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2 days ago | Advertorial | Hilary Brough

“For 24 Christmases, these handmade ornaments were never for sale” – Why a 74-year-old glassmaker is letting go of the treehouses he made for his grandchildren, at half price

In the woods behind Godfrey Pellow’s cottage in the Forest of Dean stand the treehouses he built for his grandchildren. For every one of them, he made a tiny copy in stained glass to hang on the Christmas tree. For 24 years, he turned down every offer to buy one. This November, he is closing his workshop – and changing his mind.

Coleford, November. The oaks in the Forest are letting go of their last leaves, and the lane outside Godfrey Pellow’s cottage is thick with them. Inside the old stone cart shed he turned into a workshop forty years ago, a little electric heater ticks away beside a workbench that has seen more than half a century of glass. Sheets of amber, emerald and cobalt lean in a wooden rack along the wall. A soldering iron rests in its stand. On the windowsill, catching the grey autumn light, hangs a tiny glass oak tree with a round wooden door and a fairy sitting on the steps.

“That one was the first,” Godfrey says. “Christmas 2002. Tamsin’s first Christmas. She was four months old and she couldn’t take her eyes off it.”

Tamsin is 24 now. She is the reason this story is being written at all. Because for 24 years, her grandfather had one answer for anyone who asked to buy one of his ornaments: “They’re not for sale. They’re for family.”

A treehouse for every grandchild

Godfrey learned his trade in 1974, restoring church windows across Gloucestershire and the Welsh Marches – long days on scaffolding, piecing together saints and lambs from glass that was older than the villages around it. Later he set up his own small workshop in the stone shed behind the cottage he shared with his wife, Gillian, on the edge of the Forest.

When Tamsin was born, Godfrey did what grandfathers in the Forest have always done: he built her a treehouse. He chose the old oak at the bottom of the garden, gave it a round door and little steps, and Gillian told the baby that fairies lived inside. That first December, Godfrey went into his workshop and made a copy of the treehouse in glass – no bigger than the palm of his hand – so Tamsin would have it on the tree even when the real one was wet through with winter rain.

Then more grandchildren came along. And with every one, another tree in the woods got a house – and Godfrey’s workshop got a new design. “Gillian used to say I was building a whole village up there,” he laughs. “She wasn’t wrong.”

Over the years, the woods behind the cottage filled up. So did the family Christmas tree. And every December, people who saw those little glass treehouses – at the church Christmas fair, in a daughter’s front room, in a photo on someone’s phone – asked the same question. Godfrey always gave the same answer.

The six treehouses – and who they belong to

“Every piece of glass has to be cut on the line. There’s no cheating”

Each ornament is built the way Godfrey once built church windows – only smaller. He cuts every leaf, every window pane and every piece of bark from sheet glass, wraps the edges in thin copper foil, and solders them together so the seams become the branches, railings and roof lines. Then comes a warm gold patina, and the tiny details: a brass telescope, a lantern, a staircase that actually winds round the trunk.

Hang one on a tree and you see why people kept asking. When the fairy lights shine through the glass, the leaves glow green and gold, the little windows light up amber, and the whole treehouse looks as if someone has just come home. Each ornament is about 10 cm tall and 9 cm wide – big enough to be the first thing guests notice on the tree, small enough to sit among the branches as if it grew there. A fine gold-tone chain is already attached, so it’s ready to hang the moment it comes out of the box.

“Factory baubles are painted plastic,” Godfrey says. “You can tell from across the room. Light doesn’t go through paint. It goes through glass.”

Why he finally said yes

Godfrey is 74. His eyes don’t follow a cutting line the way they used to, and by the afternoon his hands start to shake on the fine work. His daughter has asked him to move to Cheltenham, closer to the family. The cottage goes on the market in the spring. The workshop closes on 30 November.

Last winter, Godfrey did something he had never done before. He took every sheet of glass left in the rack and cut it into ornaments – all six designs, one final collection. “I thought I’d make enough for the family and the neighbours,” he says. “I made far too many. I think I just didn’t want to stop.”

That was when Tamsin sat him down at the kitchen table. “Grandad,” she said, “the treehouses are staying with the cottage. These ornaments are all that’s going to be left of them. Let other families have one. Let them start their own stories.”

It took him three days to answer. “She was right,” Godfrey says. “What’s the point of keeping 400 treehouses in boxes in Cheltenham?” 418 ornaments from the final collection are left. Tamsin found him a small corner in an online shop for handmade goods and set a price of half what similar handmade glass ornaments sell for. “I don’t want the money,” Godfrey says. “I want them on trees. I want some little girl to stare at one the way Tamsin did.”

What sets Godfrey’s treehouse ornaments apart:

What the first owners are saying

“The kind of present people keep for fifty years”

Most of Godfrey’s ornaments never stay on one tree. They go to grandchildren, to new parents, to newlyweds hanging their first ornament together. Many customers buy the design that matches someone they love – the stargazer, the child who collects acorns, the twins, the nan who reads by moonlight.

“That’s what they were always for,” Godfrey says. “A grandparent and a child in front of a tree. If one of mine ends up in that picture, I’m happy.”

Where can you get one?

Godfrey’s treehouse ornaments are only available through Cedar & Tin, an online shop for real handwork from selected makers, where Tamsin looks after her grandfather’s small corner. Only there will you get the original ornaments from Godfrey’s final collection. Look-alike “treehouse ornaments” in printed acrylic have started to appear on Amazon and other big sites. They may look similar in a photo, but they have nothing to do with Godfrey’s glass.

After 30 November, the workshop goes dark

Godfrey will lock his workshop at the end of November. Tamsin will keep sending orders out from Cheltenham after that – but only until the last of the 418 ornaments is gone. With Christmas this close and the special price, that is not expected to take long.

“24 Christmases I said no,” Godfrey says, turning the little Moonlit Willow in his fingers. “Gillian would have told me I waited too long.” He smiles. “She usually did.”

The verdict

Godfrey’s treehouse ornaments are the kind of Christmas decoration that becomes a family heirloom: real stained glass, made by hand, each one with a story you can tell while you hang it. When the fairy lights come on and the little windows glow, it’s easy to see why he kept them in the family for 24 years. Thank you, Godfrey, for finally letting them go.

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