BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON
HISTORIC CHURCHES
21ST ANNUAL EDITION
3
in office by securing Strachan’s services for the
Memorial Chapel windows. On 10 October
1929 MacAlister suddenly announced that he
would retire five days later. Just one day before he
stepped down, the Chapel Committee authorised
Sir Donald to consult again with Strachan about
designing a complete scheme for the chapel
windows that could be implemented as funds
allowed. Unaware that MacAlister was no longer
in post, Strachan replied enthusiastically on 16
October 1929: ‘Ten years of constant demands
for windows far in excess of the number I could
undertake, may have robbed the letter post of
some of its earlier power to thrill in this way: but
the Complete Extensive Scheme with its superb
possibilities is a thing apart, and always sends the
blood to one’s head – pleasurably’. Thus began
an extraordinary commission that was to occupy
Strachan on and off until his death 21 years later.
Born in Aberdeen in 1875 and educated at
Robert Gordon’s, Strachan attended evening
classes at Gray’s School of Art while working
as an apprentice lithographer, then studied at
the Life School of the Royal Scottish Academy
in Edinburgh from 1894–5. After a stint as a
political cartoonist on the Manchester Evening
Chronicle in 1895–7, Strachan returned to
Aberdeen as a mural and portrait painter
before finding his passion for stained glass
in a commission for St Mary’s Chapel of the
historic Parish Kirk of St Nicholas. Among
other commissions in the city, Strachan also
worked for the University of Aberdeen at
King’s College Chapel and at the library of
Marischal College on the John Cruikshank
memorial windows, which celebrated the faculty
of science through the theme of creation.
By 1929 Strachan had gained an
international reputation through the publicity
surrounding his four huge windows of 1911–13
at the Peace Palace in The Hague. He also had
significant experience of designing complete
schemes, such as the Lowson Memorial Kirk in
Forfar of 1914–16, and war memorial windows
including those of 1923–7 for the Scottish
National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle.
Although the university’s Hunterian
Museum and Art Gallery holds only one
preliminary design or ‘cartoon’ relating to the
chapel windows (the Alma Mater window),
the university archives contain an extensive
correspondence between Douglas Strachan
and Principal MacAlister and his successors,
Robert Rait from late October 1929 and
Hector Hetherington from 1936. These letters
are remarkable for the light they shed on
Strachan’s creative processes and the evolution
of an exceptional series of artistic works.
Strachan studied the chapel carefully
to capture its ‘personality’ and the ‘local
or community tang’, observing the light at
different times of day and noting various
practical bearings on the scheme so that the
new windows could ‘look as if they had grown
there naturally and inevitably’. Although
Principal MacAlister had initially suggested an
Old Testament theme based on Hebrews 11,
his successor Robert Rait was keen to allow
Strachan freedom to select the best treatment
for the space and not impose restrictions on his
artistic freedom. Eventually, after a period of
illness, Strachan sent a key plan with notes and
Detail of Strachan’s ‘Tanks, Machinery of War’ window at the Scottish National War Memorial, Edinburgh
(Photo: Antonia Reeve, reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of The Scottish National War Memorial)
Design for the Memorial Chapel interior c1928, John Burnet, Son & Dick, watercolours added by Robert Eadie
(Reproduced by kind permission of the University of Glasgow)
