Bill Pardoe Stained Glass Artist

And now to Kinver - I hope I'm not keeping you too long, I've only got another 15 or 16 slides I think. Now Kinver were in some terrible trouble because the North Aisle was falling down - it was jerry built you see about 1856. And they wanted to rebuild it.

And of course, the planners, bless them, the planners wouldn't let them. It had got to be done exactly the way they wanted it. And you know, they held the church up for two years before, there was a big enquiry held, I was asked to give some evidence about the stained glass windows, oh the stained glass windows had to go back and once got these in they had exactly the same fault, they wanted to build it in a modern way so they could hold these summer fairs that they have in the church to raise funds you see. And do you know, when the Minister gave his decision they were so adamant, the Council were, of course, they always make everyone go to appeal. It’s almost standard now, you've got to go to appeal and then 9 times out of 10 you win the appeal. It’s a total waste of money, some of the planners decisions. Anyhow, by the time they got the plans through and the Minister suggested, nothing to do with me what they do with the stained glass windows, he said it is solely the prerogative of the church authorities themselves, and he allows it to be built, of course. And in the meantime the costs of building it had escalated and the church had to find something like £40,000 more than they had.

And I was taking all the windows out - that's me looking a right Charlie at the top there three dimensional saint. I took all these windows out and they are still in storage, they don't know what to do with them, there's no place for them in the church.

And I had to make some new windows for them in the new nave that they were putting up, the new aisle rather, North Aisle. There had been a window that had been blank for many years where the choir hold their meetings I was just to fill it in so I used some little bits of things that were up in one of the gables which couldn't be seen, they couldn't be seen at all and I made them into 12 panels, you see me working there on them.

Bill working on the panels for St Peter's Church, Kinver

And that was the new north aisle it was built, a very modern structure and that's the window, about, well it’s quite a height that is, it would be about 14 or 15 foot, and all these little panels inside, they did very well, I thought. They were right, they'd never been seen these, they were so high up in one of the gable ends of the church. And it was nice to bring them down and install them somewhere they could be looked at. And there's me putting a modern window in the back, I didn't design it, don't blame me for it, it was the architect's design. It had to be done like that in clear glass to let a lot of light in so that when they hold their summer festivals and fairs and that they let plenty of light in the vestry.

My friend Stanley Griffiths, I usually have a chat with him, he was very fond of that. He designed the church at Potters Cross and he borrowed a bit of a drawing off me Brian Stokes' drawing of Figure of Charity. And it was sent down to Powells of Whitefriars because they were very famous stained glass people and they'd got a French artist there who was a specialist in this (deserred?) type of glass, you know big blobs of coloured glass, and they chip it on an anvil and no paint whatever is used upon it. And when the church was all ready for opening I went down with Stanley Griffiths and he said, what do you think about it? I said, well you've got to stand in front for about 5 minutes before it comes to you and there's that figure of charity, there's no paint whatever, this is chipped bits of glass and there are five figures around it, and you can't see them until you've been looking at it a long time. But the theory of it and the design is good, there's a scythe and an anchor, you see representing the fruit of the earth and the fruits of the sea and that is the figure of Charity in Potters Cross church, and very lovely too.

And then they came to me and they say, now we've got 2 little panels by the sides of the door and we want to match the colour that's in there, something like that, you see. But to show you how effective it was as far as the colour match goes you see I've more or less got the effect at any rate. I was very pleased with that.

Panels to the side of the main door by Bill Pardoe

Potters Cross New Church in 2016