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Clement Heaton 1824-1882

Glass painter and stained glass maker

Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

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Clement Heaton, painter of “stained” glass windows, was born in Bradford on Avon in 1824, son of the Wesleyan Methodist Minister James Heaton. At first an amateur artist, he became a glass painter at 25, strongly influenced by Augustus Pugin and the developing Victorian gothic revival movement. He was trained in the studio of William Holland in Warwick and, in partnership with fellow Warwick student James Butler (1830-1913), founded a firm in London. They initially worked with the well-known company of Clayton & Bell from whom they were joined in 1862 by Pre-Raphaelite artist Robert Turnill Bayne (1837-1915), another ex-Warwick man and the partnership became Heaton, Butler & Bayne, based at 14 Garrick Street, Covent Garden. From 1864 to 1878 they frequently employed the freelance artist Henry Holiday (1839-1927), another Pre-Raphaelite painter, for designs. Holiday is perhaps best known for his illustrations for Lewis Caroll’s Hunting of the Snark and an oil painting Dante and Beatrice.

Work by Heaton, Butler & Bayne can be seen in Westminster Abbey (Monument to Isambard Kingdom Brunel 1868), Tewkesbury Abbey (1869, Peterborough Cathedral (1864), Wimborne Minster in Dorset (1857), Chester Cathedral (1884 and 1887). The company continued after the deaths of its founders, producing windows widely in England, Wales and Ireland.

In 1878 Heaton, Butler & Bayne were commissioned to make a window for the church of Holy Trinity in Bradford on Avon.  It was a memorial to wine merchant and Churchwarden Emmanuel Taylor (died in 1876), his wife Sarah Augusta (died 1877) and only child Charlotte Augusta (died in 1877), wife of solicitor James Sparks.

There is an entry in Wikipedia about Heaton, Butler & Bayne and one to Clement Heaton in the old Dictionary of National Biography.

His son Clement John Heaton (1861-1940) joined the firm and he succeeded his father in 1882, but left it two years later, selling his share in 1887 for £4,800. He set up his own Heaton’s Cloisonné-Mosaic Ltd in London, later moving to Switzerland and finally to the USA, where he made stained glass windows.