Church window immortalising lost children wins award
BBCA stained glass window created in memory of three children from the same family who all died in their teens or 20s has won an award.
The window at St John's church in Tisbury, Witshire was designed by the artist Thomas Denny and installed in the 12th century church in 2024 after more than £150,000 was raised in just 10 days.
The memorial window, which has won the Art and Christianity award, features the portraits of Sarah Douglas-Pennant's three children Anna, Milly and Johnnie gathered by a local river studying a shell.
She said: "The paradox is that you know when you lose them how lucky you were to have them."
Douglas-Pennant, said both her daughters Anna and Milly had cystic fibrosis and died aged 14 and 29 while her son, Johnnie, drowned in a swimming accident in 2004 aged 17.
"Milly was just the most enchanting character - everybody loved Milly," she said.
"Anna was incredibly courageous. She still went on riding in competitions even when she was dying and she had her intravenous line in her arm.
"Once she escaped from the hospital ward and went to ride and came back exhausted but she did it."
She said her son Johnnie was a late developer "like so many boys" and was dyspraxic but "very bright".
"He'd just done his AS levels when he died," she said.
"He was going to go into the Oxbridge stream at school for his last year, but it wasn't to be."
About 180 people pledged money in memory of a loved one to fund the memorial window, which took more than a year to complete.
Douglas-Pennant, who was chair of the church's east window committee at the time, said she had been "absolutely knocked sideways" seeing her children immortalised in coloured glass.
"They're beside the Fonthill Brook [in the artwork]. My husband had scooped out some water in a bucket and they were looking at all the little creatures," she said.
"They're just looking at something miraculous really, a little creature out of the water."
Created on the theme of "seeing", she said the whole window is about "seeing the light and moments of understanding".
"So many either can't have children or don't realise how lucky they are when they do have children," she said.
"To lose them is to show you what a treasure you had."
Canon Judy Anderson, licensed lay minister at the church, said people travel from "all over the country" and from overseas to see the window.
"There's so much behind the beauty of the window," she said.
"You can look at this window again and again and see something new in it every single time."
Laura Moffatt, from Art and Christianity, said among the other designs shortlisted for the prize were two "amazing copes" covered in "extraordinary embroidery" at Wells Cathedral and an abstract window in a chapel in Durham.
"But [Thomas Denny's] window - I think it was honestly the wow factor that did it for the judges in the end," she said.
The prize money of £3,000 will be divided by the church and the artist.
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