The Dallaway Glass
 |
Fodder For
Nightmares - based on information kindly
supplied by Linda Heath.
If you had gone to our church in the mid1800s you would
have been confronted by this gruesome figure looking at
you from a panel of one of the stained glass windows. It
is an illustration from about 1780 of Revelation 6 v8 -
"And I looked and behold a pale horse; and his name
that sat on him was Death".
Rev James Dallaway, Vicar from 1804 until 1834,
had given the whole window. He also liked collecting old
glass, particularly coloured glass, and there is mention
of his going to Rouen for that purpose. When he had
enough pieces he put them together to form the chancel
window. Although in his view it was no great work of art,
he liked the rich effect of sunlight projecting colours
through it onto the whitewashed walls of the church.
Indeed, Leatherhead Church became well known for its
colourful glass as a result. |
So what happened to it, you may
ask? It remained where he had put it in the chancel until 1863
when the Henderson family of Randalls Park
replaced it with a memorial window. The Dallaway glass was moved
to the South transept only to be replaced again 20 years later by
the memorial window to Bishop Utterton, which is
still there. The Dallaway glass, along with the macabre gentleman
on his pale horse, seemed then to disappear.
A Pictorial Guide to Leatherhead, issued in the 1930s, puzzled
the Vicar of the time, Rev G H B Coleridge. In
it, reference was made to the Dallaway glass but no one whom the
Vicar consulted on the subject could throw any light on what had
happened to it. That is until the church was being "rewired
for electric light". Then in a long forgotten loft over the
choir vestry were found some packing cases containing the missing
glass, which must have been put there in 1881.
An expert from the Victoria & Albert Museum,
having examined the glass, said the medieval fragments were worth
preserving by the church; the remainder of it was of no value
except for the two panels showing Death on a Pale Horse
and Saul visiting the Witch of Endor, which were of
interest to the V&A as documents for the study of
contemporary taste.
As Rev Coleridge thought Death on a Pale Horse was "fodder
for nightmares" he was pleased the PCC agreed to give those
two panels to the V&A. However he was attracted to the idea
of having the medieval fragments made up into a window. Shortage
of money and the outbreak of war prevented it.
On Rev Coleridge's death, soon after the war, it was decided a
fitting memorial to him and his wife would be the incorporation
of the medieval fragments into a window - the one that was shown
last month.
Another mystery concerning the 1863 Henderson family East window
was also solved by chance. It seemed to have disappeared when the
present one commemorating Rev. Utterton was put in its place in
1909. A lady, who was researching the history of St
Mary's Church, Bishopstoke (near Southampton) wrote to
our Vicar about a newspaper cutting from 1909 she had come
across. It described the consecration of the newly built tower,
saying that the beautiful stained glass windows were a gift from
Leatherhead - clearly the missing Henderson windows. The Rector
of Bishopstoke in 1909, Rev S N Sedgwick, had
spent eight years serving as Curate with Canon Utterton here in
Leatherhead. That, presumably, is how the windows found their way
to Bishopstoke where they can still be seen today.
The fragments of old glass
reassembled for the window in the Chapel of Remembrance can be
seen below:
