Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., chancel east window (1863), Church of St Ladoca, Ladock, Cornwall.

Photo: Peter Hildebrand

Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., detail of chancel east window (1863), Church of St Ladoca, Ladock, Cornwall.

Photo: Peter Hildebrand

Church of St Ladoca, Ladock, Truro, Cornwall

Address

Church of St Ladoca, Ladock, Truro, Cornwall TR2 4PL

Recommended by

Michael Swift (10)

Highlight

Chancel east window

Artist, maker and date

Reason for highlighting

Original designs of high quality that were not reused in other locations later. The central panel is by Burne-Jones, while the two flanking panels and the tracery roundels are by Morris.

Other comments

Further fine examples of the work of the Morris studio can be found in the south chapel (St Wilfred’s Chapel), which overall provides a telling example of the changes in artistic style of the Morris firm over more than thirty years.

The south chapel east window, 1869, has a central panel by Ford Madox Brown, flanked again by two Morris designs, and in some ways is transitional between the early years of the Firm and the full maturity of the 1870s, while the later west window, 1897, shows the final destination in the work of Burne-Jones.

The west window may be compared with the east window, 1896, at the Church of St Germanus, St Germans. The only example in Cornwall from the intervening 1870s is the east window at the Church of St Andrew, Stratton, 1874.

Contemporary stained glass is also represented in two new windows, 2017 and 2019, by Isles of Scilly based artist, Oriel Hicks

Further details and images: Cornish Stained Glass – St Ladock, chancel east

Artist/maker notes

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was born in Birmingham and studied at Exeter College, Oxford where he met William Morris, with whom he developed a lifelong friendship. Together they created hundreds of stained glass windows that collectively stand as one of the finest artistic achievements of their time. The stature of this formidable artist and designer was recognised after his death when he became the first artist to be given a Memorial Service at Westminster Abbey.

William Morris (1834-96) was a man of exceptional talents. As well as being the greatest artist-craftsman of his age, who ran a successful manufacturing and decorating businesses, he was one of the best known and most prolific Victorian poets, a passionate social reformer, an early environmentalist, an educationalist and would-be feminist.

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861-75) or the ‘Firm’, as it was colloquially referred to, was founded in 1861 by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb, Peter Paul Marshall and Charles J Faulkner. The Firm started out with no lack of confidence. As Rossetti wrote in January 1862, ‘Our stained glass…may challenge any other firm to approach it.’

Sources:
For a brief overview of the William Morris companies see Morris & Co on Wikipedia
The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination by Fiona McCarthy, Faber & Faber, 2011.
William Morris: A Life for Our Time by Fiona MacCarthy (Faber & Faber, 1994)
Burne-Jones Special Issue, The Journal of Stained Glass, Vol. XXXV, 2011