18 CONTEXT 177 : SEPTEMBER 2023 JONATHAN DEEMING Conserving the Great South Window A falling piece of masonry was a sign that Canterbury Cathedral’s Great South Window and its medieval glass, including the 12th-century Ancestors of Christ, needed to be saved. The perpendicular gothic Great South Window, dominating the crossing beneath Bell Harry Tower, is the cathedral’s showpiece. Standing at 16.76 metres high and 7.56 metres wide, it floods the crossing with daylight.The circa-1420s Caen stone window holds precious medieval stained glass, including the Ancestors of Christ, thought to be the world’s most extensive genealogy of Christ in any art form. Some of that glass predates the great fire of 1174, making the panels by far the oldest painted windows in Britain. On a hot summer’s day in 2009, a piece of masonry fell to the ground immediately outside the principal south door. With a full programme of conservation repair works underway elsewhere, attention was immediately diverted to safeguard the precious window. Later to become affectionately nick-named ‘The Punctured Tyre’ in recognition of the unplanned but urgent nature of the work, this project exemplified how extraordinary feats can be achieved in times of adversity. From the outset, it was clear that Canterbury’s conservation ethos of ‘as little as possible but as much as necessary’ would be severely tested. The window was structurally failing and to save it, something would have to give. The question that quickly rose to the surface was, at face value, a simple one: what was more important, the stone frame or the stained glass? Reaching a conclusion required a heritagevalue-based understanding of where significance Some of the glass predates the great fire of 1174.
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