The New Murrey and Blue blog

Thanks to a TV documentary involving student stained-glass glaziers this viewer was taken to Canterbury Cathedral to see its astonishingly beautiful windows, some of which we learned have now been dated as early as the mid-1100s, maybe even the 1130s..

Léonie Seliger, the head of stained glass conservation at the cathedral, and part of the research team examining the windows, said: “[The stained glass] would have witnessed the murder of Thomas Becket, they would have witnessed Henry II come on his knees begging for forgiveness, they would have witnessed the conflagration of the fire that devoured the cathedral in 1174. And then they would have witnessed all of British history.”

Prior to this dating it was believed that all the earlier glass had been destroyed in the fire, but now it’s apparent that some definitely survived and was used in the rebuilding.

You can read more about the glass here and at Canterbury Cathedral’s own site – and there are many other sites that deal with this interesting subject.