Introduction

Home

Introduction

Introduction

Bill's Lecture

Early Days
(Lagos, Oldbury,Langley)

Lye & Stambermill

Oldswinford & Stourbridge

Brierley Hill

Cradley Heath, Cradley & Dudley

Wollescote & Kinver

Additional Material

Designs

Other Works

Bill at Work

Summary

Bill Pardoe served an apprenticeship and set up his own business in 1925. Although based in Lye he gave it the name ‘The Stourbridge Stained Glass Works’. Over the next 15 years he was very active in the making of windows, from small domestic panels to large church windows.

 

The Second World War interrupted this and it was not until 1953 that he re-started his business. There was far less stained glass work and until his retirement in 1969 he was mainly involved with general glazing work and also in the manufacture of mirrors.

Once he retired he could spend more time following his own interests and he did a variety of work for churches and organisations in the West Midlands.

He was well known for his lectures on ‘Stourbridge Old & New’, ‘Old Lye & Wollescote’, ‘The Stained Glass of Chartres Cathedral’ and ‘The Glory of Witley Court’.

This work is an effort to chronicle as much as possible of the windows with which he was involved during his life.

The starting point is his set of notes for his lectures on local Stained Glass, written about 1978. These were found amongst his effects after he died in 1991.

The slides used by Bill for these lectures are long gone.  In 2010 some of the locations were visited and new photographs taken but in other cases the buildings were either demolished (with the loss of the windows) or locked up and so inaccessible.

Arlen & Darroll Pardoe