7 minute read
Uplifting Light for a Sacred Space
As part of the project to extend the chapel at Radley College, creating an east apse, new stained glass was commissioned from Rachel Thomas, designer and senior conservator at York Glazier Trust. Her brief was to create a ‘jewel box’, inspired by the beautiful examples of early 20th century stained glass already present in the windows of Chapel.
St Michael as depicted in window 6 of the south side of Chapel, dating from 1917. This window was given in memory of ORs 2nd Lt James Freeman and 2nd Lt. Gilbert Whittet (both 1910, C) who were killed in action in France, 1916. It is possible that the face of St Michael was made to resemble Whittet. The first building to be commissioned in 1847 for the newly founded Radley College was the chapel, designed by the Oxford architect Henry Jones Underwood. Underwood was well-known to Sewell and had previously designed Newman’s church at Littlemore, which had become the spiritual home of the Oxford Movement. The exterior of his chapel at the school bore striking resemblance to Littlemore church.
Internally, the building was originally painted white, with furnishings which were a mixture of new pieces and antique items acquired by Sewell. These latter included the reredos, seventeenth century wooden pillars from Spain, and a series of re-used stained-glass windows. The windows at the east end were positioned high on the wall to accommodate the reredos which was disproportionately large for the building. Indeed, creating a suitable backdrop for it has been a constant endeavour in both of Radley’s chapels, most recently the stone surround given by John Pattinson in memory of his brother in the early 2000s: its position in the new apse, flanked on either side by the new stained-glass windows by York Glazier Trust, is the solution.
Underwood’s chapel was a temporary structure. In 1889, the school acquired the freehold of Radley Hall and embarked upon an ambitious building programme: the jewel in the crown was a much larger chapel designed by another Oxford architect, Sir Thomas Graham Jackson.
Jackson was an admirer of Ruskin and a follower of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He was trained in the offices of Gilbert Scott. His architectural style incorporated Gothic Revival alongside
The colours from this window were used by designer Rachel Thomas in her commission to produce new stained glass for Chapel.
The Burlison & Grylls stained glass windows in Chapel, dating mostly from turn of the 20th century, contain rich colours that cast beautiful light across the brickwork.
▶ Cartoon from 1897 by Burlison & Grylls for a memorial window to William Sewell, Founder of Radley and 3rd Warden who died in 1874. The design is present in Chapel as window 5 on the south side. It depicts the Fathers of the Church: Ambrose, Gregory, Jerome, Augustine. The window was given by friends and colleagues as his main memorial at the school in 1897, the 50th anniversary of founding Radley.
Italianate elements and Arts and Crafts philosophy. His major commissions at Oxford began with the Examination Schools – linked to educational reform at Oxford University. He was also employed by many of the public schools, most often designing science blocks or infirmaries: his first building at Radley was a new infirmary which included an operating theatre. By commissioning Jackson, Radley College was positioning itself among the leading schools of the recently established Headmasters’ Conference and at the forefront of contemporary institutional architectural fashion.
Work began on the new chapel in 1893 and was completed in 1895. Many of the fittings from Underwood’s chapel were re-used, including the reredos, carved pillars, and organ, but not the windows. These eventually left the school’s possession in unknown circumstances. In 1939, six panels of Underwood’s glass depicting apostles were returned to Radley from St Cyprian’s Prep School in Eastbourne.
Photographs of Underwood’s chapel show that these six surviving windows are just a fraction of the whole sequence. Attempts were made in the 1950s and 1970s to display them in Chapel, but without success. One panel is now mounted on a light box at the entrance. Three more are displayed in the Art Department. Rachel Thomas drew inspiration from the colours in this surviving old glass and from the grisaille designs in the Burlison & Grylls windows for the new glass in the apse in 2021.
Originally, all the windows in Jackson’s chapel were clear glazed. The stained-glass windows were completed by the Arts and Crafts firm of Burlison & Grylls between 1894 and 1919, each of them given in memory of an individual. Such a relatively short space of time allowed a consistency of design and coherence of sequence to emerge. The earliest is the east window, dedicated in 1895 at the opening of the chapel. It was given in memory of George Brooke who died during the influenza epidemic of 1894 whilst still at the school, aged 17. It depicts Christ in Glory.
All the windows on the north and south walls have a central register of four full-length figures each above a lower band in grisaille of either stylised flowers or scenes from the life of the individual above. All those on the south side depict New Testament apostles, saints, or Fathers of the Church; those on the north side depict Old Testament characters. The surviving cartoon of the south side’s window 5, given in 1897 to commemorate co-founder William Sewell, is typical of the series.
Two windows are memorials to Old Radleians who fell in the First World War. One in memory of Captain Charles Henderson MC, depicts General Gordon and General Roberts of Kandahar above scenes of an artillery unit in the Battle of the Somme, biplanes and an image of Henderson’s battlefield grave taken from a photograph. A portrait of the soldier is included, taken from the school’s War Memorial albums.
The second war memorial window was jointly dedicated to two friends who died on the Western Front within months of each other. A portrait of each is included and it is possible that their faces are shown in the heroic figures in the central register: this is known to have been a practice of Burlison & Grylls. The symbolism here is almost Pre-Raphaelite in Henderson's battlefield grave
its imagery: King Alfred, patron of learning, shown above a scene of shipbuilding, the Archangel Michael defeating the devil, St George shown fighting the dragon, and King Arthur, champion of chivalry, above an image of the mourning Ladies of the Lake with a quotation from Tennyson. It was dedicated in 1917.
Rachel Thomas, designer and senior conservator at York Glazier Trust, was commissioned by Radley in 2019 to design the new stained glass in the chapel extension. The architect’s vision for the apse which was to house the altar and reredos was to draw the eye into an inviting space with a central octagonal window set into a dark oak-beamed ceiling: natural light would flood down from above. The stained glass was to create a jewel box – ‘which is the dream of the stained-glass artist!’ Her brief was to incorporate a palette of rich blues and reds taken from the oldest glass and to include the symbols of the Passion which are carved into the stalls and the stonework of Jackson’s chapel, alongside the school’s emblems, the crossed keys of St Peter, and the serpent and dove. The new windows themselves are very tall and narrow, set deep into the embrasure so that the glass itself remains hidden from sight until the viewer stands directly in front of them. Deep blues, purples, tones of red, blend into orange, warm golden yellow, and pale yellow tints lead upwards to palest blues: ‘I wanted the new glass to hold the onlooker still whilst lifting their eyes to the heavens through a range of colours of the rainbow.’ The symbols tone into the background incorporating a grisaille pattern taken from Burlison & Grylls’ windows.
The effect of the new glass is indeed a wash of rainbow light flanking the altar and reredos, drawing the onlooker to this central, sacred space.
