Stained glass window showing ascension of Christ, £4000 at Thomas N Miller.
A church’s entire collection of stained glass windows sold at Thomas N Miller Auctioneers in Newcastle on July 15.
Built in 1902-1903, Burn Park Road Methodist Church in Sunderland ceased operating as a church and the property was listed on estate agent websites in 2023. The windows date from 1902 to the late 1940s and were all designed by Atkinson Brothers of Newcastle and manufactured by Hartley Wood & Co Glass Works in Sunderland.
The top-selling piece from the 24-lot collection was a 10ft 6in x 6ft 11in (3.19m x 2.1m) design comprising three separate lancet windows, showing Christ’s ascension into heaven within Gothic architectural borders, which fetched £4000 against a £5000-7000 estimate.
Other sold lots included memorial pieces of Sunderland families and a memorial window for the veterans of the First and Second World Wars which fetched £1800.
“It was fairly unusual to be consigned an entire church’s stained glass, made more difficult also by the logistics of having to have the windows removed from the church and sent to the saleroom,” Guy Macklam of Thomas N Miller told ATG. “Our specialist Sam Thompson spent several weeks piecing back together the windows and cleaning them and preparing them for sale, a little like undertaking a very large fragile and complex jigsaw puzzle as the windows are constructed in multiple sections.
“We had national interest in the glass as well as local buyers keen to own a piece of local history and overall we were pleased with the sale result. The smaller windows attracted the most interest as they were of course more manageable for most bidders, passing on only a few of the very large windows but we hope to sell those in a future auction.”
