GeoGraph - photograph every grid square

Holy Trinity Church in Longlevens is only 75 years old, however the glass seen in this and the other photographs in the sequence is much, much older. This glass has been twice rescued; first it was collected by the antiquary Samuel Lysons Link and placed in St Luke's Church in the City of Gloucester. However, in 1933 St. Luke's closed, and was demolished a little while later. This ancient glass was thankfully saved again and placed as panels in three windows of the newly built church of the Holy Trinity in Longlevens. The glass shown in this sequence is that to be found in the two windows in the northern wall of the Lady Chapel. I have not yet recorded the fragments in the West Window.
Ancient glass such as this is sadly rare in Britain, thanks to the iconoclastic ravages of the Puritans under Cromwell. During the so-called Protectorate, Cromwell and his fundamentalist acolytes destroyed much of the ancient beauty of our churches, smashing statues, whitewashing over frescoes and destroying any symbolism that they considered iconographic. As a result most magnificent mediaeval stained glass, that had depicted Bible stories to the illiterate for hundreds of years was smashed, removed and replaced by plain glass. Therefore any glass dating from before 1650 is extremely rare and to be treasured.