Greyfriars, in the heart of Worcester, is a stunning medieval timber-framed merchant’s house.

The house was saved in the mid-20^th century by siblings Elsie and Matley Moore. All of the windows were put in during the 1940’s by Elsie and Matley, who created them using recycled glass and often went about their restoration of the house in a rather unconventional way. For example, one local man was sent on errands by the Moores to collect glass from bomb damaged buildings during WWII, and the distinctive birds painted on the diamond panels of the gallery windows might look old, but they were actually designed by a friend of Elsie and Matley in the 1930s.

The windows at Greyfriars in Worcester are a fascinating mixture of old and new, recycled and repaired, and include glass that dates from medieval times to the twentieth century. The beautiful leaded windows, which form so much of the house’s character, are now in need of some conservation work.

The conservation of these windows at Greyfriars is an immense task. There are three main windows which require urgent work and four more which need work doing on them soon.

Most leaded windows need ‘tie-bars’, the horizontal iron bars that keep the lead from deforming, cracking glass and letting in the weather. Some of our conservation work will be creating tie-bars and renewing copper ties to strengthen these windows. In some of the windows there is a large gap between the lead and the wooden casements, which does not help us keep the house warm in the winter and lets in water that can damage our collections, so these gaps need to be rectified.

In addition we would like to add UV filters to the windows, which should stop a lot of the light damage to the textiles and interior of the house. Light damage happens when sunlight is allowed to directly hit an object but the UV filters take out the harmful part of the light whilst allowing us to see through the windows properly. We aim to create UV filter panels that fit individually into each window panel, which will help us enormously in the long run.

To complete this work, we need to raise £12,000. Please help us if you can, even a small donation will make all the difference to us.