St Peter's Parish News
Thursday 1 January 1970
South transept window
In the south transept of St Peter’s (behind the organ) there is a huge Victorian stained-glass window. It depicts the Resurrection of the Dead described in the Book of Revelation, and was installed in 1873 as a memorial to Sophia Curtis. Like our east window, this is the work of the Victorian stained-glass firm Clayton & Bell; Prom-goers this month will see their mosaics on the Albert Memorial in London.
The south transept window is full of symbolism and it worth pausing to take it all in. We see the faithful rising from their graves, being guided into heaven by angels, and on either side, hosts of angels sound trumpets. Unusually in stained glass, we see the backs of heads as the risen turn their backs on the Earthly realm towards Christ in Heaven. Images of the Day of Resurrection have existed since the Early Church. For comparison, here is a 14th-century wall painting in the Fishermen’s Chapel at St Brelade’s Church on Jersey in the Channel Islands. Again, we see angels sounding trumpets and the dead rising from graves – the same image, painted 500 years earlier than our Berkhamsted window.
In the upper parts of the window in St Peter’s, we see ancient Christian symbols representing the Instruments of the Passion: the deposition ladder; the chalice; the Gethsemane lantern; the whipping post, spear and dice; the three nails within the Crown of Thorns; and the emblem of the Five Wounds of Christ. These symbols link the Resurrection scene in the mind of the viewer with the Passion and death of Jesus.
“We look for the resurrection of the dead
And the life of the world to come”
– the Nicene Creed
