Restored Victorian Entrance, Fraserburgh
The solid sandstone townhouses of the Broch contain some lovely examples of late 19th Century domestic stained glass. This lovely 3 light door set is typical of the decorative leaded glass style prevalent in the well preserved area of Victorian housing stock to the south of Fraserburgh West Parish Church.
The windows had originally been made oversized (possibly for a completely different property). The sidelights had no border lead at all, the fanlight had bowed dramatically, and both fanlights and sidelights had been installed reversed, with unused tie wires still present to the outside. Despite all this, the clients were keen to retain the original glass as part of an ongoing restoration of their property.
As the fanlight was so bowed, it wasn't possible to take a coherent rubbing - on flattening the panel was up to 50mm out of square. Instead, we reconstructed the window design using the original glass pieces as a reference, with the help of a timber template of the aperture. This was fairly tricky work, as the curve of the wooden frame wasn't symmetrical.
Support bars were added internally to provide some additional reinforcement. The curved internal moulding for the fanlight was no longer present, so we used custom brass fittings to hold the upper end of the bar. These will be removed once the new moulding had been fabricated by a local joiner.