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I have often seen the tall spire at Clapton from the footpath along the River Lea, but only recently I climbed the hill from the river to visit for the first time. Built as the Church of the Ark of the Covenant by the Agapemonites in 1892, it became the Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd after 1956 and then began a new life in 2011 as the Cathedral of the Nativity of Our Lord, a Georgian Orthodox Cathedral. Yet despite these different occupants, it remains almost unchanged since it was built in 1896.

My quest was to view Walter Crane’s windows which are considered to be his greatest achievement in stained glass and were described by Sir John Betjeman as”the richest Victorian glass I have ever seen” maintaining that “it made Burne-Jones and Rossetti’s glass look pale by comparison.”

On either side of the nave are a series of pairs of lancet windows with lyrical designs of fruit and flowers, and it is these benign images that welcome the visitor, glowing within the darkness of the church beneath the heavy wooden roof lowering overhead.

It is in the west windows that a certain surreal melodrama creeps in. Here you will discover a Blakean tableau of the Rising Sun of Righteousness, flanked by personifications of the Powers of Darkness – Disease and Death, and Sin and Shame. The Art Journal had a quite a lot to say about these in 1896 which I quote below.

The submission of women to men was a central tenet of the Agapemonites, a bizarre misogynist sect founded by Henry Prince in 1856 that advocated polygamy for men and died out in 1956.

Thankfully Walter Crane interpreted his commission loosely, portraying nine female figures and a single male who is not presented as dominant. Yet there is a grotesquely seductive morbidity in the portrayal of the Powers of Darkness, who are embodied as female which must have made uncomfortable viewing for the long-suffering women of the Agapemonites.

Outside, on the exterior of the church, the effect is as much Gothic horror as Victorian gothic. On the corners of the spire sit outsize sculptures of the symbols of the four evangelists – the winged ox for Luke, the winged lion for Mark, the eagle for John and the angel for Matthew, each trampling underfoot a human figure, representing the trials of earthly existence: Death, Sorrow, Crying and Pain.

It is a strange experience to confront these brutally sentimental representations of melancholy descending to nihilism, the relics of a sinister cult extinguished a generation ago reduced now to mere curiosities.

Pomegranates

Fig

Briar rose

Iris

Poppies in the corn

Olives

Grapes

Lilies

“The side windows of the nave, nine in all, are filled with flower and fruit designs, in considerably paler colour than the figure compositions. These include the rose, the fig, the pomegranate, the bay, the lily, the vine, the olive, corn and poppies, and the iris. They are naturally of less interest than the subject windows; but they are boldly, simply, and effectively treated, and in a fashion that is thoroughly glass-like, without too nearly following the lines of old work. Perhaps they are a trifle large in scale. It is characteristic of the thoroughness of the artist that no two of these windows are alike; and, more than that, there is absolutely no repetition whatever in them: even when one light seems at first sight to be the counterpart of the other, it is not actually so; each, it will be seen upon comparison, has been separately drawn.” Art Journal 1896

The Rising Sun of Righteousness (Photo by John Salmon)

“Thence rises the Sun, and from its rays issue the forms of Angels with flaming wings bearing a scroll inscribed, ‘Then shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings.’ To the right and left of the window stand the figures of a man with upstretched hands, saluting, and a woman with hands clasped in contemplation. ” The Art Journal 1896

Disease and Death

“There is something most appropriately morbid in the many-hued raiment of Disease, crossed by forked tongues of flame; but it lends itself to strangely fascinating colour. The head is crowned, Medusa-like, with wriggling snakes, in place of locks of hair. The action of the arm behind the head, and the hand clutching the drapery on her breast, are indicative of intense pain. The white -shrouded figure of Death counterbalances in colour the figure of Sin. It again is encircled by a snake, which fulfils much the same decorative purpose as before; but in this case Death’s livid hand grips it by the neck. The other hand, uplifted, lets fall a blood- stained dart. It is a grim and ghastly figure enough; but at the same time admirably decorative. Imagine a white-clad figure, with greenish flesh and purplish wings, against a blue background, the blue and purple echoed, in fainter key, in the snake against the drapery. Its coils break the mass of white, whilst the greenish flames below, growing yellower as they begin to wrap the figure about, carry the lighter tones of colour into the lower part of the window. A clever point in the construction of these designs is the way the faces of Disease and Shame are artfully set in the colour of the drapery, as Death’s dark visage is wrapped in the folds of her white garment. To have made these painful subjects not only dramatically impressive, but at the same time decoratively delightful, is something of a triumph in design” Art Journal 1896

Sin and Shame

“Sin, draped in white, the cloak of pretended innocence, huddles herself together in the attitude of fear and shrinking; her bat-shaped wings break with deep purple the blue sky which forms the background to the greater part of the window. The blue below represents the sea, leaden towards the horizon, against which are seen flames, radiating, it may be presumed, from the Sun of Righteousness. A snake, encircling the figure, whispers the counsel of evil; and fulfils at the same time the decorative function of connecting, by the prismatic colour of its scales, the purple of the wings above with the colour of the flames below.

No less expressive is the companion figure of Shame, crimson-robed, with dull green wings, ruddy-tipped; about her sombre figure also leap the flames; her bent head, and the painful clutch of her hand upon it, are full of meaning.” Art Journal 1896

On the spire are the symbols of the four evangelists – the winged ox for Luke, the winged lion for Mark, the eagle for John and the angel for Matthew, each trampling underfoot a human figure, symbolising the trials of earthly existence: Death, Sorrow, Crying and Pain.