RESTORATION FOR
HOLY TRINITY CHURCH
In 1999 the Holy Trinity Church building in Tauranga was destroyed by a deliberate arson attack.
The damage was extensive but the altar survived by falling through the burned out floor and the stained glass windows stayed mostly intact but badly damaged and blackened. Before demolition of the remains of the building, the windows were covered with sticky tape to hold them together, removed from their frames and stored on plywood panels in a back room.
20 years later, the caretaker found them in the hall stage area and the church Administrator contacted Leadlight Expressions to inspect them and see if anything could be salvaged. We had a look and thought that there was a reasonable chance that we could do something with them.
All three windows were completely blackened with baked-on soot from the fire, virtually every piece of glass was fractured from the heat and some of the lead and glass was completely destroyed. Even so, there was enough left to work with and we agreed to work on them with the intention of using what could be salvaged in a set of memorial windows to be set into the new chapel planned to be built later in the year.
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The Repair Process
All three windows were completely blackened with baked-on soot from the fire, virtually every piece of glass was fractured from the heat and some of the lead and glass was completely destroyed. Even so, there was enough left to work with and we agreed to work on them with the intention of using what could be salvaged in a set of memorial windows to be set into the new chapel planned to be built later in the year.
The original stained glass windows before the fire.
After restoration.
