LATE 19TH CENTURY

This hall lantern is designed in the antiquarian manner, a taste promoted by the eighteenth-century connoisseur-collector Horace Walpole for his house Strawberry Hill, where 'The Gloom was achieved during the day by glazing all the windows in stained glass and at night by lighting the staircase by a splendid gothic lantern' (C. Wainwright, The Romantic Interior, p. 101, pl. 81), The fashion was continued by Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford and by William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey where the oriel window in St Michael's Gallery 'was noted by observers as shedding a cheerful glow, enhanced by the stained glass', (M. Aldrich, The Gothic Revival, p. 83). A.W.N. Pugin, who designed stained glass for his ecclesiastical commissions with his friend and associate John Hardman of Birmingham, (Atterbury & Wainwright, Pugin, pp. 195-206), re-used old pieces for his new house the Grange at Ramsgate from 1844, to which he added his own designs with the assistance of Hardman's nephew, (ibid., pp. 93, 174-184).