Raise your glass

Restoration jobs may be keeping the craft alive, but why aren't we commissioning new stained glass? Mary Miers immerses herself in a world saturated in colour

- Mary Mier

IN a Wells watermill, it’s all hands on deck as the restoration of sections of Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s finest stained glass nears completion. Old Priory Mill is buzzing with activity as panels from Birmingham Cathedral’s east window are cleaned, re-painted, copper foiled (to mend cracks) and re-leaded using farriers’ nails to hold the pieces in place as the calms are fitted and soldered.

The flagstone floor that straddles St Andrew’s stream houses a kiln, acid bay, cement and metal shops and stocks of glass and lead. There’s also a fire-proof strongroom, where treasures such as a 15th-century window from Hartpury church, Gloucestershire, and a roundel from King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, are shelved. Above are work tables alongside the water-driven millworkings, an attic in which 1,400 windows from Liberty’s in London were recently restored and an office/library. The premises of Holy Well Glass in Somerset would gladden the heart of William Morris: a marriage of ancient building and traditional craft keeping medieval skills alive where flour was once milled to feed the masons of Wells Cathedral.