Fig. 1. Sir William Turner’s Almshouses, east window of the chapel, detail of central section. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of Sir William Turner’s Hospital.
Superb mid-eighteenth-century glass depicting the Adoration of the Magi flanked by portraits of Sir William Turner (1615–92) and his brother John has been reinstated in the east window of the chapel at Sir William Turner’s Almshouses, Kirkleatham, near Redcar. [Figs 1, 2 and 3] The window was painted by William Price the Younger (1703 or 1707 – 1756) and dates from the 1742 remodelling of the almshouses carried out by Sir William Turner’s great nephew, Cholmley Turner.
Fig. 2. Sir William Turner’s Almshouses, east window of the chapel, detail of John Turner. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of Sir William Turner’s Hospital.
The glass was recently conserved by Keith Barley, Alison Gilchrist, Helen Whittaker, Daniel Thomas, and Derek Manton of Barley Studios in York. As part of the same project the stone pilasters that separate and frame the three windows were refaced, the sills were re-profiled, and the window frames replaced with ones to a design by Keith Barley that provides for ventilation of the space between the stained glass and the protective external glazing. The total cost of the work was £35,000, of which £20,500 was raised through grants and donations, including £5,000 from the Worshipful Company of Glaziers.
Special thanks are due to Peter Sotheran and the other Trustees of the Hospital, without whose efforts the project might not have been completed.
Fig. 3. Sir William Turner’s Almshouses, east window of the chapel, detail of Sir William Turner. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of Sir William Turner’s Hospital.
For further information about the window, see the Panel of the Month in Vidimus 51. For more information about the hospital, visit the CommuniGate website, and for further images in Gordon Plumb’s Flickr feed, click here.
