No . 131 The Trusty Servant
The tale of the recovery and restoration of the surviving medieval glass begins with the appointment of Herbert Chitty as Bursar in 1910 . From his voluminous antiquarian output it is clear that he saw his role to be as much about investigating the school ’ s past as on administrating its accounts . Since the final northern saints were installed in 1828 , the glass had lain in peace , apart from a nasty incident when the Warden ’ s gardener took a shot at a starling and hit Absalom instead ( a current Collegeman armed with a squash racquet will be able to sympathise ). But Rendall ’ s failed scheme to replace the 19 th -century glass launched Chitty on a mission to discover the whereabouts of all the sold-off fragments and to recover them if possible . He discovered that the best panels had been purchased by the Wykehamical Shirley family of Ettington , Warwickshire , for their mortuary chapel . He failed in his attempt to buy them back , but in 1933 did obtain the clippings retained when they had been cut to fit their new location .
When the Shirley family sold up their estate in 1949 , Sir Kenneth Clark funded the purchase of the glass in memory of Monty Rendall , who had kindled his love of art . ‘ I have never written a cheque with greater emotion ,’ he recalled . Other sections of the east window were recovered too : half of King Ahaz , found in a garage in Shrewsbury in 1937 ; a figure of Joash loaned from the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1949 ; fragments from various churches and private houses in Shrewsbury obtained in 1950 .
East window ( 1821-22 )
The glass was as corroded as Betton and Evans had found it in 1821 . But unlike them , the 1950-1 restorers were able to adapt lensgrinding technology to take off the incrustation ; fortunately , it was all on the outer side and the glass was thick enough to withstand the thinning . The area of glass recovered matched almost exactly the west window of Thurbern ’ s Chantry , so the 19 th -century memorial glass then occupying it was removed ( and given in 1966 to St Michael ’ s church , Beer , Devon ). Butterfield ’ s 1862 tracery had to be replaced with a new design so that the medieval glass would fit . On June 28 th , 1951 , the restored ( in the modern sense ) window was unveiled . In all , about a quarter of the original window had been recovered .
It was not quite the end of the story . Five further figures from the east window were given to the school in 1976 in the will of the American collector Otto von Kienbusch , in memory of his comrades from the US Army , with whom he had served in the First World War near Winchester . They were installed in Fromond ’ s Chantry , 1978 , together with two more discovered in Coleorton church , Leicestershire in 1968 . Some fragments of the side windows remain in Mancetter church , Warks , Worthenbury church , Flintshire and St Mary ’ s , Shrewsbury .
Would our Chapel look better if Rendall ’ s scheme had been realised and the restored glass could stand alongside complimentary colours ? When AC Benson wrote to The Times in 1913 deploring Rendall ’ s replacement scheme as ‘ wickedness ’ and offering to ‘ buy as much of the discarded glass as I can afford ’, he quoted his father ’ s words on their visit to Winchester during his childhood : ‘“ The colours are poor ,” he said , “ but the whole thing bears the impress of the care and enthusiasm of a mind and a hand .”’ And so our Chapel stands , despite the aims of each generation , not as a perfectly preserved 14 th -century time capsule , nor a consistent 19 th -century replacement , nor an authentic 20 th - century recreation , but a messy hodgepodge of the whole story of English stained glass in its different stages of artistic development . It thus illustrates Ruskin ’ s ‘ golden stain of time ’ much more than looked likely when Betton and Evans carted the doomed encrusted glass off to Shrewsbury 200 years ago .
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