2
BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON
HISTORIC CHURCHES
21ST ANNUAL EDITION
A SPIRITUAL ENTERPRISE
DOUGLAS STRACHAN’S STAINED GLASS IN
THE MEMORIAL CHAPEL, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
Nick Haynes
T
HE UNIVERSITY
of Glasgow moved
from the city’s polluted High Street
to George Gilbert Scott’s academic
citadel on rural Gilmorehill in 1870, but the
partially finished complex lacked a chapel.
The renowned architect of the Edward VII
Galleries at the British Museum, John James
Burnet, began planning the completion of the
western quadrangle of Scott’s great edifice with
a new arts block and chapel in 1913. However,
the outbreak of the first world war in 1914
put a stop to all building projects, and it was
January 1923 before work could begin. On
4 October 1929 the ailing principal, Sir Donald
MacAlister, finally dedicated the chapel to the
memory of the 750 university staff, students
and alumni who perished in the Great War.
Burnet looked to 13th-century France for the
Gothic inspiration of his design, and perhaps to
the surviving medieval chapels of the universities
of St Andrews and Aberdeen for character,
scale and details. For the beautiful Arts and
Crafts interior of the chapel, Burnet planned
an open-trussed roof, oak choir stalls and
organ case, stone sculptures, marble memorial
panels and a scheme of stained glass windows.
In November 1919, Burnet consulted
the stained glass artist Douglas Strachan
(pronounced ‘Strawn’) about an early version of
the chapel design and obtained estimated costs
for the window series. Strachan and Burnet were
both members of the Aberdeen Ecclesiological
Society, founded in 1886 by Dr James Cooper,
former Minister of St Nicholas, and from
1899 the professor of ecclesiastical history
at Glasgow. Cooper is thought to have been
instrumental in securing Strachan’s first two
commissions for the university in the ceremonial
Bute Hall: the Robert Story Memorial Window
of 1907–9, and the Janet Galloway Memorial
Window of 1909–14. Strachan also worked
on the east window of the Burnet-designed
Stenhouse and Carron Parish Church in 1914.
A ‘harmonious scheme of stained glass
windows’ was still on the agenda of the New
Building Committee when it met in March
1927. Unfortunately, the university’s budget
did not stretch to finishing the sculptural
scheme or installing stained glass at the
outset, so the slender lancet windows were
filled initially with a simple pattern of leaded
clear glass supplied by the Abbey Studio
of the City Glass Company, Glasgow.
Principal MacAlister’s health was failing by
the autumn of 1929, and he was clearly keen to
complete the architectural legacy of his period
St Andrew (west window, light 1, 1931–7), gifted by Dr James Thomson Bottomley in memory of William
Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, a professor of natural philosophy and chancellor of the university in 1904–7
(All photos: Nick Haynes, reproduced by kind permission of the University of Glasgow, unless otherwise stated)
