Westminster Coroner's Court

In 2024, Brian Clarke donated stained glass windows for a new extension at Westminster Coroner’s Court, London. Incorporating Clarke’s stained glass, architect Patrick Lynch’s stone-faced timber-framed building complements the original Grade II listed red-brick site from 1893.

Select windows feature Clarke’s daffodil-inspired motifs – a recurring feature in his work, from his watercolours (2019) to his screen Daffodils screen (2018). Meanwhile, light filters into the new court and jury room through Clarke’s window on the west side, spanned with forms reminiscent of his 'Vespers' series (2019-2020). This window combines translucent glass in the upper parts with more opaque coloured glass in the lower sections, which provides visitors with a screen for privacy.

The Westminster Coroner’s Court extension is shaped by Clarke and Lynch’s own ‘brutally grim’ memories of coroners’ courts, following the deaths of loved ones. For Clarke, this work is intended ‘not to give people an artistic ecstasy, but to say “I am with you”, “I know what you’re going through”, to put an arm around people’s shoulders’.