Second of four south aisle windows dedicated to the life of St Helen (c.1497-1512), Church of St Michael and All Angels, Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester.
Photo: © CVMA/Gordon Plumb
Third of four south aisle windows dedicated to the life of St Helen (c.1497-1512), Church of St Michael and All Angels, Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester.
Photo: © CVMA/Gordon Plumb
Other comments
The St Helen cycle originally filled the east window of the chancel but it was relocated in 1872 to make way for a memorial window by Ballantine of Edinburgh. An extensive restoration campaign by Samuel Caldwell of Canterbury in 1913 saw the attempted re-creation of the original window, with some lost scenes being conjectured – not always correctly – by the Liverpool antiquary Dr Philip Nelson and almost wholly created by Caldwell. The St Helen panels were conserved by Keith Barley in 1976–77.
A single surviving panel from another St Helen cycle of 1482 survives at Collegiate Church of Holy Trinity, Tattershall, Lincolnshire.
There is plenty of late 15th-century glass in other windows, also restored and rearranged by Caldwell. Most noteworthy is a north window containing the standing figures of three nimbed kings identified by inscriptions as St Edmund, St Edward the Confessor and St Henry. The latter might represent King Henry VI who was revered as a saint by Lancastrian supporters after his deposition and murder by the Yorkists in 1471, but the identification is tentative since photographs show the figure and inscription were in different windows until Caldwell united them.
A highlight of more recent stained glass is the north window Nativity scene by Moira Forsyth, 1964.
Sources:
P. Hebgin-Barnes, The Medieval Stained Glass of Lancashire, Oxford, 2009, pp. 3-35.
C. Hartwell, M. Hyde and N. Pevsner, Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East, The Buildings of England, New Haven/London, 2004, pp. 113-14.
H. Reddish, ‘The St Helen Window Ashton-under-Lyne: a Reconstruction’, Journal of Stained Glass, xviii/2,1986–87, pp. 150–65.