Back in Spring 1968, Bradfieldian Reginald Langham-Carter (A 17-22) wrote a piece which was published in the Bradfield Chronicle which was as relevant then as it is now.

“When I was at Bradfield I must have glanced at the west windows in Hall every day of each term. There were Adam and Eve after the Fall in the left window and the building of the Tower of Babel in the centre and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba on the right. In the sexfoil window above them were the symbols of Creation: around the cross of St Andrew in the form of logs and surrounded by fish, I remember that as a new boy I was challenged to find the horse’s head among the medley of human figures in the Babel window. But, apart from that, we simply took the windows for granted – they were part of the college furniture. Later in life I learnt more about them and the present note is written in the hope of getting any Bradfieldians who were as ignorant of them as I was to take a second look at the windows.

I must have wondered, as others will have done, what such obviously ecclesiastical subjects were doing in a dining hall. The answer proved to be that Thomas Stevens our founder had at first meant this room to be the school chapel and made into Hall only after the windows had been ordered, the parish church in fact continuing to be the school chapel until the present chapel was built in 1892. When Stevens ordered his windows the art of making stained glass was just reviving after long decadence and he gave his order to the firm of Powell and Sons who were pioneers in the revival. Powells asked the pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti to design the windows for Bradfield and for two other churches. But Rossetti was otherwise occupied and recommended Edward Burne-Jones who was only twenty-three and had no experience of this work though he was already becoming a skilful artist. Burne-Jones accepted the offer and made the designs, the cartoons of two of the windows still being in existence. In the Berkshire Architectural Guide John Betjeman has recorded that the general arrangement was by Burne-Jones’ colleague William Morris, another young man who was to become a famous pre-Raphaelite artist. As it transpired, Burne-Jones worked for Powells for only five years and made designs for Powell windows in only five other places. The Bradfield windows thus hold an important place in stained glass history. Betjeman says they were ‘the first pre-Rapaelite glass ever made' and, even if they were not quite this, they were at any rate among the first. They were among the earlier windows of the Victorian revival which was presently to flood the churches of England, they were practically the first of the immense number of windows that Burne-Jones was going to design and must have done much to establish his reputation. They were among the very few that he designed for Powells and they were the first of a number of windows which Powells would make for Bradfield.

Thomas Stevens would have been unaware of the significance of all this when he saw his windows installed and paid for them. Whitefriars Studios, who are the successors to James Powell and Sons, still possess a record of the bill, which reads:

1857 Rev T Stevens, Bradfield

July 8 – 2 Painted Lights for College Hall to Mr Jones’ designs

Aug 31 – 1 Painted Light for the College Hall and pieces of tracery for the two above lights

Say 3 Lights 7’ 0” x 1’6”

Tracery 4’ 10” x 4’ 4”

£78.15.0. [Pounds, shillings and pence].

I have no record of the formal unveiling of the windows (though there may be such in old Berkshire newspapers). But this seems to have been on 5th April 1859, which is the date of the title of the poem For the Opening of the West Window of the Hall of St Andrew’s College, Bradfield which John Keble wrote for the occasion. [See photo gallery below.] Keble was one of the leading clergy of his day and no mean poet and one hopes he was present at the unveiling. These windows, then, have the rare further distinction of a four-verse poem being written in their honour.

Powells maintained their connection with the school. For Arthur Powell sent all his eight sons to be educated at Bradfield and the firm later supplied several windows for the college chapel."

As part of the refurbishment of Dining Hall in 2019 and 2020 the west window was repaired and cleaned and the stained glass looks as beautiful now as it must have looked when first installed in 1859. It was an investment in the fabric of the College for the future of £78 pounds, 15 shillings and zero pence which would have equated to £4,656.42 in today's money and would have paid the salary of a skilled tradesperson for over a year at that time.

More information and link to the original cartoons of these windows on our website can be seen here