Following the publication of two monographs on the medieval glass of specific buildings (Reference AyersAyers 2004; Reference KingKing 2006) the CVMA returns to the Summary Catalogue Series with this, the second county volume by Dr Hebgin-Barnes. Her Medieval Stained Glass of the County of Lincolnshire (Reference Hebgin-Barnes1993) covered 650 parishes, whilst rural and sparsely populated medieval Lancashire has less than a tenth that number. With this in mind, a joint volume with Cheshire was originally envisaged, but so much unknown material was uncovered that it was decided that both counties deserved separate volumes. However there are many affinities between the two. These include styles of glass, the patrons who commissioned windows and, as Richard Marks has suggested, various workshops located in the north west supplying the local regional demand for glass. For these reasons the ‘Introduction’ will be common to this and to the forthcoming Cheshire volume.

One surprising aspect of the volume is the decision to push the terminal date forward to 1800, from the previous CVMA benchmark of c 1540 or 1559. Two main reasons are cited. Firstly, the now-perceived wisdom is that the Reformation was slow to make itself permanent in the north west because of the underlying religious conservatism and the physical difficulties in establishing the new doctrine in such far-flung places. This lack of clarity makes it almost impossible to date with any precision some of the glass which may generally be regarded as sixteenth century but not necessarily pre-Reformation, and the Catalogue would be the poorer if any was to be arbitrarily excluded. Secondly, the large amount of heraldic and foreign glass found in church, mansion and museum simply could not be excluded.

This allows the real surprise of the catalogue, the practically unknown collection of glass in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. When the antiquary and collector Dr Philip Nelson, FSA, produced the first county lists of ancient glass in Reference Nelson1913, he noted but one piece in Liverpool City Museum, ‘a XV century quarry bearing a bird on a twig between R T, the rebus of Robin Tree’. This is presently catalogued as in Drawer 14, Box 2 of a sixteen-drawer cabinet in a collection which grew by about 400 pieces with the acquisition of much of Nelson’s collection after his death. The amazingly diverse pieces receive appropriately detailed consideration in the Catalogue, and Dr Hebgin-Barnes (Reference Hebgin-Barnes2009) has written a very useful summary article on the collection.

Although the Catalogue is the raison d’être of the book, its heart is to be found in the Introduction. After a short overview, the physical, documentary and stylistic evidence for regional glass workshops is analysed, pointing to Chester and Manchester as likely locations, particularly for the well-known St Helen cycle dating from about 1500 at Ashton-under-Lyne. ‘The religious background’ concisely brings together the latest thinking on the religiosity of the region over time, which is reinforced by an examination of ‘Documentary sources’, including pre- and post-Reformation wills, various antiquarian notes and, towards the end of the period, the commission book of William Peckitt, which shows details of his window of 1769, now in St Ann’s, Manchester.

There then follows a section on ‘Donors and heraldry’, which traces the changes in fashion for remembrance from piety to heraldic display with many armorial bearings still to be seen in domestic settings. The most famed commemoration – of the ‘Flodden Archers’ at Middleton – is now known to date from 1505, and may instead commemorate a confraternity of archers. There then follows, as in earlier volumes, a section on ‘Condition’, which to me seems to be misplaced as it is immediately followed by ‘Iconography’. Since the condition of glass is very often due to iconoclastic vandalism, I expected to see the subject of the iconography come first. An interesting outcome of extending the scope of the volume into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is that subjects such as military exercises (drill quarries) and occupations begin to appear in glass in domestic settings.

The Introduction continues with a wide-ranging discussion on the related topics of ‘Colour and technique’ and ‘Style, design and date’, and ends with a section on ‘Foreign glass’ which is present in many churches and residences; these were imported in great numbers from the eighteenth century onwards, but unfortunately almost all of it unprovenanced.

In the Catalogue, the longer entries are for the important ecclesiastical glass, as at Ashton-under-Lyne, Cartmel Fell and Priory, Middleton and Sefton, and collections not only at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery but also at its Speke Hall and Pilkington’s ‘The World of Glass’ collection at St Helens, which includes an assortment of medieval and foreign glass. There are appendices on ‘Post-medieval’, ‘Excavated’, ‘Dispersed’ and ‘Lost’ glass.

As the author found, the corpus is large and varied and her diligent researches have produced a volume full of interest, insight and pleasure. Oxford University Press has given it the exemplary production it deserves. Sarah Brown, in reviewing the Lincolnshire volume in volume 78 of this Journal, noted the rather high price of £99. Sixteen years on, the Lancashire volume, at the same price, must be regarded as exceptional value.

A very useful facility which can now be fully exploited with this volume is the search tool on the CVMA website, which renders in radiant colour those images published in black and white, further enhancing the enjoyment of this excellent book.