Chagall windows at Tudeley

This stumpy little church buried amongst the Kent apple orchards is All Saints Tudeley – and it is the only church in the world to have had every one of its twelve windows created by the Russian artist Marc Chagall. How come?

In the early 1960s the grand house nearby, Somerhill, belonged to Sir Henry D’Avigdor Goldsmid, a city banker whose family had owned the estate since the 1840s.  (For a fascinating account of the house, its history and those of its owners see the Somerhill School site.) Sir Henry and his wife Rosemary were lavish entertainers – David Niven, Enoch Powell, Sir Hugh Casson and Sir John Betjeman among many others were regular guests. However, in 1963 tragedy struck the family when their 21 year old daughter Sarah was drowned in a sailing accident.

Sarah had been very interested in contemporary art – in the early 1960’s she had bought a David Hockney painting for £25 at his graduate show at the Royal College and which she gave as a birthday present to her mother. And in 1961 she and Rosemary had seen the Chagall designs for the Hadassah windows at an exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.

(In 1960, Chagall, who came from a Hassidic Jewish family in Belarus and whose Jewish heritage played a major role in his artistic life, began creating stained glass windows for the synagogue of Hebrew University’s Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. Its twelve windows, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, were to be filled with stained glass – ‘jewels of translucent fire’.  While working on the window designs Chagall’s collaborator the glassmaker Charles Marq developed a special process for applying color to the glass. This allowed Chagall to use as many as three colors on a single pane, rather than being confined to the traditional technique of separating each colored pane by a lead strip.
The windows were exhibited in Paris, where Sarah and her mother saw them, and then the Museum of Modern Art in New York before being  installed permanently in Jerusalem in February 1962. For a fuller idea of their stunning beauty see this page on the university’s site.)

After Sarah’s death, Sir Henry and Lady d’Avigdor-Goldsmid remembering how much Sarah had loved the windows they had seen in Paris, asked Chagall to design an east window in Sarah’s memory in their local church. Initially reluctant to take on the commission he was in due course persuaded. And when he arrived in 1967 to install the window he was so enchanted with the tiny church that he exclaimed – It is beautiful! I will do them all!

And over the next 15 years he did indeed design all the remaining eleven windows, collaborating as usual with Charles Marq.  A small local difficulty with the parish councillors who were somewhat protective of their existing Victorian stained glass windows was ironed out and the chancel windows were finally installed in 1985, the year of Chagall’s death at the age of 98.

This is the commemorative East window over the altar and can we see Sarah there cradled by the waves?

Many of the other smaller windows also use the deep vibrant blue that for Chagall represented spirituality – and include the birds, flowers and fish that so often appear in Chagall’s work –

although the two in the south (?) wall are filled with glorious sunny yellows.

If you would like to see the windows for yourself you can easily do so. Take a train to Tonbridge (every half hour or so from Charing Cross or other London stations) and then a taxi, bus or your feet to Tudeley which is just under 3 miles away. Full details on the All Saints website including a link to downloadable map from the Poacher and Partridge!

The church is open seven days a week and when I was there there was one couple eating their sandwiches in the graveyard but apart from that I had it to myself – although they do suggest checking to see if they have parties booked. Entry is free but, very reasonably, they do ask for a donation. All other information on the church website.

I walked – which is rather lovely as, after stretch along the river out of Tonbridge, there was a little private road past some rather posh houses and then a long track through the apple orchards. Btw, you can certainly give Tonbridge High Street a miss. I am sure there are lovely bits of the town but the high street sure ain’t one of them.