Church of St Mary, Lynton, Devon

Glass attention at Lynton tends to focus on a tiny window in the Lady Chapel, by Christopher Whall. But the aisles windows are infinitely more fascinating.

Glass in the Arts & Crafts is often cloyingly rich in colour and excessive in ambition – under the heady Pre-Raphaelite influence of Burne-Jones, and increasingly reflecting the sensual melodrama of cinema and illustrated magazines – images of Theda Bara and Rudolph Valentino lurk behind the womanly angels of Henry Holiday, and Mabel Lucy Attwell peeks out from behind Veronica Whall. It can all be a bit too much.

But these windows are so different in intention and language – restrained, tactful, natural: like a set of water-colours by a studious and observant naturalist, or a great illustrator. They are so realistic, may they even have been based on photographs? And they are so delightfully non-ecclesiastical. Are there gulls in the Bible? I doubt it.

Our webmaster does not permit inclusion of plain glass windows enlivened only by clever leading – so I must turn your gaze from the enchanting Benedicite window, presumably by Wilson – bison, camel, aardvark (?), deer, lioness (?) and wolf, plus abstracted fishes, birds and a lurking snake.

Nearby is the gem: a flock of four gulls – three in vivid flight, one bobbing on the waves – in pale, watery tones of green, blue, brown, and grey. They were designed by Heywood Sumner (1853–1940). These are windows not to rest your eye on, but to look through, and let them bring the skyscape in. There are plenty of real – and sharp-eyed, opportunist – gulls in Lynton, but none has the charm of these four benevolent free spirits of the sea.