In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the BBC hosted one of the early ‘do it yourself shows. The host was Barry Bucknell.
His emphasis was to transform home interiors over to ‘Scandinavian’ like appearance.
This message resulted in the transformation of hundreds of thousands of British homes. Stained glass windows and doors were removed by the score.
Regrettably most were simply sent to the garbage dumps and destroyed.
In the 1970’s, people in the antique trade recognized that there was demand for these windows. However, the demand really was from markets outside the UK. Tens of thousands of windows have been sent to countries such as Italy. Japan, the United States, and Canada (more specifically here to Campbellville).
This old door is an example of how a beautiful Victorian door was ‘transformed by the Bucknell ‘message’. To make the door look more ‘modern, red painted hardboard was put on one side and high gloss paint was applied to the other side. Its fate is less severe that what happened to most such doors, which typically were just sent to the dump.
