Corpus of Percy Bacon

City of London, St Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet Street

City of London

Percy Bacon and Brothers, Izaak Walton Memorial Window

The Isaak Walton memorial window of 1895.

The original design drawings by Percy Bacon reproduced in The Builder 13 April 1895, p292.

A sketch of the opening ceremony published in The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 13 April 1895. p13.

The central figure of Izaak Walton, who holds a fish in his left hand. He stands within an impossibly heavy niche, attended by two diminutive angels who, in turn, stand within their own sub-niches built in to the exceptionally wide columns. Behind Walton a wooded valley through which a stream flows, recedes into the distance.

Beneath the standing figure of Walton; here he is seen at his writing desk. The inscription reads:

TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND IN
MEMORY OF IZAAK WALTON, AUTHOR
OF "THE COMPLETE ANGLER" & OTHER
WORKS. BORN 1593, DIED 1683.

Portraits of Richard Hooker and Robert Sanderson.

Portrait of John Donne.

Isaak Walton memorial window, 1895.

Izaak Walton memorial Window. 1895.

Posted 23 December 2022. Updated 11 February 2023.

Dotted around the country there are a myriad memorials to the memory of the English writer and intrepid angler Izaak Walton; most notably in his birthplace of Stafford, and place of burial, Winchester Cathedral. However, it was far more fitting that a memorial be placed in a church in which he worshipped for many years, where he was a churchwarden and sidesman, and where his wife and seven children were buried. Close by St Dunstan's was his London residence Izaak Walton's Residence on the corner of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane
where he lived from 1627 to 1644.

a door or two west of Chancery Lane, and his seminal work, "The Compleat Angler" was published by Richard Marriot and sold in his shop in St Dunstan's churchyard. It was in this parish that Izaak Walton spent much of the busiest time of his life, and he would regularly fish the River Lea and The Thames.

The scheme for the memorial window to celebrate the tercentenary of Walton's birth was proposed by the editor of The Fishing Gazette, R. B. Marston, who set up a fund in October 1886¹, and canvassed for subscriptions from the angling fraternity at home and abroad, notably in America.² This would pay for the window in St Dunstan's-in-the-West, London, and the carved statue of Izaak Walton for the great screen in Winchester Cathedral. It would take some years to amass a sufficiency of funds to pay for the works, but this was finally accomplished in 1895, with £100 being subscribed for the window at St Dunstan's and £10 for the marble tablet outside, this being paid to Percy Bacon & Brothers on completion of the works on 9th April of that year.³ The reported surplus of £5-10 was donated to the Angler's benevolent Fund.

The church, as well as being Anglican, is home to the Romanian Orthodox Church in London. In 1966 an iconostasis The iconostasis installed in 1966 across the north west chapel now blocks the view of the Walton window from the body of the church.

was brought from a monastery in Bucharest and installed across the chapel housing the Walton Window, completely blocking it from view. However, the window can still been seen, albeit at an acute angle, by peering over the door to the now blocked chapel behind the screen. A photo The window as it appeared before the iconostasis was installed in 1966.

published in 1926 shows the unencumbered window.

The central light of the window has a full length portrait of Walton, copied from the statue made by Miss Mary Grant for the screen in Winchester Cathedral. Below that a figure of Walton seated at his desk, while the side lights contained portraits of some of the men whose biographies he wrote; Sir Henry Wootton, his friend and angling companion; Bishop Ken (Walton's brother-in-law); John Donne who was at one time rector of St Dunstan's. The other portraits are of George Herbert, Robert Sanderson, and Richard Hooker. At a well attended ceremony the window was unveiled on the 5th April 1895 by Mr. W. Bailey, Master of the Ironmonger's Company, of which Izaak Walton had been a member.

The window is signed, bottom right, with Bacon's, "Three Bees" rebus.

In 1904 Percy Bacon would again design a window to honour another author and angler, in Exeter Cathedral, this time commemorating the life of R. D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone. Like the Walton window, the subscribers to the Blackmore window were predominantly from the angling fraternity.

Memorial Tablet: 1895

The Isaak Walton memorial tablet; 1895.

The Isaak Walton memorial tablet; 1895. The inscription reads:

To the memory of
Izaak Walton.
Born at Stafford Aug: IX^th. mdxciii. Died Dec: XV^th. mdclxxxiii.
Buried in Winchester Cathedral.
Author of "The Compleat Angler", also of the "Lives" of
Dr Donne, Richard Hooker, Gerorge Herbert, Dr Sanderson &c.

WALTON resided for many years in Fleet Street at the corner of
Chancery Lane (West side) and between 1632 and 1644
was an Overseer of the Poor, Sidesman and Vestryman of this Parish:
he was also a member of the Ironmongers Company.

THIS TABLET and the STAINED GLASS WINDOW
on the North West side of this Church were erected by some Anglers
and other admirers of Walton in the month of April 1895.

Isaak Walton memorial tablet, 1895.

Posted 11 February 2023.

As well as the window, a marble tablet was executed by the Bacon Studio's, and installed on the outside of the church, just to the right of its Fleet Street entrance. The inscription reads:

The inscription is signed; James Booty and Joseph Crowther (Churchwardens of St Dunstan in the West), and W^m. Martin .... Rector

References: Use your browser's Back button to return to text.

Forest and Stream, 11 May 1895, p372.
Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News - Saturday 13 April 1895, p13. The window's unveiling was widely reported in periodical of the time.
Fishing Gazette, Saturday 13 April 1895, p12.

Footnotes:

History of St Dunstan-in-the-West: Link
Simon Bradley in, "Buildings of England; London. 1: City of London", 1997 (Pevsner), incorrectly (and astonishingly) attributes the window to Kempe, despite the evidence of the Bacon Studio's Rebus. A footnote to Bradley's comment states, "*Augustus Hare, Walks in London (1901), gives it to Bacon".

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