Visitors to the Kentwood Centre – Bromley Adult Education College’s base in Penge – are now treated to the sight of a beautiful handmade stained glass window as they enter the building.
Cllr Peter Fortune, Executive Member for Children, Education and Families officially unveiled the window at the Kentwood Centre to the delight of gathered students including those who prepared the window for its new ‘home’.
The intricate design of the window with its colourful woodpecker perched on a stylised tree, bathed in warm light from an enormous sun was imagined by one of the College’s students, Regan Purcell. She and fellow stained glass students created the original window for the Widmore Centre where Adult Education classes were previously held. Originally installed into a Georgian style frame, there were a number of challenges to be met before the window could follow the classes to SE20.
Regan, now a tutor for the stained glass group, worked with Jon-Paul Mountford and Eric Mortlock from the local ‘Men in Sheds’ project to reformat the window into a rectangular shape to suit its new position. She remade some of the panes, while the amateur carpenters built a new frame from recycled floorboards.