The Great East Window
The only major surviving piece of pre-Reformation glass in Exeter Cathedral, the Great East Window was first glazed by Master Walter the Glazier in 1303/4.
The Fabric Rolls tell us that between 1301 and 1304 the cathedral authorities had bought just over 3950 feet of glass from Rouen to use in the eastern part of the church and in 1304, Walter was paid £4 10s ‘For setting the glass of the high gable (the Great East Window), eight high windows (the quire clerestory) and six windows of the aisles of the new work (the windows of the N & S ambulatory)'.
Of the original window, only the top three lights, the figures of Abraham, Moses and Isaiah, and the bottom north three (representing St Margaret, St Catherine and St Mary Magdelene) and the bottom south three (the figures of St Peter, St Paul and St Andrew) survive. All the early C14th glass is in pot-metal (ie glass tinctured with metallic oxides so it is coloured throughout rather than just on the surface).
Towards the end of the C14th it was noticed that much of the tracery (stonework) of the window was rotting - probably because corrupt iron had been used in the original work. It had to be dismantled and new stone was brought from Beer quarry to replace the damaged sections and the master mason of the time, Robert Lesyngham created a new window in Perpendicular Gothic style. On 28th April, 1391, Robert Lyen was appointed glazier and a few weeks later signed an agreement to re-glaze the east window. This he did by reusing nine lights from the 1304 window and combining them with seven of his own (the central tier of the present window). Four of these, the two outer figures on each side, survive. Lyen used techniques - such as silver staining - developed in the later C14th and the faces of his figures are three dimensional.
In 1750 the Cathedral Chapter asked their Surveyor, Arthur Bradley, ‘to take such painted glass as can be spared from several imperfect Windows in the church in order to Compleat and Repair the East Window'. In 1751, under Bradley's supervision a local glazier, Joseph Tucker removed something over 350 square feet of old glass, mostly from the Chapter House and inserted it to form the middle six lights of the Great East Window. These panels, depicting a variety of saints (including another figure of St Catherine) were all produced by the same master in the later C15th.
The canopies of the saints and the heraldry of the window were inserted at various points in the window's history.
The window was removed to a cellar in Cornwall in the early years of the Second World War. Had this not been done, it would certainly have been shattered by the 1942 bomb. It was thoroughly cleaned, repaired and re-leaded between 1982 and 1986.
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