St Stephen's Church
St Stephen’s Church Stained Glass Windows
By Rosalyne Le Huray
The first proposal for a new church in St Peter Port was recorded in 1858, when the 1,000-seat Town Church was reaching capacity. Pew rents funded the church, leaving too few free seats for poorer residents and visiting sailors as the harbour grew. So a committee was formed to raise funds by public subscriptions for a new church, with plans to provide 750 seats: 450 free and 300 rented - these can still be identified today by numbers visible on the pew ends. St Stephen’s Church was originally built as a Chapel of Ease also known as a daughter church. The St Peter Port Parish Church known as the Town Church was the mother church, sharing priests.
The architect, George F. Bodley was selected to design the new church, as he was known to the islanders as a pupil of Sir George Gilbert Scott, the architect of St Anne’s Church Alderney (1850). Together with Morris’s emerging Arts & Crafts Movement’s emphasis on traditional craftsmanship, Bodley chose to champion this budding team of talented artists to design and create the stained glass windows. Built from Guernsey granite in the Gothic Revival style, St Stephen’s features Bodley’s distinctive polychromatic banding and meticulous design. And local building contractor Daniel de Putron was equally exacting.
The fundraising committee first considered Powell’s for the stained glass, but Bodley persuaded it to commission Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The window designs for St Stephen’s were funded by the congregation to commemorate people connected with the church. Each window therefore
tells two stories: the biblical scene and the person remembered. Cost prevented the original plan to fill every window, but St Stephen’s is amongst the firm’s earliest work and is the largest collection in the Channel Islands, though it is rarely noted in reference books.
Those familiar with the firm’s stained glass window designs (The Firm as they were affectionately known amongst the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co founders and clients) can identify these windows as the work of William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb. In the eastern lancet windows depicting the Apostles above the High Altar, William Morris’s face appears as St Petrus (St Peter). The central lancet, by Edward Burne-Jones, shows Christ on a living Cross entwined with green vine leaves. Below it, the central lancet depicts the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel visited Mary. Although this well-known design dates from 1864 in this church, many reference books date these preparatory “cartoons” to later in the 1860s.
The Tree of Jesse on the west elevation is the largest surviving example of this theme in Great Britain. Its background layout is attributed to Philip Webb, with contributions from William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Edward Burne-Jones. Morris’s face appears as Jesse at the tree’s root. This design is groundbreaking in their experimenting with backgrounds and emitting light at the same time. Their work also features in the north aisle windows depicting three Old Testament Prophets and a King. There is also a restored window in a wooden light box featuring Judas Macabeus (Old Testament), most likely to be attributed to Edward Burne-Jones.
Two windows in the Lady Chapel above the Altar depict the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. Mary bears the likeness of Jane Morris, William Morris’s wife, while John the Baptist resembles William Morris. Four other windows in the chapel were made by the William Morris firm in Westminster after his death and installed in 1921.
To distinguish these early windows from others in the church, please examine their colour palette. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. used primary colours and earthy tones, including blues, reds, greens, browns, and celestial shades of yellow and gold in their early work. The deepest colours came from thicker glass made using traditional handcrafting methods. Later stained glass introduced secondary colours such as purple and orange, along with brighter tones and more detailed patterns on the material of the clothes.
St Stephen’s Church was opened for Divine Worship on 6th January, on the Feast of the Epiphany, 1865. And in 1885 St Stephen’s Church became independent from the Town Church with its own vicar, and remains fully self funded and independent to this day.