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On visiting St Martin’s Church in Stamford sometime in 2019, I was pleased to see that the church had provided a simple trifold leaflet on plain paper with some history and descriptive detail of the stained glass, which I procured for the meagre sum of twenty pence. This, though rudely printed and rather clumsily photocopied was a rare gem, as church guides often neglect to provide information about the windows. The leaflet described the provenance of the glass and explained the attributions of the many armorial shields scattered liberally around the church, particularly in the east window. The leaflet having languished on my bookshelf for more than a year, and finding myself briefly lacking any professional work during yet another COVID-19 lockdown, I discovered an abundance of spare time on my hands. In early February 2021 I had chance to come across an image of the east window in St Martin’s on the internet, which reminded me of that visit in 2019 and piqued my interest. Unfortunately, on that visit I had not taken any photographs of the glass so had nothing to refer to other than the image I had found. Surprisingly, even the CVMA website had no images of the glass in St Martin’s. However, I did remember retaining the leaflet so enabling me to make some enquiries into the details of the windows in advance of a further visit to obtain some better images (COVID pandemics permitting). The research I have undertaken is likely to be well known to some, but I have not found any comprehensive descriptions of the glass in any one document. It is hoped in attempting such a project, that the original church guide might be improved upon, some inaccuracies corrected, as well as providing the reader with source references for further study. I revisited the church in May 2021 after the lockdown restrictions had been eased, and the photographs in this article are from that visit.

The history of the glass

In studying the history of the glass, it is impossible not to become caught up in the history of the local families, particularly the Cecil family, the other benefactors of the church whose armorial shields adorn the windows, and the intrigue surrounding its procurement. The church guide (CG)¹ states without citation that all of the “painted glass” in St Martin’s was removed in 1737, but we are none the wiser as to the reasons for its removal, what type of glass it was, where it ended up, or what was inserted in its place in the intervening years before the reglazing of 1759 when the Tattershall glass was installed. Harrod² (after Francis Peck) provides some pen and ink illustrations of the glass which was still in the church in 1722. As well as a number of coats of arms, a great many of which can still be seen in St Martins, there are images of two kings, possibly in conversation, possibly in combat; a king with four standing figures and one figure prone holding two tau crosses (possibly for the Priory of Sempringham) – Fig. 2. Another illustration (Fig. 3) depicts, in the top panels, men holding the arms of Russell of Strensham (Gloucestershire)³ and Left: John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln 1480 – 1494 who was thought to have been one of the primary benefactors of the church’s rebuilding in circa 1482.   Below these arms is the curious figure of a winged devil making off with a church tower, the steeple in its mouth, and alongside with the very same tower an illustration of a still intact church. These figures are no longer in the east window, but the top two armorial shields held by figures can be found in the lower panels of the window in the south aisle (SA1). The John Russell arms held by a figure now in the top of the right light in the east window is either a copy or duplicate. Marks³ suggests that the Russell of Strensham arms were installed in c. 1480 -94 – i.e. possibly that it was installed when the church was built, and by extension that would date the John Russell arms now in the south aisle window to a similar date. Marks also suggests a similarity in style with the “royal” figures at Canterbury, and therefore the glass may have been from the same workshops.

There is another intriguing clue of what at least some of the old glass contained, suggested by Harrod (after Peck). Peck briefly describes the long since demolished Peterborough Hall that stood next to All Saints Church in the centre of the town. This is thought to have been a refectory hall belonging to one of the many religious houses of the town extant in the 14th and 15th centuries; a “large and handsome room, in the north end of which was a spacious church-like window with much painted glass in it, with a figure of a cock in two or three places, and the same figure being in several places in the windows of St Martin’s Church”.

The present figurative medieval stained glass in St Martin’s was installed in 1759 (or 1760) by William Peckitt⁵ of York, and is substantially made up of that taken from the chancel of the Collegiate Church in Tattershall (Lincs). Peckitt (see box on Page 3 for brief biography) also added the rather eccentric and uncoordinated patterned glass to fill the gaps, and possibly made some of the armorial shields. Not all the glass that came from Tattershall ended up in St Martin’s; it was also dispersed between the Great Hall in Burghley House and the Chapel of Warwick Castle.⁶ Although I have not had the opportunity to visit these locations, the CVMA website⁶ does provide a pictorial record of the glass in Burghley House. The CG also suggests some of the medieval glass—particularly the shield of Borough in the east window and other 16th century shields—came from Snape in Yorkshire, while some came from Warwickshire. I have not found any source that confirms which glass came from Warwickshire, though there is reference to glass having been taken from Barnack, Northamptonshire, about 3 miles south east of Stamford.⁸ Unfortunately, it does not specify which glass. The removal of the glass from the Collegiate Church at Tattershall in 1757 caused quite a stir amongst the residents of that town culminating in the workmen engaged for the task being assaulted and threatened with death should they return the following day. A lively account of the events appeared in the quarterly journal, Lincolnshire Notes and Queries⁹ for the year ending 1st October 1889, which is reproduced here in full: