West Window, St Michael’s Church, Theydon Mount

Stained glass windows that stayed intact through plague and a bomb blast have been painstakingly restored with funds raised by a church congregation. The windows in St Michael's Church in were made for Hill Hall, which was built in the 1560s by Sir Thomas Smith. They were installed in preparation for a visit by the queen, but she cancelled her plans when plague struck the area. The heraldic panels stayed at the house until a parachute bomb landed nearby during the Second World War, when soldiers from the Royal Artillery were stationed there.

They were moved to the church for safekeeping and piecemeal maintenance has been done on them over the years. Their latest restoration saw all the panels removed and taken to the workshop of stained glass expert Susan McCarthy at Auravisions in Saffron Walden.

There, she cleaned each piece with distilled water and restored some of the leading that holds the glass in place. She said:
“We do get mediaeval glass, but most pieces are fragments that have been cut out. It’s very rare to find a whole window and you would never come across a mediaeval window with figures in it, because the Reformation took care of all those. The craftsmen at the time were very clever, considering they didn’t have the same technology, at inserting little bits of glass inside larger bits of glass. If we find anything like that, we keep it. It is very rare to find mediaeval leading, so if we do, we put it in a protective steam while we’re working on it.”

She started the restoration in 2009 and was working on the stained glass in her studio with an apprentice. As well as cleaning the glass, they replaced some of the leading that had been put in during the 20th century and placed a covering over parts of the glass to make sure it stays in good condition.

The glass was worked on while in a frame with a light behind it, to recreate the effect of the panel hanging in a window. The cost of the restoration was £10,000.