Coventry cathedral digitizes 12,000 medieval stained glass fragments

The World Monuments Fund and curators at Coventry Cathedral in England have digitized a collection of approximately 12,000 medieval stained glass fragments.

This project makes the pieces publicly accessible for the first time in decades through a digital exhibition on the Bloomberg Connects app. The glass dates largely to the 15th century and is attributed to John Thornton, a master glazier from medieval England.

The collection includes religious imagery, comical animal scenes, and portraits of the lay people who funded the original construction. These windows survived the 16th-century Reformation and were later assembled into patchwork arrangements before being dismantled for safety during World War II. German bombers destroyed the cathedral during the Blitz on November 14, 1940. Workers moved the glass into 30 wooden crates and hid them in a nearby village cellar until 1957.

While the cathedral was eventually rebuilt, the glass remained separated in storage rooms for years. The new cataloging project involved moving the fragments into custom cabinets and taking high-resolution photographs to create a database. The initiative is part of the Building Hope project to preserve the cathedral ruins. Conservators say the project helps secure academic attention for the collection, which is Britain's largest set of loose medieval stained glass.