The Fairford stained glass is a set of 28 pre-Reformation windows in St Mary's Church, Fairford, Gloucestershire. The medieval stained-glass panes are of national historical and architectural importance as they constitute what is, according to Gloucestershire Historic Churches Trust, "the most complete set of mediaeval stained glass in the country", consisting of 28 windows displaying biblical scenes. They were added after the church had been rebuilt by the wealthy wool merchant John Tame (c.1430âÂÂ1500). The glass was made between 1500 and 1517 under the instructions of his son, Edmund Tame.
The panes were once regarded as an example of Netherlandish-style glass painting, but are now attributed to the Flemish glazier Barnard Flower (d. 1517), glazier to King Henry VII (1485âÂÂ1509), and, according to some sources, also to Galyon Hone. Several sources indicate that the overall design of the windows can probably be credited to Richard Fox, Bishop of Durham, later of Winchester.
The traditional story concerning the origin of the windows is related as follows by the Gloucestershire historian Ralph Bigland (d. 1784) in his Account of the Parish of Fairford:
Most of the 28 windows incorporate four lancets, each displaying a different but related biblical scene, beneath painted gothic canopy-work. Six smaller lights occupy the space at the apex of the gothic arched windows, usually displaying decorative features, of angels where the scenes below them are supportive of the Christian faith, and of devils where the scenes are opposed to it.
The glass survived the Reformation, during which many images in English churches were destroyed. In 1642, during the Civil War, it narrowly avoided destruction when the Roundhead army was marching on the nearby town of Cirencester. It was customary at that time for cavalry of both sides to convert churches into temporary stables and barracks with little regard for the fabric of the buildings. The more puritan elements amongst the Roundheads were opposed to pre-Reformation imagery, which they regarded as idolatrous; this made it likely that the stained glass would be destroyed. However, on the order of the quick-thinking William Oldysworth, the impropriator (lessee) of the tithes of Fairford, the windows were hurriedly dismantled and the glass concealed before the troops arrived in the vicinity. "[T]o him the Lovers of ancient Art are indebted for its present Existence" (Bigland, 1791).
It may have been during the re-erection of the glass after the Civil War that some of the panes were replaced in the wrong positions. In 1725 the glass was protected by the addition of a "lattice of wire" to each window, paid for at the great cost of ã200 by Elizabeth Fermor, a daughter of William Fermor, 1st Baron Leominster (1648âÂÂ1711), by his first wife Jane Barker, a daughter of Andrew Barker of Fairford. Andrew Barker was of the ancient Barker (alias De Calverhall) family of Coverall (or Calverhall) Castle and Hopton Castle, both in Shropshire, and had acquired the manor of Fairford in about 1660.
A few of the panes were damaged during a storm in November 1703; they were either repaired (some being modified) or replaced. In 1889âÂÂ90 twenty-six windows were repaired and re-leaded.
During the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945, the stained-glass windows were removed and stored in a cellar for safekeeping.
A conservation and restoration programme began in 1988 and finished in 2010. Clear glass now protects the old glass.
Descriptions of the history and imagery of the windows are contained in the following sources:
The 28 stained-glass windows in St Mary's Church, Fairford, are shown below, numbered and described by John Mason Neale (ed.), Illustrations of Monumental Brasses, No. VI, pp. 115âÂÂ132.