Christ Church Window Glass
Christ Church Cathedral is a unique institution, being both the cathedral church of the diocese of Oxford and the chapel of the college of Christ Church one of the largest of the colleges of the University of Oxford. The earliest parts of the Cathedral are late Norman, there are substantial later additions in perpendicular and other styles. The glass of the Cathedral stretches in date from the early 14th century “Beckett Window”, depicting the martyrdom of Thomas a Beckett, to late 19th century Victorian revisions and replacements. This project concerns 17th century painted glass, which has been the subject of an ongoing research project following a significant chance find, when significant quantities of this seventeenth century glass were found in a coal hole in the college.Now more than nine thousand fragments have been recovered, the survivors of a huge glazing scheme that appears to have been put into the Cathedral in the seventeenth century. These pieces range in size from small undecorated fragments to complete images of faces, architectural elements and heraldry, This ongoing project is cataloguing and analysing the glass and its history. It seems that thirteen major windows were put into the cathedral around 1640, the largest scheme to be put into any English church between the medieval and Victorian periods.
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Dr Andrew J Shortland
T: +44 (0)1793 785642
E: a.shortland@cranfield.ac.uk
Centre for Archaeological and Forensic Analysis
Centre for Forensic Anthropology Research
