characters and narratives was a feature of Christian churches, often taking the form of murals. By the 12th century stained glass was well adapted to serve this purpose. For 500 years the art flourished and adapted to changing architectural styles.

The vast majority of English glass was smashed by Puritans under Oliver Cromwell. Churches which retain a substantial amount of early glass are rare. Very few of England's large windows are intact. Those that contain a large amount of Medieval glass are usually reconstructed from salvaged fragments. The east, west and south transept windows of York Minster and the west and north Transept windows of Canterbury give an idea of the splendours that have been mostly lost.

In Scotland, which never manufactured its own stained glass but bought from the south, they lost much of their glass not because it was smashed but because the monasteries were disbanded. These monasteries had monks with skills in repairing. When they went, windows gradually fell apart.

Influences on the revival of stained glass

Historic

Medieval windows and drawings of them provided the source and inspiration for nearly all the earlier 19th-century designers.

Canterbury Cathedral retains more ancient glass than any other English cathedral except York. Much of it appears to be imported from France and some is very early, dating from the 11th century. Much of the glass is in the style of Chartres Cathedral with deep blue featuring as the background colour in most windows. There are wide borders of stylised floral motifs and small pictorial panels of round, square or diaper shape. Other windows contain rows of apostles, saints and prophets. These windows, including the large west window have a predominance of red, pink, brown and green in the colours, with smaller areas of blue. Most of the glass in this remarkable window is older than the 15th-century stone tracery that contains it, the figure of Adam being part of a series of Ancestors of Christ that are among the oldest surviving panels in England.

York Minster also contains much of its original glass including important narrative windows of the Norman period, the famous Five Sisters window, the 14th-century west window and 15th-century east window. The "Five Sisters", although repaired countless times so that they now contain a spider's web of lead, still reveal their delicate pattern of simple geometric shapes enhanced by grisaille painting. They were the style of window which was most easily imitated by early 19th-century plumber-glaziers. The east and west windows of York are outstanding examples because in each case they are huge, intact, at their original location and by a known craftsman. The west window, designed in about 1340 by Master Robert, contains tiers of saints and stories of Christ and the Virgin Mary, each surmounted by a delicate Gothic canopy in white and yellow-stain, against a red background. The highly ornate tracery lights are filled with floral motifs. White glass ''stone borders'' surround each panel, making it appear to float in its frame. The east window of 1405 was glazed by John Thornton and is the largest intact medieval window in the world. It presents a narrative in sequential panels of the '' Creation'', the ''Fall of Man'', ''the Redemption'', ''the Apocalypse'', ''the Last Judgment'' and ''the Glory of God''.

York also has windows with small diaper-shaped ''quarries'' painted with little birds and other motifs which were much reproduced in the 19th century.

Between them, the windows of York and Canterbury cathedrals provided the examples for different styles of windows—geometric patterns, floral motifs and borders, narratives set in small panels, rows of figures, major thematic schemes.

Scattered all over England, sometimes in remote churches, is similar evidence of the designs, motifs and techniques used in the past. Two churches, St Neot's in Cornwall and Fairford in Gloucestershire, are of particular interest. Fairford escaped the depredations of the Puritan era and, uniquely in England, retained its complete medieval cycle of glass. The theme is that of the east window of York, '' the Salvation of Mankind'', but in this case the theme is spread across all the windows of the church, large and small. The west window, of seven lights, shows a single narrative incident, the ''Last Judgment''. This scheme and these particular windows provided a rare source for the designers of narrative windows for parish churches.

Philosophic

Romanticism

In the 18th century there was a growing trend for philosophers, writers and painters to commune with nature. Nature was seen as all the more attractive if it contained signs of the grand aspirations, ideals and follies of humankind. Few things were considered more romantic than a medieval ruin which conjured up images of the traditional "romances" or idealistic sagas of the Middle Ages.

England contained a great number of large Medieval ruins. These were chiefly castles destroyed by the Civil War in the 17th century and, even more significantly, vast abbey churches ruined at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century. These ruined abbey churches suffered three long-term fates. Some were used as quarries for their building materials. The more remote abbeys were simply left to slowly decay. Those that were conveniently placed were awarded, with their associated lands, to favourites of King Henry VIII and his heirs. Thus it was that many of England's nobility grew up in homes that included within their structure part the Gothic remains of an ancient church or its associated monastic buildings. Some of these houses, such as the poet Byron's home, Newstead Abbey, contain reference to their origin within their name.

In the 18th century the owning of such a pile became fashionable. Those of noble lineage who did not have a ruin or a battlemented tower or an interior with pointed arcades promptly built one. Among the earliest of these creations was the novelist Horace Walpole's refurbishing of his London villa, which gave its name to the pretty and somewhat superficial style of architectural decoration known as Strawberry Hill Gothick. The movement gained impetus- Sir Walter Scott built himself a Scottish Baronial mansion, Abbotsford; the castles of Warwick, Arundel and Windsor were refurbished by their owners. The movement was just as strong in Germany where "Mad" King Ludwig II of Bavaria indulged his medievalism by building the Disneyland icon of Neuschwanstein. All over Europe, those who could afford to do so began the restoration and refurbishment of Medieval buildings. The last great Romantic flourish was the building of Castle Drogo by Sir Edwin Lutyens between 1910 and 1930.

The Oxford Movement

Begun in Oxford in 1833 by the theologian John Keble and supported by John Henry Newman, the Oxford Movement stressed the universality or "catholic" nature of the Christian Church and urged priests of the Church of England to reconsider their pre-Reformation traditions in both Doctrine and Liturgy. While reinforcing the concept of direct descent from the Apostles through the Church of Rome, the movement did not advocate a return to Roman Catholicism. In practice, however, several hundred Anglican priests, including Newman, became Roman Catholic. The long-term effects of the Oxford Movement were the rapid expansion of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Catholic liturgical styles in many Anglican churches. The emphasis on liturgical rites brought about an artistic revolution in church building and decoration.

The Cambridge Camden Society

Formed in 1839 as a society of Cambridge undergraduates with an interest in Medieval architecture, this group developed into a powerful movement for the recording, study preservation of England's ancient churches, the analysis and definition of architectural style and the dissemination of such information through its publications, chiefly a monthly journal ''The Ecclesiologist'' (1841–1869).
The Cambridge Camden Society

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