WRITING in 1893, Thomas Hardy drew on his own experience as a trainee architect when composing a poem, “The Young Glass-Stainer”: “These Gothic windows, how they wear me out With cusp and foil, and nothing straight or square, Crude colours, leaden borders roundabout, And fitting in Peter here, and Matthew there!”

Hardy’s poem captured a historical moment as well as his personal experience. As churches across the country bear (more or less) elegant witness, there was in the 19th century an eruption of new stained-glass windows, almost of all of them attempts to recreate the aesthetic and spiritual experience of the Middle Ages. It was a revival that has become increasingly interesting to scholars: the past decade or so has brought forth a series of new studies on this neo-medieval stained glass.

The Victorian revival was not unique. This collection of essays, the outcome of a conference organised by the Ecclesiological Society, represents an attempt not only to explore the world of 19th-century stained glass, but also to contextualise it. It includes two articles on the 17th century and two on the 20th, as well as two on the Victorian experience. Deeply researched and beautifully illustrated in full colour, it is a revelation.

Six short essays cannot cover everything, of course, and it is a shame that there was no room for any 18th-century projects. But the work on the Laudian revival is fascinating, and the Victorian section is full of interest. The 20th-century chapters also succeed in establishing that it was indeed an era of revival — even though many windows themselves are now threatened by redevelopment and neglect.

It is work like this that may rescue them. Certainly, anyone reading this fine collection can only develop a renewed appreciation of what a more modern poet, Gill Learner, describes as “allelujahs of multi-coloured glass.”

The Revd Dr William Whyte is Fellow and Tutor of St John’s College, Oxford, and Professor of Social and Architectural History in the University of Oxford.

Stained Glass Revivals
Mark Kirby, editor
Ecclesiological Society £15 (plus £3.50 p&p)*
(978-0-946823-30-7)
*send name and address to chair@ecclsoc.org