Victor Noble Rainbird Memorial Windows

Allendale is home to lots of heritage treasures.

Residents have uncovered much, sharing its industrial past and the story of its people, including philanthropist Isaac Holden, an itinerant tea merchant who brought the first hearse and hearse house, and cleaner water in the form of Isaac's Well to the people of the Allen Valley.

Away from the square, hidden behind two old oak doors in the village's Methodist Chapel, hang two remarkable treasures that were for many years undisclosed. This is home to two out of three of Victor Noble Rainbird's stained glass windows.

Victor Noble Rainbird was a North East artist from North Shields, studying art at night school before excelling and attending Armstrong College, Newcastle, where he won the silver medal for the highest-placed student in all subjects.

He was known for his landscapes, street scenes, coastal imagery, and figures, working across different mediums such as illustration, oils, watercolours and glass. This image from the Wallington Gallery is a great example of his observational work and interpretation of a familiar Shields view of the Fish Quay.

When he joined the Royal Academy, he was the only student from the North East.

He was painted in prizes and awards for the promise of his career to come.

At the outbreak of WWI, aged 26, he halted his artistic career to join the Northumberland Fusiliers, where he became a Lance Corporal. War changed the direction of life for so many. During his time on the Western Front, like many other young men, Rainbird was exposed to some horrific scenes, far from the painterly strokes of The Tyne and North Shields.

Because of his artistic skill, he was tasked as a war artist and commanded to sketch German positions from 'no man's land'. The vulnerable and brutal conditions of sketching in the trenches left him exposed to gas attacks, extreme heavy shelling and a mass of psychological trauma to carry until his untimely death.

In 1921, back on Tyneside, Rainbird designed three stained-glass windows portraying his experiences of life at war. For many years, only one of the windows was known about. It's housed in a small chapel on Papa Stour in the Shetland Islands and was commissioned and designed to commemorate six men of the community who lost their lives in WWI.

The image in the glasswork is of Jesus calming the storm. A clear metaphor for the desire to save lives, and in keeping with the remote island nature of this community.

In Allendale, the Victor Noble Rainbird windows were a hidden treasure until 2014, when local enthusiast and general inquisitive, interesting human Dave Young, who's part of the North Shields Heritology Project, completed research and located two more Rainbird windows in the Methodist Chapel in Allendale. What a strike and stroke of luck.

These two precious pieces of history had been sitting quietly behind closed doors, and no one was any the wiser about their significance!

I asked Dave how he felt when he uncloaked the Rainbird windows, realising their significance -

Dave had become a bit of a Rainbird enthusiast, collecting his paintings and exhibiting an exhibition of the local artist's work at The Old Low Lights in 2015.

Looking at the two windows, they are vibrant and depict an image of Jesus, firstly in a red robe, perhaps standing on the banks of a river with foliage behind him. One hand is extended whilst the other clutches his cape. Below him is a roll of honour listing the names of eighteen men who served in WWI from the village.

The second window is perhaps from a more personal perspective, and my personal favourite. The image in glass shows a young man, clearly injured, steadying himself on the trunk of a tree.

Look at the way he stares vacantly, his head bandaged with the smallest trickle of blood. It's possible that this is a self-reflection of Rainbird. I really admire the detail in the gas mask and ammunition pockets strapped to his chest.

It's of note to me that there's no colour in his flesh. Could this be symbolic that he's psychologically drained of life, or does is show and separate the man from the uniform?

Underneath is an ordinary civilian, clothed in a uniform which has made him vulnerable to pain and loss both physically and in his head.

The nighttime setting of the scene, and light from the stars, symbolises spiritual guidance and hope. The broken column depicts the carnage and damage created by war and is a common motif on graves, which depict a life, in its prime, cut short.

The crescent moon is a symbol of renewal and of the new dawn after war. His helmet cast to the ground shows his vulnerability.

The red could symbolise lost blood. Is this fabric, perhaps bandages, or a flag or a river of blood showing the hopeless loss of life in war?

Below is a stanza from the hymn Abide with me -

Below are the names of four men from Allendale who lost their lives in the First World War. Rainbird refers to it as 'The Supreme Sacrifice '.

The windows at Allendale were made by Reed, Millican and Co of Newcastle upon Tyne at a cost of £180, with the money being raised by the minister and the church congregation.

Dave says -

It seems that if the war hadn't interrupted his studies, he could have become a major figure like his Royal Academy classmate and friend Gerald Brockhurst. Another local well- known artist, John Falconer Slater, referred to him as -

Dave, who owns many Rainbird paintings and has collected them over the years told me that he thought Rainbird's work as an artist had been hugely overlooked.

He has been described as -

In an obituary for Rainbird, his friend, local writer Joe Wallace Black said -

Rainbird's later life was impacted greatly by his experiences in the trenches. He lived with the effects of shell shock and chemical gas exposure, which gives greater significance and poignancy to the discovery of these peacetime memorials having been designed with lived experience.

He returned to creativity post-war but was never the same. He was a working artist producing whatever he needed to keep himself and his wife fed.

He sold paintings to make ends meet and eventually moved to Sunderland to live with friends. After the sadness of his experiences in the trenches, he struggled with a life of alcoholism and poor health and passed away at the age of 46 in 1936 from throat cancer.

He was buried in Preston Cemetery in North Shields in a pauper's grave, not having earned enough to pay for his own death.

He lay in an unmarked grave for 80 years.

As part of the exhibition that Dave Young hosted, £6,500 was raised from the sale of exhibition catalogues, prints and a number of individual donations and the money was used to design and make a fitting headstone for Rainbird.

It's a work of art in itself, which is fitting for a man who made memorials to others.

It was carved by Riding Mill sculptor, Neil Talbot.

Look at the local landmarks and heritage hewn from the stone. We see the Old Low Lights, a fisherwife, common on the Quayside; Sail and fishing boats, and wicker creels for storing fish.

It seemed a favourite with harlequin ladybird and their larvae, and we were kept company by a pair of gregarious Ring Necked Parakeets chomping on Butterball Crabapples.

I found it really sad to see how the experience of war impacted this young artist and robbed him of what might have been the greatest career.

Rainbird's Memorial Stained Glass Windows can be viewed in Allendale Methodist Chapel by prior arrangement with The Tynedale Methodist Circuit. His grave and headstone are located in Preston Cemetery. A good guide to finding his grave can be found on here YouTube