Left: Whole window. Right: Close-up of St. Michael.
St Michael (a regimental memorial window). Ward and Hughes, c.1880. Norwich Cathedral. This south transept (level 1) window was installed in memory of members of the East Norfolk regiment who fell in the nineteenth-century wars, up to and including the Crimean War. [Click on these and the following images to enlarge them.]
Left: Above the figure of St Michael slaying the dragon is the regimental badge of the IX East Norfolk Regiment. Right: Below are the names of engagements in which the regiment took part.
Among the engagements remembered here are the siege of San Sebastian in the Iberian Peninsular War, at the top, and that of Sevastopol in the Crimean War at the bottom. Some of the others are Cabool (Kabul) in the first Afghan War (1842), and Sobraon, Moodkee and Ferozeshah, all scenes of battles in the Anglo-Sikh War, 1845-46.
With its rich contrasting colours (note St Michael's variegated wings), highly embellished framing, and fierce dragon with muscular-looking coil and grisly spread wing, this handsome window is one of several memorials here to men of the Norfolk regiments who fell in those years. Later, in 1931, St Saviour's Chapel would be built in the cathedral's apse, on the site of the old Lady Chapel, as the Royal Norfolk's Regimental Chapel (Parkhouse 122). By then there would be many more to memorialize.
Photographs by Colin Price, reproduced here by kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of Norwich Cathedral. Text by Jacqueline Banerjee.
Related Material
Sources
Brief description of the window. Norwich Cathedral. Web. 17 November 2017.
Parkhouse, Valerie. Memorializing the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902: Militarization of the Landscape: Monuments and Memorials in Britain. Kibworth Beauchamp, Leics.: Matador, 2015.
Created 17 November 2017