Festival in the Chapel

However, the service is not an ancient ritual, for it was instituted in 1918 by the Dean, Eric Milner-White, to commemorate the first Christmas of the peace, just six weeks after Armistice Day. The annual broadcasts began in 1928. Milner-White was a Fellow of the college for more than twenty years, and his other great legacy to the Chapel was complementing its famous stained-glass windows by installing in the side-chapels other examples of sixteenth-century glass from England and the Continent; he established a major collection which is still being added to today.

These smaller panels can be seen at eye-level, and so provide an opportunity to appreciate the glaziers’ skills and techniques close-up. This gives a key to understanding the great windows above, whose stunning colours, dramatic figures and epic narrative were created by a team of designers and glaziers who were the supreme masters of their art – despite being unpopular economic migrants from Flanders who were seen as a threat to English craftsmen.