Bill Pardoe Stained Glass Artist

Now this was St Peter's at Stourton and the chancel fell down, the sandstone had perished and that window which had been put in by Howard Walker of Stourbridge, a former Mayor of Stourbridge, he got some woman from the Cotswolds about 1936, because Howard had been a lay reader in that church for over fifty years. And he came to me with almost with tears in his eyes. The end of the chancel had fallen in and the windows smashed in little bits, we got a lorry and got this window on and all these fragments of glass, we wanted to get them all together, you see.

Well, it was quite a task but fortunately, very fortunately, they'd got a photograph, a postcard, a very sharp one and I was able to photograph that and blow it up to the full size of the window there, on that ready made cartoon, I can pick all the little bits up and I painted, very fortunately also, none of the faces were damaged. That was a stroke of luck, really. It was a lovely window, you know, inside the church; it did beautify the little place.

And there they are, there's St Peter, it is St Peter's, the Virgin and child, the Good Shepherd, and St Chad.

Now I want you to have a look at this St Chad - because he's wearing a pair of spectacles. Now spectacles weren't invented until about 1400 and something and magnifying glasses and St Chad lived in 600 and something. That was a mistake, wasn't it for one thing. But I want you to have a look at the face of St Chad - this is not St Chad, this is Howard Walker's face - the former Mayor of Stourbridge. What a nerve, having yourself put in a stained glass window. (I can find no trace of this church in 2016 nor any details of it being demolished)

But wait a minute. It didn't stop there. If you look at the Virgin Mary it’s the speaking likeness of his wife and young Stanley Walker who was a very fine artist, and they were running that Stour event, was it, they used to do a marvellous line of countrymen, and that is little Stanley, as a baby. Very lovely though. And now it’s been vandalised again, and I'll get the job of it, making all new robes around the edge, it was completely smashed.