The Fabian Window
The window was made by Caroline Townshend in 1910 and commissioned by George Bernard Shaw (a founder member of the Fabian Society).
It shows Shaw, Sidney Webb and ER Pease (secretary of the Fabian Society) helping to build ‘the new world‘. The figures are in Elizabethan dress which was to poke fun at Pease who evidently loved everything medieval.
The Fabian Society’s coat of arms is shown as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The people grouped at the bottom were leading members of the Society, most of them members of the Fabian executive, with on the far left, HG Wells, who is seen ‘cocking a snook‘, which evidently was a reference to his unsuccessful battle with Shaw and Webb for control of the Society.
The window was originally unveiled at Beatrice Webb House, near Dorking, when the house was formally opened as a conference venue on 13 September 1947 by the then prime minister Clement Attlee.
The window was stolen from the house during a conference in 1978 and surfaced in Phoenix, Arizona, soon after, but then disappeared until it suddenly reappeared for sale at Sotheby’s in July 2005. The Trust subsequently purchased it and have now loaned it to LSE to sit alongside the painting. It was ‘unveiled’ by Tony Blair in 2006.