Radio 4 Daily Service-Now in the Lord you are light

The earliest Morris & Company windows in Christ Church Southgate

It was a great privilege to present the Daily Service on Radio Four Extra on Wednesday 10th September 2025 as part of a week of programmes on the subject of Art and Spirituality. If you are in the UK you can listen to the recording on the BBC IPlayer at this link. The script of my reflection is below. Thank you to the producer, Andrew Earis. The photographs in this blog post are by Christine Matthews and John Salmon.

Good morning. I’m Reverend Phillip Dawson, Rector Designate of St Olave Hart Street in the City of London. All this week on the Daily Service we’re reflecting on how the arts can deepen our spiritual lives. 

Today we’re off to what is now the suburbs of the city, to Christ Church Southgate in North London – to explore its fine collection of stained-glass windows by William Morris & Company, depicting Christian saints and virtues. It was while giving tours of this church and its glorious windows that I felt a call to the priesthood.

The windows in Christ Church Southgate are not the largest example of Morris & Company’s work in size or number – but they are unique in terms of the period they cover. From the days of the first windows produced by the company to the last, the collection charts changes in style and technique. 

The first windows to be installed in this Victorian Gothic Revival church would not look out of place in a chapel in one of the great medieval cathedrals of France. Lit by glass in intense primary colours – yellow, blue and red. Detailed tracery and elaborate architectural details surround the figures of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - painted by Ford Madox Brown and William Morris himself. 

St Matthew - said to be a self portrait by William Morris

Black brush strokes add expressive detail to each figure; the striking curls of Saint Matthew’s bushy hair and beard look remarkably similar to those of Morris himself; I rather agree with those who say this is a self-portrait. Morris was well known for his belief that something of every craftsman should be present in the work they create. Perhaps here he let that belief shine through stained glass? His life and work a reflection of a divine image – just like our own?

The nave of the church contains eight impressive windows, each decorated with two figures – all but one pair designed by the artist Edward Burne Jones in an evocative, pre-raphaelite style. 

Later than those in the Lady Chapel and installed over a period of fifty years, these figures are larger and more detailed. The cartoons - the base designs - now created through a technique of photographic enlargement from a pattern-book,  rather than scaled up by hand. 

The male figures are dressed in stylised and impossibly figure hugging medieval plate armour. The female figures draped in flowing fabrics. Closer inspection shows this - and the coloured background - is heavily but subtly embellished with hand painted blossoms, foliage, leaves and tendrils - almost like a catalogue of Morris & Company patterns. 

Above, a scroll with Latin text in calligraphy describes the virtues each pair of figures represents. Hope and Faith, Temperance and Charity, Wisdom and Justice, Generosity and Humility shine down from the northern and most prominent roadside elevation. On the south of the nave, the virtues of Patience and Peace are placed alongside images of saints. 

I find the delicate portraits particularly captivating. I can gaze into the face of peace, the face of justice, the face of charity and, as they reflect on mine, pray that I might embody these virtues more fully. The figure of each assembled, like our own broken lives, from different fragments, each piece of glass shining like a jewel, revealing new patterns and textures as the daylight changes.

Prudence and Justice - Edward Burne Jones

Even on an overcast day, the colours of the northern windows are breathtaking. Justice glimmers in bright golds, pinks and oranges against a rich indigo background. To the south the windows are lit in much darker reds, greens and browns. Partly this difference is a response to physics; the glass to the south selected to offer greater solar shading. But it is also a reflection of the changing social history of the parish. The brighter, more expensive coloured glass to the north installed when Southgate was dominated by wealthy families in large country houses. 

By the time the southern windows of the nave were decorated, these great estates had begun to be divided up to form the suburban streets that characterize the parish today.

Brass plaques beneath each window add more detail to this story - the first window dedicated to a sister of a former Viceroy of India, the last (showing Saint Francis) in memory of a church sidesman - a retired butler. 

King David (Edward Burne Jones) & St Francis of Assisi (Henry Dearle)

The pattern-book approach allowed people to mix and match designs. Saint Martha - her dirty hands carrying a pale of water, is placed next to Phebe - originally designed by Burne-Jones as Saint Dorothy, carrying a plate of fruit. We can only guess why this unusual pairing and customization was chosen for a window dedicated to a churchwarden’s mother-in-law. 

I think it is fascinating to see how the life of the parish is woven into the design of these beautiful windows; and as we gaze at the faces of these saints and virtues the story of our lives may be seen anew - illuminated by their glorious light.

Martha and Phebe (or Dorothy?) by Edward Burne Jones

Bible Reading : Ephesians 5.8-14

for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly, but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Sleeper, awake!
    Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

The windows in Christ Church Southgate aren’t famous works of art in an internationally renowned gallery; but they are just as precious.

During my time as churchwarden there I gave countless tours to hundreds of visitors, explaining how art, science, technology and the story of this community is reflected in and through these images of saints and Christian virtues.

Beneath the gaze of these delicate, fractured, beautiful figures, new light was cast on my own life. I came to see how I had been drawn into their story; every experience that had coloured my own life fitted together into a bigger picture that gradually came into focus. I felt a calling to share the story of the light and love of Christ with the whole world as a priest.

 
A Prayer attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo: 

Eternal God, you are the light of the minds that know you,
the joy of the hearts that love you,
and the strength of the wills that serve you.
Grant us so to know you,
that we may truly love you, 
and so to love you
that we may fully serve you,
and to serve you is perfect freedom,
in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.