St Michael & All Angels, Barnes
Choir stall lights
Nothing lights a church quite like a wax candle. At St Michael & All Angels, Barnes, we supplied a row of solid brass choir stall lights, each carrying a real candle inside a clear glass shade, designed purely for the beauty of the effect.
WORK Decorative choir stall lightsMADE IN Solid brass, with clear glass shadesLIT BY Real wax candles
A candle, properly dressed
The flame moves, the glass catches it, and the polished brass takes up the glow and carries it along the stalls. Lit for a service, the row of lights gives the choir a warmth and a sense of occasion that no electric fitting could.
Designed with the church
The dimensions and the overall design were agreed with the client. The lights are all the same height, so they stand along the stalls as an even, quiet row beneath the organ. Each is a slender brass stem with a brass cup to hold the candle, and a glass shade to protect the flame.
Mounted by the church’s own carpenter
The church’s own carpenter made the tapered wooden plinths, so that each light stands on a flat surface on the stalls.
The building
St Michael & All Angels was designed by Charles Innes, a member of its own congregation, and built between 1891 and 1893 for a parish that had been worshipping in Barnes since 1867. It is a church of red brick with tall lancet windows, a six-bay arcade, an apsidal east end and stained glass throughout, and it has been listed Grade II since 2000. The chancel keeps its original choir stalls, the organ loft stands on paired arches, and a lettered frieze runs round the apse. The novelist Barbara Pym worshipped here in the 1950s and drew on it for one of her books. Against the dark polished timber of the stalls, the brass lights look as if they have always belonged there.
Contact us
Would your church like decorative lighting?
If your church or chapel would like decorative lighting for its choir stalls, altar or nave, we would be glad to hear from you.
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