ARTISTS have been telling stories with coloured glass for hundreds of years.
In churches and cathedrals across Europe, stained-glass windows recount tales from the gospels, the lives of the saints and coats of arms expressing loyalty to monarchs, lords of the manor or wealthy patrons.
It was a medieval art form widely used in gothic architecture, though fragments of coloured glass have been found in the UK dating back to the seventh century.
From Genesis to the book of Revelation, the bible has provided inspiration for countless designs, from tiny panels crowded with delicately drawn figures and scenes in humble parish churches to spellbinding installations in the world’s oldest and grandest cathedrals, from Barcelona’s La Sagrada Familia to the little Sainte-Chapelle in Paris or Reims Cathedral.
But many more modern examples tell just as dramatic stories as the medieval masterpieces or gothic revival of the Victorian period.
At Pluscarden Abbey in Scotland, the Marian Window on the north wall of the north transept dates from the 1960s and celebrates the place of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the monastery is dedicated, in the history of salvation.
The roundel is based on chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation and symbolises the universe divided between the darkness of the dragon and the Light of Christ.
But while the abbey dates from the 13th century, all but a few fragments of medieval glass had been lost by the time monks returned to the abbey in the 1940s and established a new stained-glass workshop.
Without wealthy benefactors it may not always be possible to replace stained-glass masterpieces destroyed by wars, natural disasters or the ravages of the Reformation.
But sometimes the smallest and simplest modern works can still speak volumes, like those created by Brother Eric at the Church of Reconciliation built in the 1960s to serve the Taizé community in rural France.
Closer to home and hidden away in the heart of legal London, Temple Church could hardly have a more dramatic history.
Built by the Knights Templar, the order of crusading monks founded to protect pilgrims on their way to and from Jerusalem in the 12th century, it was designed to recall the holiest place in the Crusaders’ world: the circular Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
But on the night of 10 May 1941 disaster struck. For eight months, London had been enduring the German blitz, and on that moonlit night, the river was at low ebb and water pressure was weak. Sirens sounded at 11pm and the raid lasted all night.
By morning, five livery company halls had been destroyed, the House of Commons chamber had been burnt out, Westminster Hall and the Abbey had been scarred.
At the Temple, an early bomb in Middle Temple Gardens had destroyed the water mains and at around midnight fire-watchers saw an incendiary land on the roof of the church.
The fire was still burning at noon on the next day, the pews and choir-stall reduced to lines of ash, the organ destroyed beyond recognition.
As with other London buildings damaged in the blitz, it took years to restore the church, with a specialist architect supervising a major reconstruction of the exterior and interior over ten years from 1947.
In 1957, specially commissioned stained-glass windows were installed as the gift of the Glaziers’ Company. The East Window was designed by Carl Edwards, who was famous for incorporating fragments of medieval glass, whose rich colours can no longer be readily reproduced today.
Its subjects range from Jesus throwing the merchants out of the temple to the City of London in the blitz and the Temple church before the war, creating a mosaic of glowing colours.
Though most of his designs were for church windows, Edwards would also design 40 heraldic windows for the debating chamber of the House of Lords, and his daughter, Caroline Benyon, would be commissioned to follow in his footsteps half a century on and design the Temple Church’s South Window, formally dedicated in 2008 and echoing the same exciting intensity of colour.
Old or new, stained glass has the power to captivate our senses and capture our imagination with stories as old as time – and long may that continue.
