We visit St Peters Collegiate Church in Wolverhampton, meeting conservationists working on stained glass windows.

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00:00So we're here in Wolverhampton at St Peter's Church and we're with Megan. Hello Megan.

00:04Hello.

00:05So you're from a restoration company, what's it called?

00:09Woodside Stain Glass Limited.

00:11And you're based in York?

00:13We are.

00:13But on a personal level you're originally from Stafford.

00:16Yeah, yeah, so it's nice to be back on home turf.

00:19Yeah, it's nice to get a gig that's just down the road, isn't it?

00:21Absolutely.

00:23So you're here restoring windows.

00:25Interestingly, the whole company, it's all female-led, isn't it, your place?

00:31It is.

00:32It's run by myself and my colleague Zoe Harrigan and we have an all-female team of staff

00:38and we're trying to be as inclusive and diverse as possible.

00:42And how long are you going to be in total?

00:45What's the length of the project working on the windows here at St Peter's?

00:48Till about April next year, May next year.

00:52Yeah, it's a big ol'.

00:53So it's been quite a lot of work in quite a short time.

00:55Well, yeah, I mean, I was just waiting for you outside and while I was waiting for you

00:59just to kind of get me siding in details, it's not until you start looking close up

01:04at our beloved church and you realise, actually, there's a lot of, you know,

01:08the windows issues, a lot of stonework.

01:12It's showing the test of time, isn't it?

01:14It really has.

01:15I think it's been overlooked for a long time and people haven't realised, like,

01:20how important some of the glass is.

01:22So it's been really exciting to get to find out a lot more about the history

01:26and to hopefully bring it back.

01:31Yeah.

01:32Well, you were saying some of the work you'll do will be in situ on the panels

01:35and if possible, that's how you like to work for obvious reasons.

01:38But some of the bits are just so far gone that the panels will be having to come out

01:42and you'll take them to your studio in York?

01:44Yeah, so for instance, with these panels, they're completely buckled.

01:48The leads are falling apart.

01:51There's lots of breaks in the glass.

01:54There's holes over here, for instance.

01:56You can see how badly damaged that has become.

02:00Yeah, I think you can appreciate that.

02:02I may be on this one, guys, but yeah, it really is a wibbly-wobbly window

02:07where the lead's gone.

02:08It's curved in and out.

02:09And what I've learnt, which I found quite interesting, is quite a lot of the windows here,

02:15the glass has kind of been salvaged from other churches, other parts of the world.

02:21Just talk us through this little piece down here.

02:24So to the untrained eye, we just think, oh, that's pretty.

02:28It's probably to do with someone in Wolverhampton years ago or something.

02:32So what do we know about that?

02:34So this is from the early 16th century.

02:37Yeah.

02:37It's from Germany.

02:38It's showing the coat of arms of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III.

02:44So the centre of the imperial court was in Nuremberg,

02:48so I suspect it's probably originally from that area, possibly.

02:55It's some of the most high-quality glass painting you'll find.

02:59There is some paint loss, unfortunately,

03:01that makes it harder to appreciate how beautiful it would have been.

03:04But if you look at the faces, they're just exquisite.

03:07They're real characters.

03:09It's really beautiful.

03:10So this would have been made by the most skilled craftsman at the time.

03:14And it's got a really rare survival of some medieval lead here.

03:18Ah, okay.

03:19This is what we call a masterpiece, where they've created a hole in one piece of glass

03:25and then put another piece of glass inside it.

03:28Yeah.

03:29And that would have been incredibly hard to do.

03:31Only the best craftsman in the world would have been able to do this.

03:35So this also reinforces that it was probably connected to the emperor at the time.

03:42So these pieces that were salvaged, they would have been put into these windows,

03:47would have been made up using them around what period, roughly, do we think?

03:50In the early 19th century, there was a huge boom in trade from churches closing on the

03:57continent and selling off all of their belongings and stained glass and sculptures and all sorts.

04:03And a lot of that was imported to the UK, especially as part of the Gothic revival,

04:08as that gained popularity.

04:10So it was really popular to bring pieces like this over here and to install them into people's

04:15stately homes, into churches, they made their way into museum collections.

04:20A lot of these would be right at home in the V&A.

04:23Yeah.

04:23It's that quality of glass that we've got here.

04:28So does it, is it common for a church of this size to have so many pieces in their windows

04:35from salvaged other churches?

04:38Or is that a kind of fairly unique thing to this church at Wolverhampton, or was it a common practice?

04:43There's quite a lot of it here and there across the country, but I think this is unusual in that

04:50we can trace, we're starting to do some art historical research and we're beginning to get

04:56a good picture of where it might have come from originally.

04:59Yeah.

04:59And that is really unusual.

05:01That's really rare.

05:02We're beginning to find that we can assign some of these windows to known studios, and

05:10that's incredibly rare.

05:12Yeah.

05:12So really, these pieces of glass are not just interesting on a kind of a Wolverhampton level,

05:18but from a stained glass from a church window point of view, kind of worldwide really,

05:23in that respect.

05:24So this panel here, there is an identical, almost identical surviving panel in Germany, and this

05:36one down here.

05:37And so there was, in Nuremberg, there was a workshop called Hirschvogel, and they worked very closely

05:50with Albrecht Dürer.

05:51So he designed a lot of windows for them, but they also worked with other artists at the

05:57time.

05:57And we're not sure who originally designed these, but there's a good chance that they

06:03were possibly made by that Hirschvogel workshop.

06:07The panel that's identical to this in Germany was designed by Hans Holbein, the elder.

06:17So he's the father of Hans Holbein, who people might have heard of.

06:22And when you think of Henry VIII and all the famous Tudor portraits, most of them were

06:28by him.

06:29So to have links to such important artists, this is like finding a Michelangelo or a Savicci

06:37in your local church.

06:40It's amazing.

06:40So it's really nice to have the possibility to find out more about this class, but also

06:45for the people of Wolverhampton to learn about what they've got, what their amazing heritage

06:52they've got in the city.

06:53It's incredible.

06:54I had no idea it was here, and I've spent most of my teenage years in Wolverhampton.

06:58Well, what I'm learning, and I suspect a lot of people watching this, is I literally

07:02just thought, you look up at the church windows, they were made somewhere for that church,

07:06and that was it.

07:07That was the end of the story kind of thing, you know.

07:09But yeah, there's so much more to it.

07:11And these, when these windows came to the UK, this is not where they were originally put.

07:17So in 1840, there was a lady called Miss Theodosia Hinks, who was from Tettinshaw near Wolverhampton,

07:25and she commissioned a church of St Mary's to be built on Stafford Street.

07:30And so this glass was originally installed there, but unfortunately, after World War II, the

07:36church was closed and demolished.

07:38So at that point, all of that glass was adapted and installed here.

07:43So it's been on a real journey to get to this point.

07:46So they're quite miraculous survivals, really.

07:50So what do we know about this chap?

07:52He's quite distinctive looking, isn't he, this fella?

07:54He's very unusual, isn't he?

07:56He's very distinctive.

07:58I think this could be a bit of a mixture of glass of various dates.

08:04I think the very characterful knight on his horse is probably late 15th or early 16th century continental glass.

08:14I'm not quite sure where from.

08:16A lot of this purple background, I think, is probably 19th century replacements.

08:24And I think the reason not very much of the background survives is because purple glasses at that time were quite unstable,

08:33and so they corrode particularly badly.

08:35And you can see this piece is probably original, and that's almost opaque now.

08:41You can't really make out any of the detail.

08:43And the same with these.

08:44You can see they've gone almost black with corrosion, and that was because of manganese in the glass.

08:51So a lot of those will have been replaced by previous restorers.

08:56So when you, the windows that are, the panels that are coming out and being worked on,

09:02when they come back and get placed back in, were you saying, we were having a little chat off camera,

09:07something about like a double layer to help protect them for the future?

09:11So the thing that causes the most damage to glass of this age is moisture, rain, and condensation.

09:19So that can literally wash off the paint layers, and it causes corrosion and can make the glass deteriorate faster and faster.

09:30So it's really important to remove them from the weathering elements and take the wind pressure off the panels.

09:38So when we take these back to our studio, we'll take the stained glass, painted glass, out of the diamond quarry windows,

09:47and we'll replace this with a simplified version made with just clear glass and lead,

09:54but a lovely textured glass to match the nice textures of the quarries.

09:58Yeah.

09:58And then that will go back into the building, into this position, and then we will frame the medieval glass,

10:07and that will get installed just slightly in front, so it's got a protective layer behind it,

10:11and it creates a stable environment, so airflow gets around the glass and keeps it a stable temperature.

10:18It's like making museum conditions for it, just to preserve it as best we can for the future.

10:22So Megan, you've got the old window here that's been taken out, back at the studio in York,

10:29and this is the protective panel, like you were describing to us before, that's going in, yeah?

10:33This is.

10:34So the diamond quarries are the same as they were before, from the 1950s,

10:40but we've taken out the medieval glass, and we've replaced it with clear glass,

10:48but sort of following a simplified version of the lead line,

10:52so you can see these clear areas where the medieval glass used to sit,

10:56and then once this has been fitted, we'll frame the medieval glass,

11:01and that will get installed just in front.

11:03So the medieval glass, say like we can see the shapes where it's not diamond,

11:09does that come back almost as like a little separate section then,

11:12or is that in like a full length panel when it comes back?

11:15It'll come back in its own little contained section, so they're quite compact,

11:22so they'll each be framed individually, and just be mounted in front.

11:27So these are rather impressive large windows.

11:32These windows would have been built for the church,

11:36so this has only ever been their home, is that right?

11:38That's right.

11:38These are original to the building,

11:40and they would have been installed in about the mid-1860s, I believe,

11:44by Michael O'Connor, who is a very respected Victorian stained glass artist.

11:50These are a really fabulous example of his style,

11:54with all the beautiful Gothic revival,

11:58inspired foliage and narrative scenes.

12:03And so most of any work that's doing on here,

12:07is this more about cleaning up the glass?

12:10Is the lead work on these better than the other?

12:14These are generally structurally in better condition than the medieval windows,

12:19but they do still have some small repairs that need doing,

12:23where the odd piece of glass has been broken,

12:25or where some of the ties that attach the panels to their support bars have come loose,

12:31and that's really important to replace them,

12:35so that the panels are fully supported,

12:37to prevent buckling and bowing.

12:39In some cases, the odd panel has bowed and buckled a bit,

12:44and that has caused a lot of damage to the glass,

12:45so there will be the odd piece that will have to come out for treatment,

12:49but most of it we will do,

12:51leaving it in situ, which is nice.

12:53Yeah.

12:54Thanks for listening.

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