Historic stained glass windows restored

After over 2000 hours of meticulous work, UNB artist in residence Ned Bowes has restored the almost 100-year-old stained glass windows in memorial hall.

The reveal happened on Oct. 11. Situated in the Gothic Revival auditorium, the windows tell stories and feature family crests, symbols and images.

“All of these windows are just oozing with knowledge and history. There’s a message in every [one],” said Bowes.

Bowes worked for almost two years on restoring them. It took a lot of time, patience, effort and attention to specific detail. But that didn’t come without obstacles.

Bowes said the people who had previously put the windows in, had not thought about the future of them which made his task of restoring especially difficult. Another difficulty was working with pot metal and mouth blown glass that varied in thickness.

“And then of course, when all is said and done, the window that you take out has to fit back into the same opening. And if it doesn’t work, then something drastic has to happen,” said Bowes.

But the largest obstacle he had when restoring the stained glass, was scraping off the concrete on the Ashburnham window on the west wall, that features Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth the first. When Bowes started to restore this one, there were around 40 pieces of glass that weren’t visible because they were covered with lead and cement.

Bowes encountered a similar situation when he was working on restoring another window for a previous project in Barbados.

“[It] was about 12 feet high by about six feet wide, and it was in a stone church, and when I went to take the window out I discovered that about six inches on each side of the window was buried in cement. So, I had to literally cut the window out of the cement in order to fit it.”

Other than the physical obstacles, Bowes said the rest of the challenge is just keeping stamina. He said when you start a project like this that you know is going to take a long time, you just have to keep at it.

Now, the task is complete. The exhibit of the stained glass restoration runs in memorial hall until 0ct. 26.

“I think most people are very pleased at the outcome of the work, I think a lot of people are amazed to see something happening that can happen right here in our own province, that doesn’t have to be shipped off to someone else… it’s a good place to start, right here, having our own home grown artisans that can do this work.”