Stained glass ruling from Guildford Consistory Court: The Church of England Newspaper, August 19, 2012 p 5.

Nave of St Nicolas Cranleigh

The alleviation of tedium during a sermon is insufficient grounds for objecting to the installation of stained glass windows in a church, the judge of the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Guildford ruled last week.

At a hearing held before Andrew Jordan, Chancellor of the Diocese of Guildford and a judge of the Consistory Court, a petition brought by a parishioner of the Church of St Nicolas in Cranleigh challenged the decision by the parish council to install stained glass windows.

In 1944 a V-1 rocket exploded some seventy yards from the church, destroying the Church Room and Infant School, and doing considerable damage to the Church. Of the fourteen stained-glass windows, only three on the south side were preserved. Clear panes of glass were installed at the east end of the church behind the altar.

The Consistory Court approved a Parochial Church Council decision for Baynard’s Chapel to revert to a stained glass window designed by Rachel Mulligan.

One parishioner objected to the plan saying the clear light from the windows was aesthetically appealing, and provided a view of a cedar tree grown from a sapling brought from the Holy Land by a previous rector.

In his ruling the judge held this was insufficient grounds to object to the installation of stained glass windows.

“Whether the movement of an ancient cedar tree seen through clear glass is an aid to devotion or merely passes the time in one of the duller moments of the rector’s sermon will be a matter of personal taste or private spirituality, but the same may be said of stained glass,” the court held.

First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.

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