The fragments of ancient stained glass gathered in the south chancel window are among the most debated objects in the church. What survives today is only a small part of what was once a much larger and more impressive scheme that formed the main east window behind the altar.
The clearest element of surviving glass is the coat of arms of the Kniveton family, quartered with another unidentified family shield.
In the early eighteenth century, the heraldic recorders the Bassano brothers recorded that the east window showed Christ on the cross in the centre, with the Virgin Mary to the left and Mary Magdelane to the right in the side lights. The Kniveton arms appeared beneath in the centre window.
By the time J. Charles Cox visited in the 1870s, most of this glass had been moved to the south chancel window. He thought it had probably been rearranged when the church was reordered in 1842, and commented that the heraldic shield had been “put together in a clumsy way”.
The other randomly set pieces of glass are believed to be whats left of the main east window scene. They are undoubtedly old but precisely how old is uncertain. Some reports describe the fragments as possibly twelfth or thirteenth century, based on their characteristic brown-yellow colouring, the tell-tale sign of forest glass, made in woodland furnaces.
Others have argued that some of the painted pieces are later, from the fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The honest answer is that nobody knows for certain.
Cox and Heather disagreed about the identity of the original figures. Bassano had described the Virgin and St Mary Magdalene. Cox, noting a fragment showing a hand holding a book, thought one figure was more likely St John the Evangelist. Heather however named John the Baptist instead. Neither saw the original glass complete, so neither could be certain.
Look closely and you can still pick out fragments of the original Crucifixion scene: part of a face, a hand pierced by a nail, a hand holding a book, fabric, flowers and wood.