Sally Ann and the Devil's best tunes

Raising the Maypole, originally uploaded by Colonel Blink.

The Salvation Army is an entirely estimable organisation which works tirelessly for the least well off in Britain and I both admire them and the work they do. I do find it, however, a delightful irony that the Salvation Army rent a shop in Lower Goat Lane, Norwich which has seven protected by statute stained glass pictures depicting an imaginary and entirely pagan medieval world. That a temperate, straight laced organisation like the Sally Ann is forced to play host to a series of pictures depicting drunken revelry and in one case a picture full of sexually charged imagery has been a matter of joy to me since they first opened the Charity Shop in the early 1970s.
But then I probably need to get a life.

In the picture above three men, one stripped to the waist raise a sturdy maypole. In the background a woman lewdly plays the bagpipes. Next to her another woman tries to restrain a child. Not the average kind of image that appears in the War Cry.


This above is the only panel with any name or signature that I can find; It reads Yuletide P C H Bacon but whether this means they were the work of the London based stained glass manufactures Messrs Percy Bacon & Bros I am unable to say. The other six panels are not all yuletide scenes; which begs the question have some others in the shop been destroyed with time.

Were panels like this available 'off the shelf' to be put into pubs, shops and homes? Certainly we have all seen stain glass windows inserted into turn of the century homes and pubs.

The heads in all the panels look as if they could be used in other pictures. Witness the chap on the right above; He could be used for an Apostle or even Christ.



Apologies for all the converging lines and strange angles in this series. I was having to duck behind and above furniture, cupboards and customers to take them.