Notes: 1. The Window was dedicated as a tribute to the 2000 seamen from South Tyneside who died on convoy duty. The originals were shattered by a landmine during the bombing raids.
2. St. Aidan’s Church was built in 1887 to seat 600 people at a cost of £5,000. The foundation stone was laid by Alderman John Readhead. Prior to this the first vicar, Rev. Lewis David Evans, held services in the old skating rink in Ocean Road. Due to maintenance costs and falling numbers, the church closed on 30th November 1995 when the parish merged with that of St. Stephen’s, and was called “The Lawe”
3. The windows were vandalised when St Aidan’s church was empty, They were restored by artist Chris Chesney who is Northumberland based.
4. Vicar Ralph Shaw was instrumental in transferring these stained glass window from St Aidan’s to St Stephen’s.
5. There was a campaign held to raise funds. Money came from various sources:
South Tyneside Borough Council provided £6,000 to transfer the windows. This came from the South Shields Riverside Community Area Forum. The cheque was handed over by Cllr Audrey McMillan approx. Thursday February 17th 2000.
The Freemasons of Hedworth Lodge, South Shields donated £200.
A funeral, held during the campaign to raise funds for the windows had a collection of £230.
There was a donation from the Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust and members of the Seafaring Community.
But most of the £30,000 was raised by parishioners and supporters of the church.
6. Also transferred from St Aidan’s church were the Wooden reredos, altar and pulpit;
7. A wooden Linen chest remembering former Sunday School teacher Mrs Gladys Tate S86.074, was also brought over from St Aidans Church.
8. The west windows were to the memory of men of the parish who died in the Great War.
9. A pair of candlesticks remembering a foyboatman lost in a tragic accident.
10. A communion rail recalls Henry Rudd DSC who lost his life in the Russian convoys in 1942 S86.138.
11. A commemorative plaque preserves the memory of William Trealor, master of the S.S. <i>Laleham</i> which foundered with the loss of all hands off the coast of America in 1899.
another recalls Henry Heatley, lost at sea by the presumed wreck of the S.S. Lovaine in the Atlantic in 1887;
another recalls Stephen Archdale, killed by falling from aloft aboard the vessel Crompton, in the South Pacific in 1898”
There is also a mention of a Memorial (not known) to a chorister who died of enteric fever in India in 1907 and a young trooper, killed in the Boer War – Hails S86.052. Location Missing.
12. “One subject, taken from the Book of Daniel, chap. III, fills the whole of the windows.
In the first window is shown the young men standing on the brink of the furnace with all its terrors.
The tyrant sits proudly on his golden throne relentlessly inventing new torments, and orders in their hearing that the furnace be heated seven times more than it was wont to be heated.
Around him stand his eager fluttering courtiers, his rough, stern, hard, professional soldiers.
In the roaring flames of the furnace, out of sight of the Emperor, and as yet not seen by the gallant lads, is a glimpse of one who in His own person endured the fiercest pangs of torture, bodily and spiritual, as these boys are soon to undergo.
And overhead is painted His crown and theirs – the crown of thorns.
In the second window the three men are standing erect and unbound; and beside them another, stronger, taller, more radiant than they; and opposite, the proud tyrant, no longer on his throne, but humbled to the dust, praying to the God he had mocked, his boasting gone, his throne empty.” South Shields Gazette
