Chapel's windows 'great work of art'

7:00am Monday 7th May 2012 in News Photograph of the Author By Ben Wilkinson, Crime Reporter. Call me on (01865) 425427

Chapel's windows 'great work of art' Chapel's windows 'great work of art'

Abingdon School boys are seeing life in a new light after £150,000-worth of stained glass windows were unveiled in the school chapel.

The series of new windows, which depict the Christian story and life at the school, were designed by Horton-cum-Studley artist Nicholas Mynheer.

Scenes included are boys playing rugby, students studying, choir and chess, and the project took nearly 10 years to complete.

One window celebrates the commitment of the school community to the Armed Forces and is plain but for a single red poppy.

The Rev Paul Gooding, the school’s assistant chaplain, said: “The interweaving of modern school scenes with God’s story represents the spiritual dimension of life – there is something for everybody to look at.”

Funding for the windows came from a wide spectrum with more than 200 individual supporters.

These included past and present staff, governors and parents, Old and honorary Abingdonians plus many individuals and organisations associated with the school.

Rev Gooding said: “They really are remarkable works of art. It is amazing to think that pupils and visitors to the school will be able to look at these for many, many years to come.

“It is quite humbling to be involved in a legacy project that you know will be there long after you have gone, they are as much for future generations as the present.”

Mr Mynheer started work on the windows in 2003.

He said: “I feel enormously privileged to have had the opportunity to design a set of chapel windows that celebrate all that is good about Abingdon School and reflect the faith on which it was founded.”

The Bishop of Oxford, Rt Rev John Pritchard, held a dedication service for the windows at the school on Friday, April 27.

He said: “The windows really are a magnificent achievement.

“They tell the story of the school in the context of the story of Christ and use design and colour very imaginatively for that purpose.

“I feel sure that the chapel will become a very significant place of Mynheer pilgrimage.

“Nicholas has surpassed himself.”

Comments(10)

Abberdon says...
11:36am Mon 7 May 12

What an appalling waste of money! 150k smackers just for a few windows?

Does this school get any money from the taxpayers?

Absolutely disgusting.

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Reynaldo Throckmorton, Duke of Botley says...
8:35pm Mon 7 May 12

Windows are unnecessary. Personally I live inside a sealed cube, into which no daylight or oxygen can penetrate. And I love it!

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eatmygoal says...
11:20am Tue 8 May 12

Abberdon wrote:
What an appalling waste of money! 150k smackers just for a few windows?

Does this school get any money from the taxpayers?

Absolutely disgusting.
What are you talking about? It's a private school and the windows were funded by private donors (who can spend their own money however they choose - like you and me). What has tax got to do with anything?

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Abberdon says...
1:23pm Tue 8 May 12

"The ultimate iniquity, though, is that independent, fee-paying schools are allowed to exist at all. In democratic, equal, fair and inclusive Scotland, not enough of us find it strange that a cartel of elite schools exists solely for those privileged children born into wealth and power… and the few dozen proles they deign to admit for the purpose of preserving their wretched charitable status."

http://www.guardian.
co.uk/commentisfree/
2010/jan/17/scotland
-comprehensive-educa
tion

Sounds familiar?

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simplicissimus says...
1:35pm Tue 8 May 12

I agree that charitable status should go, but in free countries, people should be ffree to buy education, like any other good. And when are governments going to use taxes that parents of fee-paying pupils pay into the state kitty to pay pro rata to the schools actually doing the educating?

Likewise, if you do not pay income tax, your vote should merit lesser representation IMO.

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Abberdon says...
3:06pm Tue 8 May 12

And does it matter how much VAT you pay, when it comes to the value of a vote?

Or excise on booze and fuel?

Really simplicissimus, you should think your statements through sometimes.

Why should a boozing petrolhead who pays income tax at the top rate, without fiddling anything, get a vote worth more than an abstemious cycling trumpet player in the Salvation Army?

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Abberdon says...
3:10pm Tue 8 May 12

Another point simpo', do you really regard education as 'a good', as in 'goods'?

Do you also regard health as 'a good' as in 'goods'?

What next praytell? Are children to be seen as 'a good'?

God forbid that we have come to this. The perfect world of Thatcherism, when all relations are but money ones.

Sounds a bit like what our auld chum Mr. Marx used to talk about, eh wot?

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simplicissimus says...
3:28pm Tue 8 May 12

I'd ditch all tax bar income tax, and make it impossible to evade. That's the cheapest to collect and fairest. I favour "No representation without taxation". Too many Labour voters are parasites on the backs of the working taxpayer.

Nobody has a right to something for nothing (or should have).

Don't confuse the trimmed future of the UK welfare state with the failed experiment of the Fabians, or their ilk.

Anyway, as a posting on this thread appears to have been unreasonably removed by the OM, which seems pretty Fabian at times, I won't be wasting more keystrokes much here. The thread makes little sense without it.

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mickeybear says...
9:27am Wed 9 May 12

Whilst the Bishop of Oxford is quoted as saying that he is "sure the chapel will become a very significant place of Mynheer pilgrimage", I can't help but observe that one might have hoped he would have thought first about the chapel's status as a place of worship, and hoped that the windows would have attracted people to come in pilgrimage to Christ rather than to Mr Mynheer. Then there is the little problem of access. This is a private chapel, in a school. Not many pilgrims of any sort are going to be able to gain admission, despite the huge sums in tax relief/gift aid/rollover granted from the public exchequer to make it possible.

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Abberdon says...
11:13am Wed 9 May 12

True mickeybear, but perhaps the journalist misheard the good Bishop and wrote the name of the artist when he should have been writing, '...a very significant place of minor pilgrimage', refering to what you point out, the closed nature of the private chapel, albeit set within a Heavenly place, a state subsidised private school for the children of the wealthy elite?

Could be the Bish' was having a joke.

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