Prees Parish Church has an extraordinary medieval window by the great John Thornton, which is being conserved. As part of the events relating to its restoration, the church and village school are leading an ambitious religious curriculum and arts programme, culminating in the creation of a new stained glass window for the school. This will be an all-age project: designed and made by the school, working together with residents from the local care home and a group of adults from the village, and will be led by a local stained glass artist.
 
Who we are:

This project is led by St Chad’s Church Prees in Shropshire and Prees CE Primary School, together with the stained glass artist Nathalie Hildegarde Liege. Natalie has worked on similar projects in Liverpool and Shrewsbury. For example: in 2015, fifteen year 9 students worked with her on a project with the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, to commemorate 800 years since the signing of the Magna Carta, which you can read about here. 
 
The Project - A window for our Time:

This project is intended to offer opportunities for both children and adults to experience what is now an endangered craft, as well as being able to engage in debates around faith, culture and heritage.
 
For the last year the church has been fundraising for the restoration of its wonderful medieval window created in the 1400s by John Thornton, the famous glass master responsible for the Great East Window in York Minster. It’s extraordinary to think this outstanding artefact, of national importance, is in our village church. It depicts St John the Baptist, Herod and Herodias, fragments of the Last Supper, and the Crucifixion and is a wonderful exposition of Biblical narrative. It also shows figures from every strata of society at the time.

It is costing over £70,000 to conserve and a huge amount of this has been raised by the children of the school next door, the brownies and guides, local families and individuals etc, who have put on many events and sponsored one another for many activities. It has brought dozens – if not hundreds – of people into the church who have never been before! Their generosity has been genuinely humbling – especially as the village is in the 4th decile of deprivation.

The church wanted to give something back to the whole village – and especially to its young people – and realised that a new stained glass window, designed and produced by the children, adults in the village and residents of the local care home would be a very special way of thanking them, of inspiring them, to encourage debates around faith, history and identity. This should tie the children and families and other villagers even more closely to the church, working together to produce a new heritage for current and future generations.

It will be installed in the school in a window that overlooks the church – they will see the church of St Chad’s through their new, beautiful, stained glass window, tying the two together.
 
Our objectives are:

To create dialogues between faith and no faith, young and old, exploring the biblical themes and cultural representations of the medieval window and exploring how these relate to our current societal issues

To involve the wider community – and especially the primary school – in activities involving formal and informal religious education

To use creative art and an endangered heritage craft - stained glass making  - to forge links between a range of local people.
 
How the project will work:

Children who will be in year 5 will be involved in workshops in church, in Nathalie’s professional glass studio, as well as continuing the work in class. These children come from diverse backgrounds: more than 50% have been identified as having SEND, qualify for the pupil premium or come from the gypsy, traveller community, and many children come from deprived households.

We intend to the project to be as inclusive as possible and are inviting members of the nearby care home to take part too, working with Natalie and other parts of the village community.
 
Adults from the village will work in Nathalie’s studio, learning some of the basic skills needed to produce the window, and Nathalie will also run workshops in the local care home for residents.
 
By working together it should foster empathy within the community, allowing people of diverse ages, and to degree backgrounds and cultures, to work together on a beautiful object for the future - an object located in the school through which the Church will always be viewed.
 
This is a one-off project, which will take place September-October 2025 and March-October 2026. The window should be installed by Christmas 2026 - however, its outcome will enrich the school and the village for many years to come.