John Hayward (16 July 1929 – 19 May 2007) was an English multidisciplinary artist best known for his work in stained glass. His ecclesiastical work was widely commissioned across the United Kingdom and abroad in the second half of the 20th century and is characterised by its fusion of traditional figurative iconography with modernist design sensibilities.
In total Hayward designed and made around 200 stained glass windows during his career, including for the church of St Mary-le-Bow in the City of London, Norwich Cathedral, and Sherborne Abbey in Dorset. Hayward's practice also incorporated sculpture, murals, and liturgical furnishings, most notably for Blackburn Cathedral.
Early life and education John David Hayward was born in Tooting, London, into a Methodist family. His upbringing was influenced by the craft skills of his parents - his father was a printer - and strong engagement in church life. He was educated at Tooting Bec Grammar School, where his artistic ability was recognised by his teacher Jack Levin, who encouraged an early interest in drawing and painting. His childhood included frequent time spent in the countryside, which fostered a lasting engagement with landscape that would later inform his artistic language.
After the war, Hayward won a place to study at Saint Martin’s School of Art, where he trained initially as a painter. During this period he was exposed to the work of artists such as Georges Seurat, Georges Braque, and Piero della Francesca, whose use of structure, colour, and the placement of figures within landscapes would influence his later work. Hayward also developed an interest in Byzantine mosaics and Christian iconography, particularly those associated with Ravenna. He later received training in the design and manufacture of stained glass under Francis Spear, which helped direct Hayward's career toward ecclesiastical art.
Career Early career with Faith Craft
In the early 1950s Hayward was offered a place at the Royal College of Art. However, he chose instead to enter professional practice, recognising the bountiful opportunities available to ecclesiastical artists due to the significant church building and restoration then underway in post-war Britain. In around 1953 Hayward joined Faith Craft, a St Albans-based firm specialising in church furnishings and interiors that had been established the Society of the Faith in 1916. Here he would work on commissions across a variety of media, including stained glass, furniture, metalwork, and mural painting. The experience bought Hayward into contact with many other designers working in the field, including contemporaries such as Terence Randall, Francis Stephens and Gordon Beningfield.
Although Faith Craft closed in 1969, partially retained records held by the Society of Faith indicate some of the windows commissioned from the firm that Hayward designed, sometimes working in collaboration with other artists. These include examples at Paisley Abbey (1954, with Francis Stephens), Christ Church in Streatham (1955), St Mary Magdalene in Flaunden (1955), St Jude's in Blackburn (1959) and St Matthew in Camberwell (1961). Of particular note are three windows Hayward made in 1956 for St Mary's Anglican Cathedral in Johannesburg, South Africa. Hayward was also responsible for more complete fitting out of churches under the auspices of Faith Craft. In 1959 he provided designs for fixtures including the reredos, rood, crucifix, candlesticks and altar rails, as well as stained glass for both St Andrew's Church in Accrington and St Aiden's in Durham.
Importantly for Hayward's own future direction, the networks he forged at Faith Craft exposed him to the ideas of the Liturgical Movement, one of the central tenets of which was the re-evaluation of the functional and theological purpose of church space with the intent of better engaging a congregation in the rituals of worship. For architects such as Laurence King, who would become a close associate of Hayward, this introduced the idea that ecclesiastical design should respond to more than just decorative considerations.
Establishing an independent studio
In 1961 Hayward took the decision to established himself as an independent artist, setting up his studio at Bletchingley in Surrey. Nevertheless, his ties to former colleagues at Faith Craft remained strong. Indeed, Hayward's first major independent commission was for a scheme of windows for the rebuilt Christopher Wren church of St Mary-le-Bow in the City of London. The full interior restoration of the church had been awarded to Faith Craft in 1956 and was undertaken by a team of architects and artists led by Laurence King. Taking eight years to complete, it was Faith Craft's largest single commission. In the same year that Hayward established his studio, King asked him to design and manufacture the complete glazing scheme for the church. The ten windows he produced, installed between 1963 and 1964, remain among Hayward's best known works, combining bold palettes of colour and sharp geometries with recognisable figurative iconography. Across the three principal windows installed in the east wall, the image of Christ in Majesty is flanked on either side by the Virgin Mary and St Paul. Mary cradles the church, while behind both her and Paul are 'tapestries' comprising the spires of the City of London's other churches and St Paul's Cathedral. The windows in the west wall reference the governance of the City and the heraldry of the Great Twelve Livery Companies.
At the outset, Hayward's independent practice continued to be multidisciplinary and his relationship with King would lead to more commissions. In 1961 King was appointed architect to Blackburn Cathedral, the former parish church of St Mary that became a cathedral with the creation of the new Diocese of Blackburn in 1926. King's task was to convert the building to reflect this elevated status, adapting a project begun in 1938 but quickly abandoned due to the onset of the Second World War. Soon after winning the commission, King appointed Hayward as the cathedral's 'artist in residence' and they would work together on fixtures and fittings into the 1970s. King's scheme included placing the sanctuary beneath a new lantern tower over the crossing. For this space, Hayward designed the glass for the lantern, the four sculptures of winged seraphim in the pendentives, the large sculptural Corona that hangs above the altar, and the stone altar itself. However, due to structural inadequacies, the lantern tower had to be rebuilt in 1998/1999, with new glass commissioned from Linda Walton. In addition, Hayward designed the large fibreglass and aluminum sculpture of Christ the Worker that dominates the inside west wall. It appears to set Jesus within a cotton loom, an apparent allusion to the Lancashire's textile industries. Hayward also designed stained glass windows for the south transept and St Martin's Chapel, a painted reredos for the Jesus Chapel and the cast bronze font cover.
The modern semi-abstracted design that Hayward deployed for his windows at St-Mary-le-Bow set a model for his future work in glass. His 1964 window for the chapel of St Peter’s College, Oxford, a memorial to Dr Christopher Chavasse, shows Christ in Majesty, realised in Hayward's now distinctive style. In 1968, five windows by Hayward were installed at St Michael Paternoster Royal, a City of London church a few hundred metres from St-Mary-le-Bow. Here, his equally distinctive windows form a triptych over the altar in the east wall, collectively depicting the War in Heaven as Archangel Michael triumphs over the Devil. The following year, Hayward's Dick Whittington window was installed in the north aisle of the same church.
Focus on stained glass
As the demand for post-war church reconstruction diminished, particularly from the 1970s onward, Hayward's practice increasingly focused on individual stained glass commissions. Most of these would come from private or institutional patrons seeking to reglaze a window in an existing building as a memorial to an individual or in commemoration of an event. While each window was conceived in response to its specific architectural setting, and with iconography tailored to the patron’s requirements, the majority would remain recognisably faithful to Hayward's breakthrough designs for St Mary-le-Bow, evolving over time without ever losing his distinctive modern idiom.
The number and diversity of such commissions mean that examples of Hayward's work from this period can be seen across the UK, though concentrated in the south of England. For St Michael & All Angels in Mitcheldean, Hayward was commissioned to replace a large window blown out during a storm in 1965. His window, dedicated in 1970, spans five lights and once again depicts St Michael defeating the Devil, the archangel holding a flaming sword as Satan lies beneath him, bound in chains. In the same year, his first of two windows for St Wulfram's Church in Grantham was installed, depicting Christ walking on water to rescue the drowning St Peter. In 1974 he completed a second window depicting the Seven Sacraments. All are in his characteristic modern style.
Nevertheless, where the setting demanded it, Hayward was not adverse to refining his style to fit a brief. The church of St Matthew in Croydon, which was rebuilt by the architect David Bush on a new site between 1965 and 1972, is a modern building notable for the simplicity of its design. As part of Bush's scheme, Hayward was commissioned to provide six rectangular panels of stained glass that provide the principal artistic interest in the wall behind the main altar. Installed in 1972, each panel has a semi abstract design representing a parable from the Gospel of Matthew. Hayward carefully integrated shards of glass taken from the windows of the demolished predecessor church.
Between 1976 and 1972 Hayward made four windows for St Mary's Church in Battersea, each depicting a notable individual connected to the parish; Benedict Arnold, William Blake, William Curtis and J. M. W. Turner. Each window includes a medallion portrait of the individual in question, surrounded by attributes, buildings and heraldry with which they are associated. A fine example of Hayward's later work done at his studio in Surrey is the east window of St Leonard's in Streatham, one of a number he created for the church. Completed in 1989 and installed in 1990 it shows Christ in Majesty surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists. It evidences the evolution of Hayward's style since the 1960s, while remaining recognisably part of his oeuvre.
Relocation to Dorset In 1989 Hayward moved to Dorset with the intention of retirement. However, the appeal of a commission to reglaze the Great West Window of Sherborne Abbey proved to great an opportunity to miss. It would become one of Hayward's largest and most prominent works. The brief was to replace the Victorian glass that had suffered from significant paint loss. Hayward submitted his design to for faculty approval sometime in 1990 or 1991. However, this sparked a five-year delay as debate swirled about the loss of the older glass and the appropriateness of citing Hayward's modern design immediately below the Abbey's famous fan vault cieling. Finally approved in 1995, Hayward spent the next two years making the window, before its installation in 1997, ahead of dedication in 1998. In marked contrast to the abbey’s medieval fabric, the window uses bold colour and dynamic composition to highlight the theme of The Incarnation.