CRAFTSMEN AND LABOURERS IN CONSTRUCTION
This window and the one shown on page 2 were made in 1959. They typify construction on the South Bank and a river providing a channel of trade for skins, wood pulp food and other resources for local factory and workshop. If raw materials came from far afield, skills, sites, traditions and trade loyalties were local contributions. Those who worked and managed traveled relatively short distances. Few people anticipated the rate and range of changes just ahead.
The next twelve windows tell something of the changes that had come in only 25 more years.
In these windows, old and new, a story unfolds that challenges us all to expect the unexpected and to find therein ways of retaining the rich strains of a mixed but inclusive community for residents and working population side by side. It is not an easy task. Every one has a contribution we should generously expect and evoke. Some contributions glow, some seem to glower, others are still hidden or even suppressed. How are we to nurture a community today in which everyone contributes in relation to their gifts?
The best of traditions and of practice in the Christian church reveal good news we call the Gospel to aid us in this task of being fully human under God. Is this good news expounded and explored in ways that make sense of our society, of its social and its economic patterns? The windows now shown are symbolic of an attempt made out of Christ Church and the John Marshall Hall, to expound and explore.
