Talk by David Smalley: Scotland Yard; the Titanic; Rochdale Town Hall and the stained glass of St James Church Hebden Bridge

Victorian stained glass has had, until recently, a very bad press. Yet in the late 1870s the congregation and clergy of St James church, at great cost, embarked on a programme of restoration that resulted in a complete glazing by the firm Heaton, Butler and Bayne. Complete schemes are unusual but this one, through the parish magazine, is particularly well documented, a rarity in the world of Victorian stained glass. This lecture looks at the background to the restoration and the social insights that have emerged as the Parish Magazine has been studied.

Speaker David Smalley says he has had a childlike fascination with light and glass since lecturing on gemstone identification in the 1970s and 80s. He has over the last eight years been studying stained glass through the Continuing Education Department at the University of York with a personal focus on Victorian glass.