34 South Main St., Attleboro, MA - (508) 222-7000
Feature
Window to history
 Jim Donahue, left, and his son, Kevin, both of New England Stained Glass of North Attleboro, fit a final piece of stained glass into place at Trinity Episcopal Church in Wrentham. (Staff photo by Mark Stockwell)
Top Headlines For the past two years, three of its major stained-glass windows have been undergoing repairing and refurbishing by New England Stained Glass in North Attleboro. This past week, the windows came back, and next Sunday, May 21, the parish will celebrate and re-dedicate them at a special service at 3 p.m. The reinstallation is highly noticeable from both inside and outside the church. Located at the rear of the sanctuary, the windows also face East Street toward Wrentham Common, and have readily captured the public eye. But in recent years they had begun showing signs of their age. The Rev. Tara Soughers, rector of Trinity, said the lead in stained glass tends to get soft over the years, and that can cause sagging and even the loss of pieces. When that began happening to the three windows, the parish decided it was time to correct the deterioration, and had the windows removed in 2004. Since then, the windows have been taken apart, repaired, cleaned, and put back together again. For the past two weeks, a crew from C&D Souza Construction of Somerset has been working on the framing in preparation for the reinstallation this past week. The cost of the project was nearly $35,000 and was covered through donations from parishioners. A similar project may one day be in order for three other windows on the opposite wall of the church overlooking the altar area that are also discolored and starting to bulge. The windows are only part of the work that has been needed to the church in recent years. A major project was launched in 1997 to have the aluminum siding taken off the front of the building and the steeple so damage from years of water leaks could be repaired and the steeple could be reinforced. Then new wood clapboard siding was installed to bring the church back to the look it had when it was built in 1872. The parish hopes to one day replace the aluminum siding on the other three exterior walls, but other needs have been a priority. The organ that has been in the church since 1915 is being refurbished for the first time in 37 years, and the exterior front of the building already needs to be repainted, which may be the next project. The advantage of an older building is that it was built well from the beginning, Soughers said, but as it ages, it always needs something done to it. `` Old buildings take a lot of love and care and work,'' she said.
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