Remembrance through rose-tinted glass

Hauntingly beautiful, stained-glass scenes keep the memory of our Fallen alive in glorious technicolour. Andrew Green visits country churches to seek them out

- Andrew Green

THERE’S the familiar clunk as the latch on a sturdy village church door is sprung. Inside, my footsteps echo in a centuries-old silence. This morning, the location is the intimate space of St Nicholas Church at Ickford, Buckinghamshire, but what’s about to happen holds true for country churches across Britain. Another search for examples of First World War memorial windows ends in a shattering of that silence.

The ferocious battle into which my imagination is plunged this time around was fought at Épehy (on the Somme) on September 18, 1918. The inscription below the neo-Gothic, stained-glass Virgin and Child relates as much in remembering a local victim of the action: 2nd Lt Edward Vernon Staley of the Royal Field Artillery. Son of the rector of Ickford, Staley died at the age of 19, heartrendingly close to the safe haven of the Armistice.

‘The stained-glass industry is booming and enjoying wonderful prosperity,’ proclaimed a 1920 newspaper. In the aftermath of the war, craftspeople struggled to meet the demand for memorials. These days, the cycle of remembrance for the dead in numerous conflicts revolves around early November. A century ago, memorials of various kinds were being unveiled a month after mournful month.