Collecting Stained Glass

 On a drive back from the hardware store in Strathroy the other day, my husband and I passed St. Paul's Anglican church on Wisbeach (Warwick Township). We stopped and walked around it, admiring the pale gold of the brick, the serene surroundings, and the view of open fields. Their stained glass windows have figures on them, and there are also dedicated windows with family names painted on them, same as ours. They've got lovely patterned white/clear glass that I've never seen before. 

But they've also got severe damage and sagging. Someone has screwed plexiglass over them, same as ours, and the heat has destroyed them. We also noticed some bad structural issues with the church.

I came home and phoned the woman who runs the cemetery, which is still active, and I looked up the history of the place online. The congregation gave up holding services there exactly fifty years ago, and the poor building has been left unheated and empty ever since. They open it once a year for an annual BBQ, and there might be a rare wedding. (Personally, with the back wall bowing like that, I wouldn't want to spend much time inside!) I'd love to see the windows from the inside, though.

Wish I had the money to restore this church. Wish I could get my hands on those windows and flatten them out and heal them, as I'm doing to mine. What is it about old stained glass that makes me want to rescue every piece of it I see? Someone over a hundred years ago put a lot of effort into creating something beautiful, and it's a shame to lose it. But even if I volunteered my services to help them, there's no point restoring windows in a building that is slowly collapsing. Wish I were a millionaire! It's such a beautiful building to lose.

And then the wishful thought: I wonder if I could buy their windows... No idea where I'd put them. But it seems urgent and important to preserve them.