Tag Archives: stained glass window

Oct 01 2024
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Daily Post, Interior

Lecture in Hogwarts

Monday 30th September 2024, 2.00pm (day 4,785)

Rylands lecture, 30/9/24

Another lecture, only this time I am facing front instead of at the front. For several Mondays over the next few months I will be a student again: the subject, you can see for yourself. ‘Hogwarts’ is, in fact, the Historic Reading Room of the John Rylands Library; a spectacular setting for a class, and somehow appropriate (though this was opened in 1901 and is detinitely not a medieval construction). But by next time I hope they’ve turned the heating on. Mr Rylands himself, or his statue, at least, pokes up behind the screen.

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Jul 21 2022
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Interior

Traherne Windows, Hereford Cathedral

Wednesday 20th July 2022, 12.10pm (day 3,982)

Traherne Windows, Hereford, 20/7/22

File this under the ‘Someone Else’s Art’ category — specifically, these stained glass windows (of which there are four in total) were created by Tom Denny in 2007. They celebrate the life and work of poet Thomas Traherne, who wrote in the 17th century but was not discovered and properly published until the early 20th century, when it was decided by those who decide these things that he had anticipated Romanticism by about 150 years. I’ve never read the guy, but the windows are worth seeing.

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Sep 25 2013
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Daily Post, Interior

Stairwell, John Owens building

Wednesday 25th September 2013, 11.40am (day 762)

John Owens stairwell, 25/9/13

John Owens made his fortune in the early 1800s, it seems in two ways — first through cotton trading, and secondly by “keeping no company whatsoever” and spending every evening in, reading books (according to contemporary accounts). On his death, with no children — unsurprising, with those habits — he left a substantial sum of money towards the foundation of Owens College, now a part of the University of Manchester, and also made it a condition of his will that no student nor member of the faculty in that institution would ever have to “pass a religious test” to achieve their status. He might not have been much of a party animal, but at least he had a sensible lack of zealotry along with it.

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