The re-dedication on Friday of a stained glass window that has returned to Armidale’s former St John’s Theological College after an absence of decades was a homecoming for more than just a beautiful work of art.
In 1898, Bishop Arthur Vincent Green founded the college in a building designed by Horbury Hunt, on land then alongside New England Girls’ School. A stained glass window commemorating the opening remained in the building but, during the Second World War, was removed for safe-keeping and taken to Morpeth, near Newcastle, where the College had relocated in the 1920s. There it remained until the college was sold in 2008, and the case made for its return to Armidale.
For Reverend George Garnsey, one of several clergy at Friday’s ceremony, said it was an extra significant occasion. A former principal of St John’s Morpeth, his grandfather Canon Arthur Garnsey was a former Warden of the Armidale St John’s.
“My father and his siblings were born here at this very place. So it is very much as if two of us are coming home,” he said.
During the ceremony Bishop Rick Lewers said the original dedication of the window was for St John’s as a theological college, while the re-dedication was for a St John’s that was a school of Christian education. He talked through the symbols of the window, including the five quills that represented learning, and said it was a reminder of God’s purpose.
Among those present was Mrs Juliet Cameron, a former NEGS student who lived in the Newcastle Diocese and just happened to be in the school’s archives in 2004 when someone showed her a photograph of the window and asked if she knew about it.
“The school archivist Mrs Jean Newall confirmed that it had come from St John’s, but we didn’t know where the window was. Fast forward a few years and I met a student at St John’s Morpeth and asked him if he knew the window — and he invited me to see it, as the College was going to be closed.”
Mrs Cameron approached the Newcastle Diocese asking if the window could be returned home and in 2008 was advised that the Bishop, Diocesan Council and the purchaser of the college site all gave their blessing to the idea.
She then wrote to NEGS Chairman Mr John Cassidy who enabled it to happen. Builder John Fisher and NEGS maintenance manager Lyall Cameron removed and brought the window back to New England, where around $2000 in restoration work was done, including replacement of several pieces of cracked glass and cleaning, by a stained glass artisan in Walcha.
“It’s hard to imagine why it was thought World War II posed such a threat to the window here in Armidale, and for it to be removed to a place that was probably of greater risk. Its return is a lovely story of history and tradition joining hands.”
