One of our favourite recent acquisitions is a collection of original antique stained glass windows which we carefully removed from the former St Ninian’s Church on Finchley Road, Central London.

The church was built in 1911 for the Golders Green Presbyterian congregation. It was designed by the architect T. Phillip Figgis, who also designed some Northern Line London Underground stations. The church was a redbrick building designed in the Perpendicular style, with traditional Gothic touches.

There are some great original photographs of the exterior and interior of the church on the English Heritage Archives website:

Exterior in 1911: http://www.englishheritagearchives.org.uk/SingleResult/Default.aspx?id=995119&t=Quick&cr=bedford+lemere&io=True&l=all&page=1075
Interior in 1911: http://www.englishheritagearchives.org.uk/SingleResult/Default.aspx?id=1733918&t=Quick&cr=bedford+lemere&io=True&l=all&page=1077

Before removing any items, Jason took photos of the pieces in their original setting. However, with no power on site (already cut off to prepare for demolition), the photos don’t show off the building at its best!

The building became the Shree Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in 1982 and in 2013 was unfortunately up for demolition.

We salvaged what we could from the church – many of it’s lovely original features were still intact such as the windowsand original doors and pews. Removing the stained glass window was a painstakingly difficult job, especially as there was no power on site so all had to be done with battery tools!

Alongside the window depicting Saint Luke and Saint John that are on our website, we also salvaged some from the other side of the church which depicted vibrantly coloured angels and the nativity scene.