Simon Knott

Magnolia just about to burst into life in Holywells Park. Here we go again.

2/2 The Blessed Sacrament Chapel in St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow, with the portrait of St John Ogilvie hanging above the altar and tabernacle. Today is his feast.

Today's the feast of St John Ogilvie, a Scottish Jesuit priest hanged at Glasgow Cross #OTD 10 March 1615. His image by Peter Howson hangs in the Blessed Sacrament chapel of St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow. Canonised in 1976, he's the only post-Reformation Scottish Saint so far.

2/2 St Frances dispensing charity, 1870s glass by Clayton & Bell at Kimberley, Norfolk. A legend recalls during a famine she was able to dispense food from a miraculous storehouse that never emptied. An unusual saint to find in 19C glass in a CofE church, it remembers Frances Wodehouse of the Hall.

Today's the feast of St Frances of Rome, 15th Century mystic and foundress. She receives inspiration in glass by Ninian Comper, c1930 in the baptistery of St James Episcopal church, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.

2/2 Here's the whole thing, with another angel and more skulls. A creature of the night holds the drapery of the inscription in its teeth.

#MemorialsMonday #MonumentsMonday #MementoMoriMonday

There's a blanket of fog over the whole of the south-east waiting to welcome you home, Ian...

An angel with a skull and sheaves of corn on the 1686 memorial to Thomas Robertson in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh. It was inside the church originally, but was removed in the major restoration of 1883.
#MemorialsMonday #MonumentsMonday #MementoMoriMonday

2/2 'I walk secure and blessed in every clime or coast'

St Columba on his mission accompanied by angels. Glass by Herbert Hendrie, 1942, originally made for Tolbooth St John Kirk, Edinburgh, now in Greyfriars Kirk down the road.

St Columba, 6th Century Irish missionary to the Picts and the Scots, in glass by Douglas Strachan, 1922 in St Margaret of Scotland's chapel, Edinburgh.

#StainedGlassSunday

I've now had it confirmed thanks to @jeelyeater1.bsky.social and an article she found in the Scotsman newspaper that this glass IS by Herbert Hendrie, and it was originally donated by Cameron in 1942 to Tolbooth St John's church. When that church closed in the 1970s, the glass came to Greyfriars.

Late winter's lease hath all too long a date

With Eastertide still three weeks away, lets hope no high winds divest it of its bloom...

3/3 David Cameron was a highly regarded and wealthy landscape artist who just happened to be an enthusiastic promoter of stained glass in churches thanks to his staunch presbyterianism. I'm assuming he bought the glass when its original church closed. So who is it by? Could it be Herbert Hendrie?

2/3 Marjorie Kemp's glass at 1/3 is one of just two 20th Century windows in Greyfriars Kirk. Here's the other, and it's a bit of a puzzle. It was brought here from elsewhere, perhaps in the 1930s. The church claims it is by 'the artist David Cameron', who donated it. However, all is not as it seems.

It just interests me, with her no longer remembered in the Ordo, that it's an American protestant denomination that still holds a candle for her, so to speak. And of course I thoroughly approve, it's a significant moment in the Gospels.

St Margaret of Scotland and St Helen, by Marjorie Kemp, 1938 in Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh for #StainedGlassSunday.

Yes, she's venerated as the first Apostle in the Orthodox tradition. Although she's no longer included in the Roman canon I believe that American Episcopalians, of all people, continue to observe a lesser feast in their liturgical calendar.

I think in the late 19th Century there was generally a move away from what were seen as garish colours in Art and Design. I think HBB were in such high demand, and needed to maintain their success as a mass production workshop by moving with the times.

3/3 Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well by Heaton, Butler & Bayne, 1863 in Bradford Cathedral. HBB at their very best in the early 1860s after Robert Bayne had joined the firm. They would become victims of their own success in the following decades.

2/3 Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, a collected 16th Century continental roundel, one of more than eighty now at Nowton, Suffolk.

Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, a headstone relief of 1877 at Fordham, Norfolk. There are a number of roughly contemporary headstones depicting biblical scenes in this area on both sides of the Norfolk/Cambridgeshire border, so presumably the work of the same workshop.

3/3 'Thou hast well said, "I have no husband", for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband'

Jesus and the woman at the well by AL Moore, 1887 at Reydon, Suffolk.

2/3 'Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet'

A detail of Jesus and the woman at the well by Rosemary Rutherford, 1966 at Broomfield, Essex.

It would certainly be at home in the West Country.

'Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did'

A detail from the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well by Mary Lowndes, 1908 at Linton, Cambridgeshire, today's Gospel. 1/3

Berserker - Wikipedia

Viking warriors who fought in a trance-like state of fury - the wikipedia page explains the connection to the modern word 'beserk': en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker

Thanks. No, I just pointed my phone upwards!

2/2 St John's Episcopal church, Edinburgh, from Lothian Road. 'A remarkably convincing Gothic exercise for its date' thought Pevsner. It cost £18,000 in 1815, about four million in today's money. They may not have been the biggest denomination in 19C Scotland, but they were certainly the wealthiest.

The Georgian pendant vaulting of the nave at St John's Episcopal church, Edinburgh. The work of William Burn, 1815-18, the thin wall shafts leading to fan vaults give the illusion that the walls are wavy, but they aren't. All the vaulting is non-structural, of course. 1/2