The West Window

The window fills the whole of one side of the ringing room. It was designed by Burlison & Grylls  (misquoted as Burkson & Gryffs in one reference), and installed in 1885 in memory of Com. Elliott Mores. This page explains the imagery in the window, in as far as it has been deciphered. For convenience, the different sections of the window are numbered A,B,C (bottom to top) and 1,2,3,4,5 (left to right), as shown in the diagram. There are pictures and notes for each section below.

The window is described in the guide books as representing the Te Deum. It does indeed contain words from the Te Deum, but only the first 17 of its 29 verses. The distribution of the words around the window is also rather unusual, as shown by the arrows in the diagram. It starts with verse 1 at bottom left and runs through the outer four panels along the bottom. It then jumps to the bottom of the leftmost panel in the row above. Then it goes across all the scrolls held by the angels at the top, and across all the scrolls floating above the bottom row (except the middle one, which contains saints' names).  Finally, it jumps back to the remaining panels under the second row of figures. The complete sequence, using capitals for the bottom of each panel, and lower case for the scrolls at the top of each panel is: A1, A2, A4, A5, B1, b1, b2, b4, b5, a1, a2, a4, a5, B2, B3, B4, B5.

The window can also be thought of as a Last Judgement / Second Coming. Christ the Judge is in the Centre, surrounded by The Orders of Angels, Saints and Prophets, and St Michael is weighing Souls in the balance.

The positioning of the text of the Te Deum is probably used to help identify the various groups of figures. The wording in the scrolls (not the blocks of text) thus gives:
 

The window shows dozens of people and angels. Three have their names above them (Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, marked * in the table below) but some of the others have been identifed from the groups above, and by the way they are portrayed. Christian artists over the years have used a set of conventions for representing different saints, based on significant features of their lives. So the things they are holding, how they are dressed, what they are doing, and of course what they look like, can all be used to identify them. Some people say that this helped illiterate people to understand the stories in the bible, but that seems questionable since they would need to learn the stories before they could recognise the imagery.

There are over 50 potentially identifiable figures in the window, but many of them have not yet been identified. There are no known records of the window, and all of Burlison & Grylls records were lost when their premises were bombed in 1945. Some information was obtained from description of the east window of St Michael's church in Kirk Langley, Derbyshire , which also depicts the Te Deum, with a lot of the same content almost identical to panels A1, A2, A4, A5, B1, B2, B4, B5.

The figures in the Kirk Langley window have several significant differences compared to the Wokingham window, notably: A1-3 – has no spear, A4-3 is older, A5 extra figure behind, B1-1 hair gold not white,, B1-2 hair grey not brown, B1-5 young, gold hair, no beard, B2-2 grey hair not bald, B2-3 grey hair not dark. There are other minor differences of colour. The Kirk Langley window dates from 1851, over 30 years earlier than the Wokingham window, so the Wokingham design was presumably considered as an improvement on the original.

If you think you know the identity of any of the others (or if you think there are any mistakes) please do get in touch .

You can see enlarged versions of each section by clicking on the images below.

You can also see the detail of what we have so far deciphered .

Pictures

Click each to enlarge and move between pictures using the arrows.

C1	C2	C3	C4	C5
B1	B2	B3	B4	B5
A1	A2	A3	A4	A5

Details of people shown in the window

The table shows what we have worked out so far. It is incomplete, and might not be entirely accurate.

Click on the picture at the start of each entry to open a new window with its picture. You will need to reduce the size of the window to see both it and the table.

References

How to Read a Church, Richard Taylor, Random House.

 The Bible and the Saints, G Duchet-Sucheaux & M Pastoureau, Flamorian Iconographic Guides

Private correspondence, Brian O'Calaghan, Reading University

 Records of the Parish Church and Parish of Wokingham, Canon B Long, 1937

Wikipedia 

Iconography in Art and Architecture, Buffalo

The Saints and their Symbols, caravagio67  [dead]

Saint Symbology, World Lingo  [dead]

Christian iconography 

Doctors of the Catholic Church  [dead]

Symbols of the Saints in Art, Fisheaters  

Symbols of the Saints 

How to Recognize the Holy Apostles in Icons, Iconreader 

Updated 15-12-2023