St. Cecilia was made in 1897 for ‘The Hill’ at Witley in Surrey, the house built for Myles Birket Foster in 1863, and where he lived until 1893 when the house was purchased by Mr. Edgar Horne, who presumably commissioned both this window and another single light, ‘Flora’ (BJ 434) which appears in the Morris & Co. ‘Catalogue of Designs for Stained Glass’ dated 8 April 1896. The entry in the Catalogue of Designs for C76 is dated 1897 January and names the glass painters as follows: figure of St. Cecilia by Walters, quarries by Wren, scroll drawn and lettered by Campfield and painted by Wren. A small scale drawing, annotated ‘The Hill, Witley’, is in the Gallery’s collection (BL A 313).
The original Burne-Jones cartoon (BJ 50) for this figure was first used at Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge (south transept, south window, 3rd tier) in 1873; also used at St.Nicholas, Halewood, Lancashire in left light of a two-light window (south transept, memorial to Edith E. Bardswell) in 1881; and at Holy Trinity, Sloan Street, Chelsea (east window, 4th tier) in 1894-95).
During the early years of the Firm, Morris & Co. had a close association with ‘The Hill’ house when it was owned by Myles Birket Foster. The house contained several works by Burne-Jones, Rosetti, Ford Madox Brown, and Morris & Co. Stained glass windows within the home included a series of 7 panels designed by Burne-Jones illustrating Chaucer’s ‘Good Women’, a series of roundels containing classical and Chaucerian heroines, Chaucer himself, Homer, King David and St.Cecilia, also by Burne-Jones. Four panels, ‘Architecture’ (Madox Brown), ‘Music’ (Rosetti), ‘Painting’ (Burne-Jones) and ‘Sculpture’ (Burne-Jones), illustrating imaginary incidents in King Rene’s Honeymoon and which are probably those now in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Phillip Webb’s account book contains two references to furniture designs for Birket Foster – a design for a cabinet for Foster’s pictures (1.1.1866), and a design for a book case (8.2.1868). Apart from a series of seven canvases painted by Burne-Jones with the story of St.George which formed a frieze around three sides of the dining room and a screen with 16 scenes from the Life of St.Frideswide made up of cartoons for the window designed by Burne-Jones for the Latin Chapel in Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford. Burne-Jones also designed a number of tile panels which were made by Morris & Co. – a series of tiles with the story of Cinderella for a fireplace in one of the ground floor rooms and tile panels with the story of Sleeping Beauty and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ for the bedrooms. The latter is now in the WMG (C75).
