Baptistry window

The happiness of the Gospel vignettes of the chancel window is there again in the baptistry window: the window in the south aisle by the font. This picture of a mother as blond as an Anglo-Saxon maiden, holding her chubby golden-haired child while one angel swings a censor and the other prays, was in fact a memorial window. It was given by Charles Johnston, who was Holy Trinity’s vicar from 1891 to 1916, in memory of his wife, who died the year he retired: a death celebrated with a picture of joyous youth. The only hint of unhappiness is the sadness in the girl’s face as she foresees this baby’s death. The child, though, is a bouncing infant who has learned the royal wave (or blessing) and whose kingly orb is held with the firm possessiveness of a teddy bear. The relaxed picture makes it a more modern window than the stained glass in the chancel, although made a few years earlier.


‘Ecce Angus Dei’ (Behold the Lamb of God) announces the scroll in Latin at the top, as though the Holy Spirit itself were speaking. Holy Trinity must have been quite high church in the early 20th century, what with all this Latin. The font into which pour the rays of the spirit is identical to ours, but for the carving of the cross. This appears as a quatrefoil (the four leaves recall the cross) in the window and a plain cross on the font. As the font was designed by Ninian Comper in the 1950s, it echoed the stained glass rather than the other way round.