These two pieces of glass from Sudeley Castle are in a package labelled, in Soane's hand, Sudely [sic] Castle / Thursday 22 Aug 1816/ Glass taken out of / a window in the room / adjoining the Banqueting Room. The wrapping is a printed notice of a Meeting of the General Committee of the United Grand Lodge of Freemasons to be held on 28th Augt. 1816 & a Quarterly Communication to be held on 4th September.

Soane’s Note Book (his diary) confirms that he visited Sudeley Castle on 22 August 1816 and staid there all day, ret:g at ½ past 7 to Chelt[enham] where he was lodging at the Stiles Hotel. It would appear that the sole purpose of his journey was to visit the Castle as he arrived in Cheltenham by coach from London at 9pm on the 21st, spent the 22nd at Sudeley and left at 11am on the 23rd to return to London, breaking his journey at Oxford for the night. Sudeley Castle was purchased in 1810 by Richard Grenville, the future 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos (1776-1839). Soane had known the family well for many years, re-modelling Buckingham House, Pall Mall for the 1st Marquess of Buckingham (the Duke’s father) in the 1790s and later building a Gothic Library at Stowe for him in 1805-07. In 1815 Soane was called in by the Duke to make surveys of Sudeley and propose alterations (not carried out). In August 1819 he visited Sudeley again to make notes and in March 1820 submitted plans of the existing building with proposals for alterations – again these were not commissioned, perhaps because he was asked instead to rebuild another of the Duke’s properties, Wotton House in Buckinghamshire, which burnt down in October 1820.

This glass does not appear in the inventories of Soane's collection drawn up in 1837 because it was in the first of three 'sealed repositories' created by Soane with instructions that they should not be opened until later in the 19th century. The first repository (drawers in the Dressing Room and Closet K on the ground floor) was opened on the anniversary of Mrs Soane's death, 22 November, in 1866. It is not known why it was included.

Catalogue of the Stained Glass in Sir John Soane's Museum, Special Issue of the Journal of Stained Glass 2004, p.286
Sue Palmer 'The Mystery of the Sealed Repositories' in Death and Memory: Sir John Soane and the Architecture of Legacy, Sir John Soane's Museum exhibition catalogue, 2015, p.41

Death and Memory: Soane and the Architecture of Legacy, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 23 October 2015 - 2 April 2016

X250, Soane sealed repository contents
X257, Soane sealed repository contents
X268, Soane sealed repository contents
X271, Soane sealed repository contents
X302, Soane sealed repository contents