Sadie McLellan


1914 - 2007

Stained-glass artist. Born in Milngavie (East Dunbartonshire), McLellan was educated at Bearsden Academy, the younger sister of playwright Robert McLellan (1907-85). She trained at Glasgow School of Art and the Danish Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen, and later toured Europe. She contributed work to the Women's Pavilion at the Empire Exhibition of 1938, which took place in Bellahouston Park in Glasgow. She taught for a time at Glasgow School of Art and, in 1940, married another stained-glass artist Walter Pritchard (1905-77). She worked with her husband on the War Memorial Chapel in Our Lady's High School in Motherwell (1949). Other work includes windows in Balshagray Parish Church in Broomhill (Glasgow; 1950), the Robin Chapel in Craigmillar (Edinburgh; 1953), Glasgow Cathedral (1955), Cambuslang Old Parish Church (1958), Cadder Parish Church (Bishopbriggs; 1965), Cardonald Parish Church (1960), a fabulous window which formed part of the restoration of the Pluscarden Abbey (1964), Clackmannan Parish Church (1966), Denny Old Parish Church (1970), Killearn Parish Church and King's Park Parish Church (1980). She created an experimental window combining architectural stained glass and concrete for St. Mungo's Roman Catholic Church (Alloa; 1960) and worked with Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan to create the remarkable Church of the Sacred Heart in Cumbernauld in 1965.

McLellan was friendly with the poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892 - 1978), who dedicated his poem The Terrible Crystal to her. She lived in Crawfordjohn (South Lanarkshire) between 1971 and 1989, when she retired to Nova Scotia, where she died.


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