Stained Glass Hartlepool

Founded in 1994, the Leadbitter Glass Studio has been supplying Overlay Stained Glass panels to homes and businesses across Hartlepool ever since, delivering to every other part of the UK too. St Hilda’s Church stands on the Headland, the town’s original quarter, close to where sailors and fishing crews have come ashore for generations — a fitting backdrop for a craft built to withstand whatever the coast throws at it.

Every panel is designed and manufactured in our own Decorative Glass Studio — either from your own photo or idea, or from one of the hundreds of patterns in our gallery. Our Overlay Stained Glass comes as either toughened single glazing or a resilient double-glazed unit, and suits a front door, a landing window, or any other glazed opening in the home equally well. The great majority of orders qualify for free delivery across Hartlepool.

We’ve supplied Overlay Stained Glass for a Prime Minister’s home, for Hollywood film sets, and for well-known musicians and billionaires — though the vast majority of what we make is still for homeowners across Hartlepool. We also produce other styles of Decorative Glass for Hartlepool clients, including Bevelled Glass, Etched Glass, and Fused Glass.

See your glass before we create it!

Our Free Client Pages Design Service

Every Hartlepool order comes with a private Client Page, where a full-colour drawing of your design, built to scale, appears a few days after you order. If a colour needs deepening, or a motif needs enlarging, tell us and we’ll amend it and send it back — as many rounds as you need. We only begin manufacturing once you’re happy with the course we’re plotting.

Image above created using Minster Glass.

How Our Stained Glass Is Made

Traditional leaded glass is a patchwork of small pieces held together by soft lead, which is exactly why it’s so prone to cracking and letting the weather in as it ages — hardly reassuring for a home facing straight into the North Sea. Our Overlay Stained Glass is built to hold firm against that, applying both the leadwork and the colour directly onto one continuous sheet of toughened safety glass, rather than piecing together dozens of separate fragments.

Pilkington K Glass is also available on request, and is required by current building regulations for new window and door installations across Hartlepool and the rest of the UK.

Every panel is manufactured using toughened or laminated safety glass, since durability matters to us as much as how the finished design looks.

Plenty of homeowners have a story about traditional leaded glass costing good money, only to see individual pieces crack within weeks of fitting. Our Overlay Stained Glass was designed specifically to avoid that.

Our process

We hand-shape lead strips onto the toughened glass first, tracing an uncoloured outline of your chosen design. Once that’s complete, the glass is turned over and coloured piece by piece, each section held within its own leaded boundary.

Matching lead lines are then added to the reverse to mirror the front exactly, so the finished panel is leaded and coloured on both faces, not just the one you see.

A choice of lead finishes is available too — see our Leaded Glass page for the full range.

Ready to have Overlay Stained Glass, or any other decorative glass, made for your Hartlepool home or business? Get in touch today for an accurate quote and turnaround time.

Browse Our Leaded Glass Galleries

Our website holds one of the largest collections of decorative glass patterns anywhere. Browse hundreds of Leaded Glass designs in our main gallery, arranged by theme and by door style, to find the right pattern — or simply for inspiration towards your own. Visit the Main Gallery to see what’s possible.