The continuing saga of our quest to photograph and document the stained glass windows of Lawrence Lee (LSL).
Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, St James Church, Milton
It was only recently, thanks to a list of LSL’s windows shared with us by Peter Hart (who we met at St James, Milton, Hants), we discovered that there was a third church here on the Isle of Wight boasting a “Lawrence Lee”. We had already visited Holy Cross in Binstead some years ago (the two gallery windows there were the first of LSL’s that I’d seen), and we visited All Saints, Ryde back in October last year.
The Ryde window is magnificent – depicting all the saints (as you might expect). It’s worth taking a look at the photos (link above).
We headed off to Wroxall this morning in the icy cold rain and found a small window at St John’s which, if it had a title, I would be inclined to call The Lamb of God. Stephen and I quickly came to the conclusion that this was not one of LSL’s finest pieces – fairly uninteresting overall, as were the other windows in this particular church. It was done in 1953, so was one of his earlier works (although so was the Ryde window), and it is possible he had a fairly rigid brief as it looked very much in keeping with the others.
St John's Wroxall
We found the colours to be a little duller than usual and there was nothing of his usual flair about it. Interestingly the photos make the colours look brighter than they seemed to the eye. Stephen recalled that at times his father was working flat out to fulfill commissions and inevitably some were done ‘to order’ and others allowed him some freedom of expression. His style certainly developed over the years but it is in evidence in some of his earlier windows too.
After that we drove back to Ryde and picked up a friend, Jan, and went on to Holy Cross, Binstead to revisit the four windows there. On our first visit Stephen and I had only been aware of the two gallery windows depicting the Peacock and the Phoenix, back in the days when I was using film exclusively. On our second visit we were unable to access the gallery, although our main purpose then was to photograph the Holy Spirit and the Holy Cross windows that had since come to our attention. On that occasion I was using a new digital camera and I had never been pleased with the results.
The Phoenix - a symbol of resurrection
The gallery windows had been installed in 1971 during restoration following a fire in 1969. The Holy Cross window is also dated 1971 and the Holy Spirit the following year. We chatted with the lady who kindly opened the gallery for us and she remembered the fire. She told us that it could be seen from the ferry (a member of the clergy was coming to visit and obviously had no idea that the fire he could see was the church he was heading for).
This time I was much happier with the photographs – the colours weren’t washed out and the detail was sharper.
Our next planned visit will be to some windows in London – particularly one at the “Chemical Society”. We haven’t yet decided on which other places we’ll see as it will, as always, involve emails, phonecalls and route planning. We might also pay a return visit (for me at least) to St Marylebone so that Stephen can see the Madonna and Child window there, which I photographed when I was in London back in January.
As always, watch this space, and keep an eye on the Lawrence Lee Stained Glass Flickr group for the latest updates.
Most of the images link to larger versions of themselves, but some will take you to other views of the same window or to sources of more information. Always worth clicking through. There are also quite a lot of links in the text of this piece.
The two gallery windows at Holy Cross, Binstead
The Blah Blah Blog 