Bill Pardoe Stained Glass Artist

Now I was doing the glazing and a lot of work on the Church of the Holy Name, one of my lads was in Cambridge some years ago and every Sunday we would be trotting down there about 8 o'clock down the Coventry Road in the car, to Cambridge, and you'd see great crowds of people and I'd wonder, what on earth is the matter, there's no football match on, this morning, there's no football match on Sunday. It was all the Irish people coming to this Catholic Church, you know, to Mass, they had seven sittings to say Mass, there were so many crowds of people.

And the old parson, he said, look, he said, I'd like something, there was no stained glass at all in this church, he said I'd like something there in the crying room, he said, can you think of something. So I thought back to this window I had put in in Wollescote, and I said I'd like something like that in it, give a splash of colour. That was the crying room.

Because there was a triple glazed window here, to deaden the sound, and those, that screen and windows were double glazed, so that mothers could take their babies to the back room, and they could partake of the service, they could see everything going on round the altar, and the little youngsters could squeal their heads off and you couldn't hear anything in the church. A crying room. And that was the window and he was very pleased, he said, we're going to say a mass for you, he said Next Sunday there's going to be a mass. Goodness me. I didn't feel any different. But it came out very well, I thought. There again, you see the very dark ruby and shading up through that style onto the rose of glory.