The Catholic Church of the English Martyrs in Hillmorton, nowadays a suburb of Rugby, but formerly a seperate village close to the Northamptonshire border. View of the church from the south west.

This is an immensly familiar sight to me as my own parish church in the area I grew up in (I was baptised here and have attended regularly on and off ever since). Next door is English Martyrs Catholic School which I attended between 1978-86.

The church itself was built in 1967 and never completed to the original design which was to have four 'transepts' radiating from this central lantern. In the event only one arm was built and used as the nave whilst the other walls below the windows temporarily blocked with corrugated sheeting.

In 1982 the old nave was walled off to form a church hall, and a new sanctuary built in place of the temporary wall on the east side, necessitating the reorientation of the interior within the main block seen here, an arrangement which remains today. (the last two temporary walls were replaced in brick in 1990)

The church came close to demolition recently when many parishoners voted to replace the structure with a smaller new building, though this scheme fell through last year.

The interior is dominated by four huge resin-bonded dalle de verre windows by Welsh artist Leonard Jonah Jones, abstract in design with a vague Crown of Thorns image. Certain elements of this glazing are failing and require difficult remedial work, though the exact nature of this is far from clear.

Uploaded originally for the 'Guess Where UK?' Group.

Postscript Sept 2011
The stained glass is sadly in the process of being removed and will be replaced with plain double glazing, alas the cost of restoration was high and support for retaining the glass low, thus a tragic end to a once significant scheme of windows.

I am hoping that the panels (many of which have fragmented) can be stored, all the pieces thus far removed have been numbered to indicate their original positions but their exact fate is far from clear.

Tags:   church hillmorton rugby warwickshire modern catholic sandy & norris

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Hillmorton's Roman Catholic church of the English Martyrs was built in 1965 (architects Sandy & Norris) with a square core surmounted by an expanse if coloured glass on all four sides forming a lantern, and capped by a concrete vaulted ceiling. Below it was envisaged that four limbs would sprout from this nucleus to form a cross, though in the event only one was built to the north, which served as the nave until the church was re-orientated in the early 1980s when a new sanctuary extension was added to the east.(the old nave being walled off and serving as the church hall ever since). The remaining two temporary walls below the vast windows were finished in brick only in 1990.

The major artistic feature of the building is the enormous expanse of stained glass by noted Welsh artist Jonah Jones, executed in the dalle de verre ('slab of glass') technique popular in the 1950s & 60s, with heavy chunks of glass set in a resin matrix (in place of traditional lead, which would be insufficient to hold such thick pieces of glass). The design of the four windows is abstract, though each incorporates a subtle crown of thorns motif in red glass.

However, times have changed and the dalle de verre technique has not stood the test of time well. Though the east and north windows remain in sound condition those on the south and particularly the west have suffered from the effects of heat expansion which has caused several of the glass pieces to detach from their resin matrix, whilst in the worst cases the resin structure itself is failing, in places cracked and bowing dangerously. Finding a remedy to these problems seems to be frought with difficulties and curently the future of these windows (the largest work ever undertaken by the artist Jonah Jones) hangs in the balance.

Personally I hope they can be saved, admittedly I have an emotional attachment having grown up here, but I also consider them a rare period piece, a bold expression of the kind of optimism and vision that gave us Coventry Cathedral (a mere 12 miles away) and Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, both of which are accepted as iconic statements of their age, despite the general unpopularity of the architecture of the time.

Any information on how to proceed with saving these precarious artworks will be most gratefully recieved.

Tags:   hillmorton catholic church rugby warwickshire modern contemporary modern church sixties architecture sandy & norris

© All Rights Reserved

Hillmorton's Roman Catholic church of the English Martyrs was built in 1965 (architects Sandy & Norris) with a square core surmounted by an expanse if coloured glass on all four sides forming a lantern, and capped by a concrete vaulted ceiling. Below it was envisaged that four limbs would sprout from this nucleus to form a cross, though in the event only one was built to the north, which served as the nave until the church was re-orientated in the early 1980s when a new sanctuary extension was added to the east.(the old nave being walled off and serving as the church hall ever since). The remaining two temporary walls below the vast windows were finished in brick only in 1990.

The major artistic feature of the building is the enormous expanse of stained glass by noted Welsh artist Jonah Jones, executed in the dalle de verre ('slab of glass') technique popular in the 1950s & 60s, with heavy chunks of glass set in a resin matrix (in place of traditional lead, which would be insufficient to hold such thick pieces of glass). The design of the four windows is abstract, though each incorporates a subtle crown of thorns motif in red glass.

However, times have changed and the dalle de verre technique has not stood the test of time well. Though the east and north windows remain in sound condition those on the south and particularly the west have suffered from the effects of heat expansion which has caused several of the glass pieces to detach from their resin matrix, whilst in the worst cases the resin structure itself is failing, in places cracked and bowing dangerously. Finding a remedy to these problems seems to be frought with difficulties and curently the future of these windows (the largest work ever undertaken by the artist Jonah Jones) hangs in the balance.

Personally I hope they can be saved, admittedly I have an emotional attachment having grown up here, but I also consider them a rare period piece, a bold expression of the kind of optimism and vision that gave us Coventry Cathedral (a mere 12 miles away) and Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, both of which are accepted as iconic statements of their time, despite the general unpopularity of the architecture of the time.

Any information on how to proceed with saving these precarious artworks will be most gratefully recieved.

Tags:   hillmorton catholic church rugby warwickshire modern contemporary modern church sixties architecture dalle de verre stained glass window sandy & norris jonah jones

© All Rights Reserved

Hillmorton's Roman Catholic church of the English Martyrs was built in 1965 (architects Sandy & Norris) with a square core surmounted by an expanse if coloured glass on all four sides forming a lantern, and capped by a concrete vaulted ceiling. Below it was envisaged that four limbs would sprout from this nucleus to form a cross, though in the event only one was built to the north, which served as the nave until the church was re-orientated in the early 1980s when a new sanctuary extension was added to the east.(the old nave being walled off and serving as the church hall ever since). The remaining two temporary walls below the vast windows were finished in brick only in 1990.

The major artistic feature of the building is the enormous expanse of stained glass by noted Welsh artist Jonah Jones, executed in the dalle de verre ('slab of glass') technique popular in the 1950s & 60s, with heavy chunks of glass set in a resin matrix (in place of traditional lead, which would be insufficient to hold such thick pieces of glass). The design of the four windows is abstract, though each incorporates a subtle crown of thorns motif in red glass.

However, times have changed and the dalle de verre technique has not stood the test of time well. Though the east and north windows remain in sound condition those on the south and particularly the west have suffered from the effects of heat expansion which has caused several of the glass pieces to detach from their resin matrix, whilst in the worst cases the resin structure itself is failing, in places cracked and bowing dangerously. Finding a remedy to these problems seems to be frought with difficulties and curently the future of these windows (the largest work ever undertaken by the artist Jonah Jones) hangs in the balance.

Personally I hope they can be saved, admittedly I have an emotional attachment having grown up here, but I also consider them a rare period piece, a bold expression of the kind of optimism and vision that gave us Coventry Cathedral (a mere 12 miles away) and Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, both of which are accepted as iconic statements of their time, despite the general unpopularity of the architecture of the time.

Any information on how to proceed with saving these precarious artworks will be most gratefully recieved.

Tags:   hillmorton catholic church rugby warwickshire modern contemporary modern church sixties architecture dalle de verre stained glass window sandy & norris jonah jones

© All Rights Reserved

Hillmorton's Roman Catholic church of the English Martyrs was built in 1965 (architects Sandy & Norris) with a square core surmounted by an expanse if coloured glass on all four sides forming a lantern, and capped by a concrete vaulted ceiling. Below it was envisaged that four limbs would sprout from this nucleus to form a cross, though in the event only one was built to the north, which served as the nave until the church was re-orientated in the early 1980s when a new sanctuary extension was added to the east.(the old nave being walled off and serving as the church hall ever since). The remaining two temporary walls below the vast windows were finished in brick only in 1990.

The major artistic feature of the building is the enormous expanse of stained glass by noted Welsh artist Jonah Jones, executed in the dalle de verre ('slab of glass') technique popular in the 1950s & 60s, with heavy chunks of glass set in a resin matrix (in place of traditional lead, which would be insufficient to hold such thick pieces of glass). The design of the four windows is abstract, though each incorporates a subtle crown of thorns motif in red glass.

However, times have changed and the dalle de verre technique has not stood the test of time well. Though the east and north windows remain in sound condition those on the south and particularly the west have suffered from the effects of heat expansion which has caused several of the glass pieces to detach from their resin matrix, whilst in the worst cases the resin structure itself is failing, in places cracked and bowing dangerously. Finding a remedy to these problems seems to be frought with difficulties and curently the future of these windows (the largest work ever undertaken by the artist Jonah Jones) hangs in the balance.

Personally I hope they can be saved, admittedly I have an emotional attachment having grown up here, but I also consider them a rare period piece, a bold expression of the kind of optimism and vision that gave us Coventry Cathedral (a mere 12 miles away) and Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, both of which are accepted as iconic statements of their time, despite the general unpopularity of the architecture of the time.

Any information on how to proceed with saving these precarious artworks will be most gratefully recieved.

Tags:   hillmorton catholic church rugby warwickshire modern contemporary modern church sixties architecture dalle de verre stained glass window sandy & norris jonah jones

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