Stained Glass of Percy Bacon & Brothers

The restored panels depicting St Sidwell (r) and her martyrdom (l).

Photo cc-by-sa/2.0 - © David Smith - geograph.org.uk/p/5631159.

The restored panels. Left: Martyrdom of St Sidwell. Right: St Sidwell.
Photo cc-by-sa/2.0 - © David Smith geograph.org.uk/p/5631159.

St Sidwell's Church, Exeter, circa 1830.

St Sidwell's Church, Exeter, circa 1830.

Posted 27 June 2023. Updated 09 October 2023.

Perhaps this page should be entitled, "Lost and Found Works", as the story of these panels is one of an extremely rare, almost accidental survival against the odds. St Sidwell's church was bombed and almost completely destroyed in the early hours of the 4th May 1942 (during the same raid which damaged Exeter Cathedral). Although the tower survived the initial bombing, it was so badly damaged that it was demolished shortly afterwards. In the weeks that followed, local people managed to rescue a number of objects from the ruins, including panels of stained glass, and stone statues by Exeter artist Harry Hems. These items were safely wrapped and stored in the bell tower of St Matthew's Church, Newtown, and then forgotten about, only to be discovered 74 years later in 2016. The panels were restored by Exeter glass restorer, Andrew Johnson before being put on display at St Sidwell's Community Centre.¹

The two panels illustrated here represent an image of St Sidwell holding a scythe, the implement of her toil and martyrdom, and a depiction of that incident. This glass was installed in 1895 in the south west window. As can be seen from a drawing of 1830, St Sidwell's Church, circa 1830. The Percy Bacon glass was installed in the perpendicular 3-light south east window all the windows in the south aisle were very tall, three-light, perpendicular windows. These panels rested one above the other, the portrait of St Sidwell being at the top, and the depiction of her martyrdom below. In the bottom of the lower panel (illustrated right in the picture) the Percy Bacon Three Bees rebus is visible. On 2nd February 1895, the Exeter Flying Post reported on the preparation of the glass in Percy Bacon's workshop with a full description of the work:²

In the event, the window was not fitted until late April 1895,³ and finally consecrated on 1st June 1895.⁴ A new brick church was built in the 1950s, now St Sidwell's Community Centre..

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Two of four surviving panels from 1391 by Master Glazier Robert Lyen of Exeter in the great east window of Exeter Cathedral. Left: St Sidwell holding a scythe, and Right: St Helen. These lights replaced the earlier glass of 1304 by Master Walter the Glazier. Although some of Walter’s work was retained by Lyen, extensive modifications to reinforce the window’s crumbling stonework meant some lights had to be reglazed entirely. At the outbreak of World War Two all the medieval glass in the cathedral was removed for safe keeping. In 1942 the cathedral received a direct hit from a German bomb and a great deal of the stained glass still in situ (including Percy Bacon’s memorial to R. D. Blackmore) was destroyed.

Photo by "Jules & Jenny". Creative Commons License. CC-BY-2.0

Further information on the east window can be found on the Demolition Exeter Blog.

St Sidwell and St Helen. Section of the great east window of Exeter Cathedral installed in 1391 by Master Glazier Robert Lyen. Photo by "Jules & Jenny". Creative Commons License CC BY-2.0.

Until the reformation, medieval English churches were awash with the devotional imagery of foreign saints, but many a parishioner would cherish a figure considered one of their own, a local saint to whom they could relate at a visceral level. A local saint, probably a minor noble, or cleric whose body would be said to have been laid in the nearby church, would be much more real in the minds of devotees, and most importantly immediately accessible on a daily basis, unlike the many multi-national or foreign saints whose shrines would have been too far away, and requiring long pilgrimages only available to the relatively wealthy. A local saint would imbue a sense of regional pride and identity, making devotional offerings in the form of money to the church more likely. As Eamon Duffy points out, “the more geographically specific dimension of the cult of the saints, the sanctifying of place, of the local, was also fundamental to the appeal.

The subject of this entry, St Sidwell (also Sidwella, or Sativola) was very much seen as an Exeter saint, and unsurprisingly a pious legend would be forged in the minds of the local population to draw them to their devotions in the church, and put their hands in their pockets! The legend of St Sidwell is like many of those which loosely belong to what might be termed a head-cult. Sidwell is said to have been the daughter of a minor Saxon nobleman, Benna (or Beorna), who lived in Exeter. Bishop Grandisson in his Legenda Sanctorum written in 1327 to define the, “proper lessons for saints’ days” to be read only in the church of Exeter",⁵ goes as far to say she was one of four devout sisters. Clearly to enhance the likelihood of canonisation, and a sign of true devotion to the Christian Faith, it was highly desirable that Sidwell be a virgin. On the death of her father, Sidwell inherited a great deal of his lands in the east of the city which did not go down well with her jealous stepmother, who commissioned one of the farm labourers to kill her. He did so by cutting off her head with a scythe as she prayed in the fields at Hedewell Mede, and where her head fell a spring of pure water welled up. Later she got up and carried her head to a site she had chosen to build a church, reputedly the church which bears her name, and where she was buried. This story of saints carrying their decapitated heads and wells springing up where they fell is a common hagiographical motif, and is similar to another local Devon saint, St Urith (aka Hieritha, one of Sidwell’s sisters) who was portrayed in the left hand panel of Bacon's window at St Sidwell's Church. Urith's supposed tomb can still be seen at St Hieritha's Church in Chittlehampton. Around the country many other hagiographies of English saints follow the same general head-cult, or cephalophore format, including Fremund (Warwickshire), Kenelm (Worcestershire), and Justinian (Pembrokeshire). Another story relates to a second supposed sister of Sidwell, St Juthwara, whose remains were translated to Sherbourne in Dorset during the reign of Ethelred the Unready, and who suffered exactly the same fate as both her sisters, leading one to suppose that these stories were peddled precisely to localise the veneration of the saint. By the 14th century the cult of St Sidwell had spread well beyond Exeter to the rest of Devon and Cornwall. In many churches in those counties her image would be painted on screens, carved into bench ends and bas-reliefs, or painted on glass. In Exeter Cathedral a stained glass window installed by Robert Lyen in 1391 depicts St Sidwell holding a scythe (click on the image above for description),⁶ and at Laneast in Cornwall where the church is dedicated to her, she is represented in another Percy Bacon window. In 1520 Sir Christopher Trychay, vicar of Morebath in north Devon, was looking for a local saint who embodied local pride, and chose St Sidwell to that end, mounting a statue or image of her strategically placed next to Jesus at the high altar, thereby elevating her to special importance.⁷ Devotion to St Sidwell would not be confined to Devon and Cornwall. Another 15th century window depicting the saint which still survives, was installed in the antichapel at All Soul's College Oxford in about 1442. The subject may have been chosen by Roger Keyes, a fellow of the college and supervisor of the building works there, who had previously been a canon at Exeter Cathedral. Keyes was also appointed by Henry VI to take charge of the building of Eton College, where St Sidwell was depicted in a wall painting.⁸ Even today, the Sidwell cult clings on in Exeter. A large bas-relief mural, Modern bas relief of St Sidwell, Exeter by Frederick Irving.
Image © Copyright Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
geograph.org.uk image ref 351497. cc-by-sa/2.0 was commissioned by Tesco and executed by Frederick Irving which can be seen above a shop in Sidwell Street, not far from the church bearing that dedication.

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1. The story of St Sidwell's is well covered on the internet: St Sidwell's Heritage Hub | The Lost Treasures of St Sidwell's | Exeter Memories |
   The Ancient Parish of St Sidwell, Exeter (Oakford Archaeology).
2. The Exeter Flying Post, 02 February 1895, p6.
3. Express & Echo, 20th April 1895.
4. The Builder Vol 68 8 June 1895, p440. The Builder article reported that the window's stonework had been renewed by Harry Hems of Exeter.
5. Bishop Grandisson, Legenda Sanctorum 1327. Ed Reynolds, H. E.
6. Demolition Exeter: The Great East Window of Exeter Cathedral.
7. Duffy, E. The voices of Morebath : reformation and rebellion in an English village, 2003.
8. Sacred Mysteries: St Sidwell, the model for day-return pilgrimage; Daily Telegraph, 13 October 2018. See also Vidimus, Issue 51 (Feature).
9. For an in depth account of St Sidwell: Swanton, M. G. St. Sidwell. An Exeter Legend, Devon Books (Devon County Council), 1986.