Following approval to build a new chapel at St Mary's RC Primary School in Middlewich, the school wanted to add a large stained glass window to the three windows of the curved elevation behind the altar.
Three companies submitted designs, including our own design by Jamie Moore. The brief was quite simple in that the school wanted something colourful and hopeful, fairly modern and quite simple. Our design was chosen for its vibrancy, high impact and careful choice of coloured glass.
Given the dangers of installing lead-based panels into a school environment and to ensure that the brand new building was ecologically sound, there was also a requirement to encapsulate the window into double glazed units. This meant significant design issues both in terms of the structure of the window and in terms its long-term performance, but ones we were able to overcome with a little latteral thinking!
The window was made up of over 2600 sections of glass, most of which was from Lamberts in Germany who provided some quite stunning colours for us to work with. The panels were leaded up and the rims were leaded using Y-section lead to enable them to be gripped by the spacers of the double glazing units. Each 2m x 1m panel had 840 solder joints on average!
Installation took place exactly on time with the contractor's programme.