York Minster - Five Sisters Window - a photo on Flickriver

            The Postcard

A Valentine's Series postcard that was printed in Great Britain. The image is a glossy real photograph.

Someone has used a pencil in order to write the following on the divided back:

"July 26th.
Restored in commemoration
of all the women in the Empire
who lost their lives as the result
of the Great War.
Memorial tablet to Admiral
Craddock (sic) of Coronel fame -
1914 on east wall of N. transept."

Sir Christopher Cradock

Rear Admiral Sir Christopher "Kit" George Francis Maurice Cradock KCVO CB SGM was an English senior officer of the Royal Navy. He was born in Hartforth, North Yorkshire on the 2nd. July 1862.

Appointed to the Royal Yacht, he was close to the British royal family.

During the Great War he earned a reputation for great gallantry. 

The Battle of Coronel

Sir Christopher died on the 1st. November 1914 at Coronel. He had been tasked to search for and destroy the East Asia Squadron of the Imperial German Navy as it headed home around the tip of South America. 

Believing that he had no choice but to engage the squadron in accordance with his orders, despite his numerical and tactical inferiority, he was killed during the Battle of Coronel off the coast of Chile.

Heavily disadvantaged because the high seas had rendered the main-deck six-inch guns on HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth unusable, and with partially trained crews, Cradock's two armoured cruisers were destroyed with the loss of all 1,660 lives, including his own. Sir Christopher was 52 years of age when he died.

This battle was the first defeat of the Royal Navy in a naval action in more than a hundred years.

Departing from Port Stanley he had left behind a letter to be forwarded to Admiral Hedworth Meux in the event of his death. 

In this he commented that he did not intend to suffer the fate of Rear-Admiral Ernest Troubridge, who had been court-martialled in August for failing to engage the enemy despite the odds being severely against him, during the pursuit of the German warships Goeben and Breslau. 

The Governor of the Falklands and the Governor's aide both reported that Cradock had not expected to survive.

Sir Christopher Cradock's Personal Life

Cradock never married, but kept a dog which accompanied him at sea. He commented that he would choose to die either during an accident while hunting (his favourite pastime), or during action at sea.

The Cradock Memorial

The Cradock Memorial is much more than a "tablet" - it is a relatively large and elaborate memorial sculpted by F. W. Pomeroy. It was placed in York Minster on the 16th. June 1916 on the east side of the North Transept towards the Chapter House entrance.

There is another monument to Cradock in Catherington churchyard, Hampshire, and also a monument and a stained glass window in Cradock's memory in his parish church at Gilling West. 

Having no known grave, he is commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission on Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

The Five Sisters Window

Some of the stained glass in York Minster dates back to the 12th. century, and much of the glass (white or coloured) came from Germany. The glass was painted, fired, then joined with lead strips into the windows. 

Approximately two million individual pieces of glass make up the cathedral's stained-glass windows. The windows were removed in 1916 because of the fear of bombing during the Great War, and the glass was removed again during the Second World War.

The Five Sisters  window is 53 feet (16.3 m) tall. Because of the extended time periods during which the glass was installed, different types of glazing and painting techniques are visible in the different windows.

The Five Sisters window was restored in 1925 with £3,500 raised by Almyra Gray and Helen Little.

Taken on: May 24, 2022

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