St Michael slaying the dragon over the City
Martin Travers (1886-1948)
1915
Richard Norman Shaw's St Michael and All Angels
Bedford Park, Turnham Green, London W4
The first stained glass windows in St Michael & All Angels were designed by Daniel Bell, whose brother was Alfred Bell of the famous Victorian firm of Clayton and Bell. They were installed in 1887. Unfortunately the great East Window was destroyed in World War II, and has had to be replaced. Of all the windows, this one by a somewhat later stained-glass artist, Martin Travers, is the most dramatic. It shows St Michael raising his sword to slay a particularly fiery dragon over the City of London. Travers had worked with the architects Arthur Beresford Pite and Sir Ninian Comper, and had Anglo-Catholic and Aesthetic sympathies; he was a leading early twentieth-century stained glass artist. The subject, as well as being appropriate to a church dedicated to St Michael and All Angels, would have had a particular resonance for wartime Londoners. Notice St Paul's in the left-hand corner.