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Monday 23rd April
From The Archives

St George and the Chapel

 

During this week of St George’s Day, take a few minutes to visit the School Chapel and have a look at the War Memorial window - a familiar part of our school life, but have you ever looked at it carefully?  The following is an explanation of what it means and how it came to be in the Chapel.  The photos are by Jade Downes.

 

In 1923, the Old Oswestrian Society, which had been inactive since the 1880s, was reformed; their first act was to make an appeal to all OOs for subscriptions towards a War Memorial to those Oswestrians who had fallen in the Great War less than a decade earlier.  The memorial was to take the form of a stained glass window in the School Chapel with a brass plate below detailing the Roll of Honour.

 

At that time, Mr R H Webster, Art Master to the Borough of Oswestry, was Visiting Art Master at Oswestry School and, although not on the regular staff, he was very interested in the life of the school, particularly the chapel where he was responsible for the display of Coats of Arms around the inside of the roof.  Webster was the designer of the War Memorial Window.

 

Below, in his own words, published later in The Oswestrian, and taken here from Oakley's 'A History of Oswestry School', Webster describes the window and the symbolic meaning of its three subjects.

 

"We believe that our Chapel is built a few yards from, and possibly on, the very spot, where St Oswald gave his life for his Country, his people and his Faith.  St Oswald, who in death served his cause more greatly than in his life, is a fitting prototype of the Christian patriot and his life and death epitomise all the high striving of those glorious dead whose memory we seek to honour.  So in the centre of our window is Oswald, Saint, King and Martyr.  Both hands hold his long sword cross-wise to his breast as he stands by the historic oak tree, on the battle morning of Masserfield, in consecration to the triple cause of his life - his Faith, his land, his people.

 

"Right and left are the militant saints, the Archangel, St Michael, and our patron, St George, types of the eternal struggle against spiritual and material evil - against evil thinking and evil doing.  St Michael is crushing a serpent under his feet and St George has slain one dragon and is going on - to fight the next in whatever guise it may appear.  St Oswald is wearing the Saxon banded cap with a royal coronet, a shirt of plate mail, cross gartered shoes, and a cloak of royal crimson.  The militant saints wear armour, a little idealised of the 14th century.  The chapel is built in the late 13th century manner, so the armour helps to suggest a natural progression - of glass made to enrich an earlier building, rather than as in the later Gothic, of a building made to hold glass.  St Michael's status is shown by the star-like decoration of his helmet and he holds the cross topped staff that pictorial symbolism usually assigns to him.  St George, as Patron Saint of England, wears on shield and pennon and surcoat the Red Cross that still forms the heart of the Union Flag.  His belt is embroidered with roses and the shield above him bears another rose and a 'Lion of England'.

 

"The crowned shield over St Oswald bears a cross, palm and sword to symbolise his royalty and martyrdom.  On the shield over St Michael are the sword of power and the scales of justice, for in ecclesiastical symbolism St Michael often typifies the Creator's power and justice, as St Gabriel His love and mercy.  'Over all is our Founder's Shield'."

 

The War Memorial window was dedicated on Speech Day 1924 when a service was held in the Parish Church by the Rev Canon Spooner, DD, OO.