15th Century Stained Glass at Sandhurst
In the south aisle of St Nicholas Church, Sandhurst are two windows which hold glass dating from the fifteenth century. Both windows are reconstructions: a brass inscription on a window sill tells us the work was carried out in 1929 in memory of members of the Cleland family. The glass was moved from the north aisle, where some fragmentary glass remains in the tracery of the north window. This aisle is still known as the Betherinden Chapel and, according to a notice in the church, was built by one Sir Richard de Betherinden, who died in 1455. Hasted says that in the glass in the chapel there were formerly effigies and arms of this family, and also that there was once in Downe church a memorial for John Berenden, citizen, wool-draper and chamberlain of London, who died in 1445.
Not enough glass survives to enable one to draw any clear conclusions on what the 15th century glazing scheme at Sandhurst might have been, but there is sufficient to make out one partial and four almost complete figures. On the east wall of the south aisle, in the middle light, is the golden winged figure of St Michael (fig. 1). His face is now largely obliterated but his streaming hair, with a three-stemmed flower rising from a band on his forehead, fills a decorated halo. He wears the habit of a priest, an amice ornamented with flowers, and a cope with a circle design on its border. His left hand is raised in benediction and his right hand holds a balance on which he is weighing souls. On the left, the hairy legs of the lost soul dangle outside the weighing dish and his wide-eyed, tongue-lolling aspect (fig. 2) contrasts with the serenity of the saved soul on the right (fig. 3).
The eastern window of the south wall has two lights with a quatrefoil above, in which is the head of a young man, in the Pre-Raphaelite style, which could date from the restoration by R.H. Carpenter in 1875 (see John Newman, in the Buildings of England Series, West Kent and the Weald), but is more likely to have been inserted when the window was reconstructed in 1929. In the left light, amid a jumble of fragments of canopy, is the figure of St George (fig. 4). He wears full plate armour of the mid fifteenth-century with the visor of the bascinet raised to show his face. He holds a lance in one gauntleted and one bare hand and thrusts its point into the mouth of a dragon whose tail curls round his right leg. Below St George is part of another figure (fig. 5) in a gown, with what appears to be a scourge in his hands. The scourge is the attribute of St Boniface but there is insufficient evidence here to make a positive identification.
One can, however, be more positive about the remaining two figures in the right hand light, each framed within a twist of cable. Newman identifies them as a priest and an abbess, an attribution repeated by later writers, e.g. by June Osborne in Stained Glass in England (1981). However, although the dress of the figures is that of a priest and an abbess, both have halos so they must be more than mere ecclesiastics. They must be saints. The priest figure (fig. 6) carries a Tau (?) cross staff and at his feet trots a pig, wearing a belled collar (fig. 7), both attributes of St Anthony of Egypt.
St Anthony was born in Upper Egypt in the third century; he distributed his wealth among the poor and led a hermit’s existence in the desert for many years. On the back of the choir stalls in Carlisle Cathedral is this painted inscription: Then liveth he in wilderness XX year or more. Without any company but the wilde boar. His ‘Temptations’ were the subject of numerous paintings by, amongst others, Bosch, Bruegel and Grunewald. Generally regarded as the founder of monasticism, he was invoked as a cure for disease, especially that which now bears his name, ‘St Anthony’s fire’. An Order of Hospitallers of St Anthony was formed c. 1300 and they would ring a small bell to attract alms. The bells were then hung round animals’ necks to protect them from disease. Two wills, of Robert Kryar, 1487, and Richard Sone, 1529, leave money for a lamp to burn before the image of St Anthony in Sandhurst church.
The figure of the abbess (fig. 8) is dressed as a nun with veil and wimple and an ornamental T. In her right hand is an abbess’s staff and in her left, a book with a decorated cover. Her halo is filled with lines and is more prominent than that of St Anthony (St George either did not have one or it got lost in the reconstruction). This is almost certainly St Clare, the foundress of the present Order of the Poor Clares, which is based on the teachings of St Francis. Born in Assisi c. 1194 she became abbess of a convent there in 1215, a convent she was never to leave although Clare nuns spread throughout Europe. She died in 1253.
As Newman says, the
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