Edinburgh’s glass menagerie

Many are the minutes – even hours – that I have sat in contemplative wonder, looking at the fragments of the first stained-glass window in the country, if not the world, dating from 670 AD.

The window is hard by the centre of Sunderland, within the walls of St Peter’s Church, Monkwearmouth, County Durham, one of the most important Anglo-Saxon churches in the country. If you dwell on what was subsequently to be produced with this glowingly translucent art, you are quite floored with delight.

With stained glass being associated most generally with the Church for well