Detail of 1 of the clerestorey home windows on the south aspect of the nave, depicting saints and champions of the Church.
St Mary’s at Fairford is justly well known, not only as a most attractive building architecturally but for the survival of its finish established of late medieval stained glass, a unique survival in an English parish church. No other church has resisted the waves of iconoclasm unleashed by the Reformation and the English Civil War like Fairford has, and as a consequence we can expertise a pre-Reformation iconographic scheme in glass in its entirety. At most church buildings a single is fortunate to obtain mere fragments of the original glazing and even a person total window is an fantastic survival, therefore a complete set of 28 of them right here in a a lot more or less intact state makes Fairford church uniquely treasured.
The exterior previously claims good matters, this is a handsome late 15th century setting up completely rebuilt in Perpendicular design and dedicated in 1497. The benefactor was lord of the manor John Tame, a rich wool service provider whose son Edmund afterwards continued the family’s legacy in donating the glass. The central tower is adorned with a lot carving together with unusual figures guarding the corners and a somewhat archaic searching aid of Christ on the western side. The nave is crowned by a fine clerestorey while the aisles beneath variety a gallery of massive home windows that feel to embrace the overall building with out structural interruption apart from the south porch and the chancel projecting at the east close. All all-around are pinnacles, battlements and gargoyles, the effect is incredibly rich and imposing for a village church.
One enters by way of the lover-vaulted porch and is at first satisfied by subdued lights in just that requires a minute to adjust to but can right away appreciate the stylish arcades and the wealthy glowing colours of the home windows. The inside is spacious but the look at east is interrupted by the tower whose panelled partitions and arches frame only a glimpse of the chancel beyond. The glass was inserted concerning 1500-1517 and exhibits marked Renaissance affect, being the get the job done of Flemish glaziers (based in Southwark) beneath the route of the King’s glazier Barnard Flower. The excellent is consequently of the greatest available and suggests the Tame family had connections at court to secure such glaziers.
Getting into the nave one is immediately confronted with the largest and most well-known window in the church, the west window with its wonderful Past Judgement, best known for its lurid depiction of the horrors of Hell with unique demons dragging the damned to their doom. Sadly the three home windows in the west wall suffered serious storm harm in 1703 and the Last Judgement suffered further in the course of an 1860 restoration that copied alternatively than restored the glass in its higher half. The nave clerestories have an intriguing plan even more emphasising the fight of Good vs . Evil with a gallery of saintly figures on the south facet well balanced by a ‘rogue’s gallery’ of persecutors of the religion on the darker north facet, over which are wonderful demonic figures leering from the traceries.
The aisle windows type even more arrays of figures in canopies with the Evangelists and prophets on the north aspect and the Apostles and Medical practitioners of the Church on the south. The a lot more narrative windows are generally found in the eastern fifty percent of the church, starting in the north chapel with an Outdated Testomony themed window adopted by more on the daily life of Mary and infancy of Christ. The issue make a difference is typically confined to one mild or a pair of them, so multiple scenes can be portrayed in a solitary window. The scheme carries on in the east window of the chancel with its scenes of the Passion of Christ in the lessen sign-up culminating in his crucifixion above, while a smaller window to the south exhibits his entombment and the harrowing of Hell. The cycle continues in the south chapel in which the east window shows scenes of Christ’s resurrection and transfiguration while two even more home windows relate even more incidents culminating in Pentecost. The remaining window in the sequence nevertheless is of class the Very last Judgement at the west end.
The glass has been significantly valued and secured above the hundreds of years from the ravages of background, staying eradicated for defense throughout the Civil War and Globe War II. The windows underwent a comprehensive conservation involving 1988-2010 by the Barley Studio of York which bravely restored legibility to the home windows by sensitive releading and recreating missing parts with new function (previously these had been crammed with basic glass which drew the eye and disturbed the equilibrium of mild). The most spectacular intervention was the re-buying of the westernmost home windows of the nave aisles which had been partly loaded with jumbled fragments subsequent the storm hurt of 1703 but have now been returned to something closer to their first state.
It is critical below not to neglect the church’s other functions given that the glass dominates its reputation so a great deal. The chancel also retains its original late medieval woodwork with a wonderful set of sensitive screens dividing it from the chapels both aspect together with a charming established of stalls with carved misericords. The tomb of the founder John Tame and his wife can be viewed on the north side of the sanctuary with their brasses atop a tomb chest. All over the church a wonderful series of carved angel corbels supports the aged oak roofs.
Fairford church is a countrywide treasure and shouldn’t be missed by anybody with a enjoy of stained glass and medieval artwork. It is ordinarily kept open up for website visitors and deserves additional of them.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary%27s_Church,_Fairford
Posted by Aidan McRae Thomson on 2021-04-21 16:59:55
Tagged: , Fairford , church , Gloucestershire , stained glass , window , medieval
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