St Giles – Window for the 1998 Centenary

The text in the four-light window declares the window to have been “given by the people of St Giles’ in 1998 to celebrate the centenary of the building of the central nave and chancel in 1898”.

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The window was designed by local artist and member of St Giles’ congregation, Jennifer Bell, and executed with M E Stained Glass of Newark. She wrote about the window:1

“The brief for the design of the 1998 window was to show St Giles’ and her three daughter churches (St Luke’s, St Paul’s, and All Hallows). The image of the waterfall seemed immediately right; God’s Spirit as the water, flowing from the Holy Mountain, forging its way through field and bedrock, overflowing from one church through another and on again, sweeping leaves (only decorative at the sides of the window – the design taken from a window in the Lady Chapel – but becoming real in the water) over the sill into the church. (The stars bursting into the sky are also taken from a motif in another window.)

“The picture as a whole is straight from the Psalms, and in fact if you look closely you will see verses written in the painting of the grass and trees. Among them are: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Psalm 42. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. Psalm 24. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. Palm 23. I lift my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 121. … Just as in the world outside you can see God’s word written right through creation … if you look.”

References
1. Jennifer Bell St Giles’ Church, the new stained glass windows