Miracles reunited: The 2024 Rearrangement of nIII
Article
In the report he supplied to the Chapter in 1857, Austin Jr included two diagrams of window nIII. In the first, he noted how the panels were arranged in the window before he took them out. In the second, he showed how he rearranged the panels, with the goal, as he put it, "to bring into Harmony the different phases of the Stories illustrated".
THE IMAGES IN THIS ARTICLE ARE PLACEHOLDERS FOR ACTUAL RELEVANT REARRANGEMENT DIAGRAMS ETC
These precious diagrams allow us to reconstruct how the nIII’s panels were arranged before Austin began his work (see diagram A to the right). The window was in a serious muddle at that point, with many of the panels out of their narrative order. These problems were very likely a result of hasty restoration work done in the 1660s, when glaziers had to repair many of the cathedral’s windows in the wake of Puritan iconoclasm.
Austin’s rearrangement (diagram B), was a great improvement. He did indeed “bring into Harmony” most of the window’s stories, and he also made the window look complete by adding four of his own newly made panels into the arrangement. Though question marks hung over the iconography of some of the window’s panels, especially those Austin installed in the top section of the window, his arrangement was considered satisfactory for many years. It was preserved when the panels were reinstalled after both World Wars and also after the 1989 restoration carried out by Canterbury’s conservation studio.
Close examination of nIII’s glass in 2020-23 revealed new information and details that had not been noticed before. Painted dots were found all over the hands and legs of a man pictured seated at Becket’s tomb. This man, long thought to have been lame, is in fact a leper. With this breakthrough, it became clear that two other panels in the window also belonged to the story of this leper, Ralph of Longueville.
The examination also provided new insights into the panel Austin had installed at the very top of nIII. This famous image of Becket coming out of a shrine was long thought to represent a vision of Benedict, one of the monks who recorded Becket’s miracles. On close inspection, however, the man in bed was revealed to be a bearded layman with a bandage around his head – definitely not the monk Benedict! The man is in fact Eilward of Westoning, a layman who suffered a head wound and was imprisoned for months before he was blinded and castrated for his supposed crime of thievery.
With the permission of Chapter and the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England, the panels of Ralph’s and Eilward’s narratives were reunited when the window was reinstalled in 2024. In addition, three of Austin’s replacement panels were moved to the top of the window and three medieval panels moved down into their place, a change made in order to make the window’s surviving medieval glass more visible to viewers.
If future generations wish to return to Austin’s 1857 arrangement, or to put the panels into a different order entirely, these changes are reversible.