Secrets of Stained Glass: The Crafty Nuns behind St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury

We love an intriguing story with exciting twists and turns! And sometimes the many rare and often mysterious objects and artefacts in historic churches come with exactly such stories. A recently re-discovered stained glass panel at St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury became part of a search for a long-forgotten stained glass artist.

Just like it’s creator the stained glass panel had been almost entirely forgotten. Hidden in storage, the glass evaded close inspection for many years before being uncovered and conserved by Jim Budd Stained Glass. This work was generously funded from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) as part of the project ‘The Past, Present and Future of St Mary’s Stained Glass’. 

The project at the church was initially driven by the need to conserve the windows but was further developed to encourage greater interaction with the heritage of the building through new interpretation, events and activities, including a stained glass festival.

When we tried to establish the background of the re-discovered panel, the natural first assumption was that the window could be attributed to the Rope cousins. They were local, were involved with the church and the window resembled their work in style. They were female stained glass artists in the 20th Century and are associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement. Born in 1882, Margaret Agnes Rope was christened at St. Mary’s church. She later designed the altar in the Trinity chapel at St. Mary’s in memory of her father, Henry John Rope, surgeon at the Salop Infirmary (located just behind the church) and churchwarden.

Initially born into a protestant family, she converted to Catholicism when her mother converted following her father’s death at the age of only 52. She later became a Carmelite nun and raised money for her community of nuns through her work as an artist. In her younger years, she was known as a strong character, who enjoyed smoking and motor bike riding. Her extensive body of work includes several windows in Shrewsbury Cathedral. She often worked in collaboration with her cousin Margaret Edith Rope, whose nickname was ‘Tor’ for tortoise, the symbol she used to sign some of her windows. 

The two Rope cousins have certainly left their mark on church design of the 20th Century, however, as it turned out the window at St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury, was not made by either of them. Instead, it was created by another, less well known female stained glass artist: Joyce Meredith.

The connection was established by researcher Catrin Meredith (no relation), whom we interviewed for our members magazine Pinnacle a little while ago.

‘There was something about the window that caught my eye. Something about the faces’ says Catrin. ‘And that combined with the dedication to a person called Meredith underneath, I had to find out more’. Catrin, who had already been researching the work of stained glass artist Joyce Meredith, immediately noticed a similarity to other pieces of her work. ‘I had known that there had been a Shrewsbury window by Joyce’ says Catrin, ‘but I didn’t know where it was.’

Joyce Meredith was born in Liverpool in 1892 where her father worked in shipping. She lost her parents quite early in life and was sent to her aunt’s boarding school in Southport, Lancashire. She then studied at the Liverpool School of Art from 1911 and went on to study at The Slade. It was after this that Joyce specialised in stained glass. 

‘I only know of about fourteen of her commissions so far’, says Catrin. ‘Joyce used to be part of a religious community and when I went to their archive, I found a list of all her known works.’

Joyce moved around quite a lot during her life, and her few known commissions appear to be quite scattered, with no central archive of her work. Catrin has travelled around the UK to find Joyce’s work and to add to her research, from Peebles in Scotland to Portsmouth. 

Joyce lived on the edges of religious orders, having trained as a nun and living within a few different religious communities, but then deciding to leave. The Shrewsbury window was installed in 1935 as a memorial to Joyce’s cousin Emma Frances Meredith. It was originally installed in what is now the Quaker Meeting House and a Mission Hall for St Mary's on the new Coton Green estate in Shrewsbury, then known as St Catherine’s Hall. 

Through her research, Catrin is starting to recognise Joyce’s style, the faces having a unique, slightly naïve quality. It’s easy to see why the work was originally attributed to the Rope cousins, who were contemporaries of Joyce and who, like her, worked at ‘The Glass House’ studios in London. 

The window has three panels, with the central one showing the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child and the panels either side depicting St Catherine of Alexandria and St Francis of Assisi. St Catherine of Sienna is shown as a smaller figure. Two other small figures depict the virgin Mary with her cousin Elizabeth – could this be a reference to Joyce and Emma’s familial relationship? The figures depicted in memorial windows were carefully considered.

‘We think St Catherine was chosen because the window was originally in St Catherine’s Hall and St Francis as Emma’s middle name was Frances. I really like the fact that she’s thought about who she is memorialising in the window and put some personal elements in there,’ says Catrin. ‘It’s these details that I love, particularly the wolf next to St Francis – there’s something very tender and endearing about it.’

Catrin didn’t initially set out to study Joyce Meredith but like so many researchers, found herself falling down a rabbit hole of fact-finding. 

‘This wasn't a project that I ever set out to do. It kind of found me in a weird set of circumstances. But for the last two years I've been working my way through visiting the sites of the windows.’ Having amassed a large amount of information, Catrin says that she has been persuaded to write it up. 

‘I think at some point there'll be a little book. If only to bring together all the information about Joyce Meredith and her windows. Most, if not all, of the places I've been to haven't known the window that was in their church was by her. So, I leave a little trail as I slowly but steadily work through the windows.’

At a time when there were very few female stained glass artists, their voices are often unrepresented and it was difficult for them to train and get commissions. Catrin believes that it is important to have a record of their life and work. Shrewsbury has turned out to be a well of information for anyone researching female stained glass artists from the past to the present day. On a recent excursion, Catrin not only revisited Joyce Meredith’s window at St. Mary’s, but also paid a visit to Shrewsbury Abbey, which has windows by Jane Gray. Alongside Margaret Agnes Rope another artist called Nathalie Hildegard Liege, created stained glass for Shrewsbury Cathedral and the town Museum and Art Gallery. Shropshire-born artist Jane Gray, who passed away in 2024, designed over 100 stained glass windows over the course of her career, which spanned the 1950s through to the 2020s. Nathalie Hildegard Liege is a contemporary stained glass artist. She has her studio in Shrewsbury and puts her own spin on a longstanding tradition of female stained glass artists working in this town.

So, what’s next for Catrin? Now that she has the research bug, there is no stopping her: ‘My children like to joke about my work. It's sort of: ‘where's mum? Oh, well, she's either in an archive or in a cemetery’. But that's where I find the material. And that's my happy place.’