Church of St Laurence, Upminster, London (Essex)
Address
Church of St Laurence, Corbets Tey Road, Upminster RM14 2BBRecommended by
Highlight
North wall of the north chapelArtist, maker and date
Unknown medieval and renaissance artists, 15th and 17th centuriesReason for highlighting
St Laurence, Upminster is found at the eastern terminus of the London Underground District Line. It is one of a number of churches formerly in Essex, but now in London, which have relatively unknown but good collections of sixteenth and seventeenth century glass. See ‘Other comments’ below
Originally the north aisle had a chantry chapel at its eastern end, with the glass discussed here in the chapel’s east window. This was restored in 1630 when armorial glass was inserted. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the chantry chapel and glazing was in poor repair and the chapel was restored with what remained of the 1630 glazing being inserted in a window in the north wall of the chapel where it remains today.
Other fragments including possible fifteenth century quarries from the medieval glazing of the church and fragments probably from a domestic house were also inserted in the widow. During the nineteenth century further fragments were inserted and restorations carried out.
Possibly the main interest in this window are the two Civil War musketeers at the top of the window, extremely rare and the only known examples in the south of England. Also of interest are the crests of the Latham family depicting an eagle holding a swaddled child; this crest derives from an earlier marriage alliance between the Latham and Stanley families.
A full history and description of the window can be found in Issue 107 of Vidimus.
Other comments
The other relatively unknown collections of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century painted glass in this former part of south Essex are at: St Thomas’ Church, Noak Hill, which contains a substantial part of a large nineteenth-century collection made by Sir Thomas Neave of Dagenham Park; the medieval chapel of Ilford Hospital, and the Lethieullier Chapel at St Mary the Virgin, Little Ilford.