St Margaret's King's Lynn

Among the places I visited during my recent holiday was St Margaret's Church in King's Lynn.  King's Lynn is a very old trading centre and a member of the Hanseatic League in late medieval times.

The church is just across the square from the town hall and is the most impressive building in the centre of the town except for the Customs House. It certainly is the tallest structure in modern King's Lynn.

There are a number of 19th century windows in the church, but I have chosen only three to show here.

Upon entry, the east window and reredos dominate the church.

East Window and Reredos

Reredos

The reredos is gilded carved wood depicting christ at the centre top separated from his crucifixion at the bottom centre by St Michael appearing to the virgin Mary.  He is surrounded by figures in the dress of the popes and bishops, who may be the early fathers of the church.  On the outer portions, angels are in support. This is massive - the figures are almost life size.  It was designed by G F Bodley and carved by G R Bridgman and installed in 1899.

East Window

The window above the reredos is huge too.  In keeping with the reredos below, it contains the figures of St Margaret and St Mary Magdalene on either side of Christ. The other figures are angles.  The window is 19th century, made by Ward and Hughes.

West Window

 The west window contains the saints relating to the other churches in King's Lynn surrounding Christ.  The other panels at the sides and in the bottom layer contains scenes from the history of King's Lynn such as the granting of the King's Lynn charter, the visit of Cardinal Wolsey, and King Henry VII granting a charter for the reconstruction of the church in 1524.  The window was designed by Donald Taunton of John Hardman and Co. and installed in 1927.

Side Entrance

 The church has only one modern window.  It is located at an entrance on the north side of the church and is the second large window on the West face of the church.  This was designed by Geoffrey Clark and installed in 1967.  It is an impressive window of almost 4 metres tall.  Unfortunately, you can see that there is already damage to the bottom right corner.

It is an impressive church which is very light due to pale green tinted leaded glass in the clerestory and various figures in clear fields for the north and south ground level windows.

St Silas's Church Hall, Installed

Back in August I reported on the early stages of the restoration of the wheel window and three small "supporting" lights.

Now that the building is nearing its completion, it was time to install the big window into its new home. The stone has been re-erected, with the location markings still visible at close quarters. Installing into stone channels is always more concerning, as the panels have to be big enough to stay in the stone, but not so big as to be impossible to put in. I got someone to help with the installation, both to give assistance and to keep me calm.

The first day, we could only install the bottom half of the wheel window, as the scissors lift was in constant use by the painters and no other scaffolding could be put up there while the painters were at work. So after four hours we left, with the promise that the lift would be in place for us in the morning.

Morning came, but the lift was not there. There was no one qualified to drive it either. We did a few odd jobs for an hour or so, and then the lift became available. The top half of the window fitted well with little difficulty. We finished it up and went for lunch.

The difficult part came with the little windows. It seems like there is less room for manoeuvre. The stone was badly eroded in some places also. So, out we went to buy a 110 volt angle grinder as the site's one had gone missing. Still it will be a good tool in the future. It was an essential one for this installation, as we had to cut one new channel and deepen all the others. Four hours after we started on these three little windows, we began to seal them with the sand mastic. I finished on the inside first and was able to stand back and admire.

Fortunately, the other workmen on the site also admired the work. But most importantly the architect approved the work. Very important for me, as it appears he initially preferred another person for the job.

This is the completed installation of the main window and its three supporting windows.

The outside of the window from below

The window from the inside staircase

Lansdowne Church

Just recently I along with others, was given access to Lansdowne Church, Glasgow by a group of photographers interested in the future of the building. It is one of two spires along Great Western Road, a major road from the city centre to the west. The building has a good architectural heritage - Mackintosh was later a member of the Honeyman practice. From my standpoint, the greatest interest are the surviving windows of Alf Webster.

However there are other windows of interest too. So before cleaning up my pictures of the Webster windows still installed, I would like to show some of the other windows. The church because of its orientation has no East Window, and so in unusual. The West window, over the (now disused) entrance to the church faces onto the River Kelvin and so is open with no buildings to diminish the light. It is a very formal affair, possibly installed at the time of building, and does not take advantage of the amount of light that is available in the evenings.

As you can see it has a lot of formal grisaille with three figures.

On the left is Moses

In the centre Christ

And I am sure someone will tell me who this is on the right.

These are windows typical of the period just before the aesthetic movement began about 1870. Formal decorative elements with little narrative or drama are typical of the period.