Our Wonderful Windows - more from Westbourne Church Restoration Trust September 2024  I am sitting writing this on a grey day with wind and rain and it really does seem that summer has finished, how different to the  day of the Church fete at the end of July! The Trust was delighted to be asked to attend again and are very grateful for the kind welcome and support from the fete organisers. The weather was kind and it was lovely to see so many faces both new and familiar. Thank you to all who supported the Trust’s ‘small raffle’. Every penny that we raise is used to restore the fabric of this wonderful building. The weather was not so kind on the evening of Trust’s Garden Party, we had to change venue at short notice and the administration of The Meeting Place came to our rescue. It was a great delight to be able to thank members of the church council, our donors and past officers for their generosity and hard work. We hope that it will become a regular fixture, the weather will not beat us.  While summer seems to have gone in a flash it does mean that there is not so much pressure to be outside for every second, which in turn has lead me inside the church. The stained glass is one of the first things that hits one on entering. I remember when I first became ‘involved’ in the church I was told that the glass was not particularly ‘important’. I suspect that ‘important’ may mean old and /or unusual, however the glass is very interesting. There is an excellent illustrated guide to the windows on the Church website and it is well worth reading that prior to a visit. I had planned to write a factual summary of the glass and its manufacture but as I researched I became sidetracked, wondering why so many ‘old’ churches like ours have stained glass from the 19th century, often in a similar ‘pre-Raphaelite’ style and the stories of the individuals who instigated their manufacture. There are churches in Sussex that have some pre-reformation and medieval stained glass remaining but they are not that common. They tend to be on a small scale or are fragments of previous glories. Stained glass is an expensive ‘add on’ to any church and large windows would have been a huge cost for a relatively modest village church until mass production started in the 19th Century. If there was old glass it might well not have survived the centuries let alone any deliberate destruction after the reformation. So what drove this new desire for new stained glass in so many Church of England churches? Henry VIII caused the church in England to break away from Rome but initially everything carried on much the same in most village churches with the same form of worship, the same degree of decoration in the churches, just the big monastic houses were abolished. Churches became more austere and bare as the reformation became stronger during the reign future monarchs (despite a brief return to Catholicism in the reign of Mary Tudor). This country’s identity was intimately linked with being protestant and any trace or leaning towards ‘Rome’ was deplored and feared, such papist decadence was tant amount to idolatry! The fear of catholic plots, invasion and overthrow of British institutions was widely felt.  In the 19th century, things began to change. The United Kingdom grew in confidence - Britain was a ‘top nation’ and as such was not going to be threatened by any Roman Catholic conspiracy. There was a resurgence of interest in history, in particular medievalism, and it was felt that churches (many of them like ours of medieval origin) deserved to be ‘restored. The industrial revolution had produced wealth that could be spent on such restoration and also had developed technologies that manufactured stained glass more economically. At the same time new groups of clergy with in the Church began to aspire to at older styles of worship and doctrine. The time was ripe for a new investment in ecclesiastical art for all, in the shape of large stained glass projects. That is not to say that such windows came ‘cheap’. In our church most were funded by families or individuals as memorials. There are numerous other memorial plaques of varying degrees of splendour on the walls of the church but the glass seems to me to be a real gift to the community giving pleasure and facilitating worship for all. All the windows in the church date from a very short period - from the 1840s to the early 20th century, the 1860’s were particularly busy for installations! It is tantalising that we do not know much about the glass in the windows before these were all installed. There is a mention of an old window being removed in the course of the new windows being added - I wonder if it contained coloured glass and can’t help wondering what was lost. The window of St Mark and St Matthew the Evangelists at the west end of the church is the oldest in the church and  was made circa 1840 when the Rev Henry Newland was the rector. The windows in the Chancel showing the life of St John the Baptist (including the gory beheading at the behest of Salome) were installed in Rev Newland’s memory just after he left the parish in 1863.Scenes from Jesus’s life also in the chancel date from the same year in memory of General John Oldfield. He was born in Westbourne in 1793 into a military family. He was very short and when he was old enough to go to the military academy at Woolwich he had to get a special dispensing order to allow him to enrol. In 1805 the cadets were inspected by George III. The King was struck by Oldfield’s height and asked his name and age! Oldfield was commissioned into the Royal engineers and served in the Napoleonic wars. When he heard that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, he sent his family home to Westbourne from Brussels where they had been living. In his capacity as brigade major of the Royal Engineers he produced a sketch-plan of Waterloo which was used by the Duke of Wellington prior to the battle. He was promoted to General in 1862 and died just one year later, he is buried in the churchyard. The incumbent during this busy period was the Rev John Sterling (Rector 1862 -1871). He was a keen amateur historian and from a wealthy family. He seems to have designed and funded one of the windows himself, that of the last days and crucifixion of Christ also in the chancel.In the same year 3 more chancel windows (Miracles of Christ)  were installed in memorial of Catherine Barwell and E Mundy. Catherine was the widow of Richard Barwell of Stanstead. She was widowed in 1804 and married Edwin Mundy who was an MP in Derbyshire - he died in 1822. This begs the question of who gifted the window in 1863 and it seems that it was their son (Sir Robert Mundy) who returned to the area (he lived at Hollybank House) after a glittering career in the colonial service, serving a governor on several Caribbean islands. My favourite donor story relates to the window of the resurrection at the west end of the church. This was gifted by Admiral Sir Provo William Perry Wallis of Funtington House. He has the most extraordinary biography, his father was keen that his son should have a naval career. He did not have the means to buy him a naval commission but managed to enlist Provo as an able seaman at the age of 4, one hopes that he was not on board ship from this age! Provo rose through the ranks and became a naval hero in the napoleonic wars. He died at the age of 100 having been in the navy for 96 years, he is buried at Funtington Church. This takes us up to 1865 and I will try to complete the stories of donors in another article in the near future. Thank you for taking the time to read this, any comments, corrections or further information are very gratefully received.Mary Galloway (Chair Westbourne Church Restoration Trust)