Ward & Hughes, detail of Chancel south window (1878), Church of St Guthlac, Market Deeping, Lincolnshire.

Photo: Peter Hildebrand

Curtis, Ward & Hughes, detail of Chancel south window (1908), Church of St Guthlac, Market Deeping, Lincolnshire.

Photo: Peter Hildebrand

Church of St Guthlac, Market Deeping, Lincolnshire

Address

Church of St Guthlac, 9 Church St, Market Deeping, Lincolnshire PE6 8DA

Recommended by

Jasmine Allen (10)

Highlight

Guthlac windows, south side of the chancel

Artist, maker and date

Ward & Hughes / Curtis, Ward & Hughes, 1878 & 1908

Reason for highlighting

These two little-known windows feature roundels based on the life of the Anglo-Saxon hermit Saint Guthlac (c.674-715).

Uniquely, several of the designs are based on drawings in the late 12th or early 13th century ‘Guthlac Roll’, which features 18 roundels drawn in ink, each 6 inches in diameter, illustrating the life of Guthlac. In view of their use here, it is noteworthy that it has been suggested that the Guthlac Roll designs were originally intended to be enlarged for stained glass.

There are six roundels in each window. Each is placed on a chequered background with knives and scourges, the saintly symbols of Bartholomew and Guthlac. The medallions read chronologically bottom to top in each light, and from right to left, west to east. Guthlac’s revelation, incomplete in the Guthlac Roll, has been completed by the glazier of these windows.

Other comments

Digitised images of the Guthlac roll can be seen on the British Library website at British Library – Guthlac Roll

Of particular note amongst the church’s other late 19th and early 20th century windows is the Archangels’ window in the north aisle by Herbert Hendrie, 1920+. Although unfortunately the light from behind is reduced by vegetation, close inspection shows the quality of the work.

Artist/maker notes

Ward & Hughes / Curtis, Ward & Hughes
Ward & Hughes was a partnership between Thomas Ward (1808-70) and Henry Hughes (1822-83), who became the chief designer, while also producing windows under his own name. On his death the firm was taken over by a relative Thomas Figgis Curtis (1845-1924). The firm continued for a few years after Curtis’s death, in the hands of a cousin, Mrs Ethel Kibblewhite.

Source: Victorian Stained Glass by Martin Harrison (Barrie & Jenkins Ltd, 1980)