Fig. 1: Glass furnace excavated at Glastonbury Abbey. © Glastonbury Abbey

New research led by the University of Reading has revealed that finds at Glastonbury Abbey provide the earliest archaeological evidence for glass-making in Britain.

Professor Roberta Gilchrist of the university’s archaeology department has re-examined the records of excavations that took place at Glastonbury in the 1950s and 1960s. Glass furnaces recorded in 1955–57 were previously thought to date from before the Norman Conquest, but radiocarbon dating has now revealed that they date to much earlier, roughly to the 680s, and are likely to be associated with a major rebuilding of the abbey undertaken by King Ine of Wessex. We have documentary records of glass-making at York and Wearmouth for the 670s, but Glastonbury provides the earliest and most substantial archaeological evidence for glass-making in Anglo-Saxon Britain.

The extensive remains of five furnaces have been identified, together with fragments of clay crucibles and glass for window glazing and drinking vessels, mainly of vivid blue-green colour [Fig. 1]. It is likely that specialist glassworkers came from what is now France to work at Glastonbury. The glass will be analysed chemically to provide further information on the sourcing and processing of materials. Professor Gilchrist said: ‘Glastonbury Abbey is a site of international historical importance, but until now the excavations have remained unpublished. The research project reveals new evidence for the early date of the monastery at Glastonbury and charts its development over one thousand years, from the sixth century to its dissolution in the sixteenth century.’ An exhibition at Glastonburg Abbey Museum, ‘From Fire and Earth’, tells the story of the abbey’s pioneering role in medieval crafts and technology, and runs until 16 September 2012.

The full archive of excavations will be brought to publication by Professor Gilchrist, in partnership with the trustees of Glastonbury Abbey, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The radiocarbon dating was funded by the Somerset Archaeology & Natural History Society and the Society for Medieval Archaeology. Specialist analyses of the glass are being undertaken by Dr Hugh Willmott (University of Sheffield) and Dr Kate Welham (University of Bournemouth).

Fig. 1. The Betrayal.

Two thirteenth-century windows attributed to the Dominican priory in Strasbourg have been acquired by the French state following their auction by Sotheby’s in Paris on 20 April 2012. The Betrayal [Fig. 1] sold for 156,750 EUR (including buyer’s premium), and the Crucifixion [Fig. 2] for 228,750 EUR (including the buyer’s premium). The windows were discussed in our last issue; see Vidimus 59.

Fig. 2. The Crucifixion.

French law allows the state to use a right of pre-emption on works of art or private documents of national importance. This means that the state substitutes itself for the last bidder and becomes the buyer. In such a case, a representative of the French State announces the exercise of the pre-emption right immediately after the lot has been sold, and this declaration is recorded in the official sale record. The French state then has fifteen days to confirm the pre-emption decision.

Fig. 1. Sorgheloos in poverty. Christ Church, Llanwarne. © C B newham

Parishioners in the tiny village of Llanwarne (Herefordshire) have launched a fund-raising appeal to help with the cost of restoring twenty-six Flemish roundels that were given to the church in 1901.

The roundels feature some extremely rare subjects, including scenes from the story of Sorgheloos (sometimes spelt Sorghelos), a late-medieval Dutch morality tale about a young man who squanders his fortune on gambling, loose women and false companions [Fig. 4]. When he becomes penniless, his friends and family desert him and he ends up destitute. Unlike the Christian parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke XV, 11–32), Sorgheloos is rejected when he returns home. It is a harsh warning to the irresponsible and feckless. Sorgheloos has been the subject of a previous Vidimus ‘Name that Roundel’ puzzle; see Vidimus 41.

The glass was donated to the church by the then rector, Walter Baskerville Mynors (1826–1932), after it was removed from the parish church of St Weonard in 1884 by Walter’s younger brother Robert Baskerville Mynors (b.1819), to make way for a memorial window to their mother. The Mynors family lived at nearby Treago Castle, a fortified manor house built c.1500. The glass had been brought to Herefordshire by Walter and Robert’s mother Elizabeth (née Halliday) after she married Peter Mynors (b.1787) in 1817, and came from part of her family’s Somerset estate at Chapel Cleeve.

A fund-raising appeal is being launched in the village over the weekend of 18–20 May. This will include an exhibition and a talk by Dan Humphries of Holywell Glass. Telephone 01981 540825 for more information and tickets.

If anyone would like to contribute to the appeal, please send cheques payable to ‘Llanwarne PCC’ to Anne Hyde Smith, The Old Manor House, Llanwarne HR2 8JE.

NOTE

The Llanwarne glass is described by William Cole in his Catalogue of Netherlandish and North European Roundels in Britain, CVMA (GB), Summary Catalogue 1, Oxford, 1993, pp. 131–34. The Sorgheloos roundels are also discussed in. J. Berserik and J. M. A. Caen, Silver-Stained Roundels and Unipartite Panels before the French Revolution. Flanders, II: The Provinces of East and West Flanders, Turnhout, 2011.

Fig. 1. Blickling Hall, formerly Steinfeld Abbey: the Virgin Mary and St Potentinus. © Mike Dixon

Important windows, including panels from Steinfeld Abbey, have been cleaned and reinstated as part of a two-year campaign to restore the great hall of Blicking Hall (Norfolk), a mansion near Aylsham that was built in the seventeenth century and is now owned by the National Trust owned.

In 1820, the original great hall was enlarged. As part of the new scheme twelve sixteenth- and seventeenth-century windows were bought from John Christopher Hampp, the leading importer of and dealer in stained glass of the day [Fig. 1]. For further information, see our Special Supplement about the Steinfeld Abbey glass in Vidimus 35.

Fig. 1. Rheinische Glasmalerei: Meisterwerke der Renaissance.

After fifteen years at the Schnütgen Museum in Cologne, Dr Dagmar Täube has become the new Director of the Draiflessen Collection in Mettingen.

During her time at the Schnütgen Museum, Dr Täube was responsible for curating the marvellous Rheinische Glasmalerei: Meisterwerke der Renaissance exhibition and editing its accompanying two-volume catalogue [Fig. 1]; see Vidimus 8.

We wish her every success in her new post.

Fig. 1. The Kiss of Judas.

The appearance of the panels is likely to stir considerable interest, as they are reputedly the only examples of glass from this church still in private hands, having entered the local workshop of glazier Albert Sigel in 1850 for restoration before being acquired by the grandmother of the current owner in 1909.

The attribution of the windows to the Dominican church was made in 2004 by Dr Françoise Gatouillat of the Centre André Chastel in Paris, who argued that the panels were originally part of a Tree of Jesse scheme installed before 1260. She also identified other panels as belonging to the same scheme in the St Lawrence Chapel in Strasbourg Cathedral, the Burrell Collection (Glasgow), the Württembergisches Landesmuseum (Stuttgart), and the Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame (Strasbourg). A sceptical view of this attribution can be found in Victor Beyer, Les Vitraux de l’ancienne église des Dominicains de Strasbourg, published in 2007, who, unlike Gatouillat, thought that only the St Lawrence Chapel glass could be said definitely to have come from the Dominican church.

Fig. 2. The Crucifixion.

The Dominican church at Strasbourg was founded in 1224. Before it was given over to Protestant worship in 1531, at least three glazing schemes are known to have been installed, the first dating to 1254–60, the second to between 1307 and 1347, and the third to the beginning of the fifteenth century. After the Reformation, the church was incorporated into the city university and used as a library. In 1833, a considerable amount of ancient glass from the church was bought by the city authorities and put into safe storage – a prescient decision, as the church was subsequently shelled in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war and demolished.

Further Reading

Victor Beyer, Les Vitraux de l’ancienne église des Dominicains de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, 2007

James Bugslag, review of Beyer in Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters, xxxiii (2009), pp. 152 –57

Francoise Gatouillat, ‘La verrière typologique de la première église des Dominicains de Strasbourg’, in Hartmut Scholz et al. (eds), Glas. Malerei. Forschung. Internationale Studien zu ehren von Rudiger Becksmann, Berlin, 2004, pp. 101–107

Charlotte A. Stanford, ‘Architectural Rivalry as Civic Mirror: The Dominican Church and the Cathedral in Fourteenth-Century Strasbourg’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, lxiv/2 (June 2005), pp. 186–203

Fig. 1. Stained Glass at Lincoln Cathedral.

A new book on the stained glass of Lincoln Cathedral will be published in the autumn, and Vidimus readers can receive a third off the retail price if they pre-subscribe.

The contributors include CVMA author Professor Nigel Morgan, who will describe the medieval glass; Dr Jim Cheshire, who writes on the Victorian glazing; and conservation expert, Tom Küpper, the team leader of the cathedral glazing department. Over 100 photographs by Vidimus contributor, Gordon Plumb, will add to the book’s riches.

The book will cost £15 when published, but Vidimus readers can save a third off this price by pre-ordering copies before the 30th July. Please send a postal order or cheque (made payable to ‘Lincoln Cathedral Publications’) for £14.50 to ‘Stained Glass Book Offer’, Lincoln Cathedral Library, The Cathedral, Lincoln, LN2 1PX. The amount includes postage and packing.

Keith New (Hon FRCA, BSMGP) was born in London and studied graphic design at the Royal College of Art (RCA) before was conscripted to serve in the RAF towards the end of the Second World War. On his return to the RCA in 1948, he joined the stained-glass department led by the late Lawrence Lee (1909–2011), and in the 1950s was asked by Lee to design three windows for the nave of the new cathedral, a modernist building designed by Sir Basil Spence (1907–76).

After that, New’s commissions included windows for the Royal College of Physicians in London; Bristol Cathedral; All Saints Church, Isleworth; the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Tunbridge Wells; and Christ Church, Calgary (Canada). In 1958, he was commissioned to provide windows for Sir Christopher Wren’s church of St Stephen Walbrook, which had been badly damaged during the blitz. Unfortunately, these were subsequently removed and replaced with clear glazing during a later reordering of the church funded by the property developer Peter Palumbo (b.1935, created Lord Palumbo, 1991). After being stored in the London Stained Glass Repository (LSGR, see Vidimus 50), one of the windows, depicting the Conversion of St Paul, was acquired by the Dean and Chapter of Norwich Cathedral and inserted in the centre light of the top tier of openings in the north elevation of the north transept.

Fig. 1. Norwich Cathedral: the Conversion of St Paul, by Keith New.

In 1999, Norwich Cathedral commissioned John Hayward (1929–2007) to make additional windows in this area of the church and asked him to take account of Keith New’s panel in designing his own. Hayward solved what night have been a potentially difficult stylistic problem by acquiring two more of New’s panels from St Stephen Walbrook, courtesy of the LSGR, to flank the first panel, and then designing three further panels that complemented New’s work in terms of colour and approach.

In later years, Keith switched to painting large landscapes of the British countryside using a mix of acrylic paint and oil pastel. He is survived by his wife, Yvonne, whom he married in 1953, and two daughters, Clarissa and Roxanne, to whom we send our condolences.

For further information, visit the Worshipful Company’s website.

Fig. 1. Strawberry Hill House: glass in the star chamber

The World Monuments Fund Britain is holding an important symposium on medieval stained glass at Strawberry Hill House on Thursday, 10 May, 10am – 4pm. Speakers including Heather Gilderdale (independent scholar, specialist on the work of John Thornton) and Jim Cheshire (University of Lincoln Conservation Department) will speak about the cleaning, cataloguing and potential re-use of thousands of fragments of glass, dating mostly to the fifteenth century, but also as late as the nineteenth century, from the war damaged Coventry Cathedral. Leonie Seliger (head of stained glass conservation at Canterbury Cathedral) will speak about the conservation of two panels dating to c.1200 at the cathedral. Michael Peover (glass consultant at Strawberry Hill and former librarian of the British Society of Master Glass Painters) will speak about the repair, cleaning and protection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century panels, mainly of Netherlandish origin, at Strawberry Hill House.

Lunch is provided and the day includes a tour of the house. Tickets for Vidimus readers are available at the discounted price of £60. For further details, email sarah [at] wmf [dot] org [dot] uk.

The CVMA (GB) Picture Archive contains many images of the glass at Strawberry Hill.