Abbey Stained Glass Studio

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Fire Damage | Explosion Damage

Over the years stained glass windows become buckled and this is caused largely by the heat from the sun. The darker colours of stained glass attract more heat than the lighter colours and when the lead gets warm it becomes pliable.

The weight of lead and glass makes the window sag just a little each day heat is generated. This buckling puts extreme pressure on the individual glasses and they begin to break.

The artwork, which gives the coloured antique glasses their three dimensional effect, flakes off at the edges of the cracks and begins to look most unsightly. Added to this there is often a century of grime, both inside and outside the stained glass windows as they are normally so high up that they cannot be cleaned.

These stained glass windows are usually held in-situ with rusting iron horizontal tie bars. The rust caused these bars to expand and this has a knock-on effect of bursting the surrounding stonework framing to the windows.

There is no easy remedy. The stained glass windows have to be taken out, and their old perished lead, which has lost its strength, removed. Each piece of glass has to be cleaned individually on the benches, repairs as considered necessary carried out and then the whole window completely releaded and cemented. This work, on completion, will keep most stained glass windows in good order for the next seventy years when the whole operation will have to be repeated again.

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