We were recently tasked with the repair and restoration of this badly damaged, late period 20th Century stained glass window at Emmanuel Church, New Brighton, Wallasey. The lower panel of the window featuring St. Hilda of Whitby (the sharped eyed among you will notice a small painted piece featuring it’s monastery of which she was the founding abbess) was partially detroyed as the reult of an attempted break-in.
Having carefully removed the lower panel, leaving the upper section in-situ, all the glass we were able to salvage was carefully pieced back together from which replica’s were carefully re-cut, painted and kiln fired. Those pieces which remained intact were saved for re-inclusion. On completion of the paint-work, the panel was re-leaded prior to being re-installed back into it’s original setting.
The window is one of two which were salvaged from the original Emmanuel Church who’s foundation stone was laid in 1899. This building was demolished for safety reasons in 1998, with the new Emmanuel Church being built on the same site and utilizing much of the materials from it’s earlier incarnation. The current Emmanuel’s foundation stone was laid in 2001. The second of these two windows, featuring St. Francis is situated internally within the building between the main church hall and an upper balcony. Illumination is not good and there is a small amount of damage believed to have been sustained during it’s removal from the original building. Lightworks will shortly be carrying out repairs and installing a new LED back-lighting kit to bring the window back to life when viewed from the main hall.
Having completed the works we were extremly pleased to recieve a wonderful hand-written letter of thanks from a Joan M Hough, the daughter of Florence Daisy Hough, to whom the window was dedicated.
Our images show the window before and after its repair and resoration, a detail of the restored panel in the studio, and a copy of the letter we recieved.
Leave a Comment