The story of how an Oxfordshire villager challenged art history experts by proving that ‘gloomy’ pictures in St Andrew's Church, Chinnor, were linked to Westminster Abbey is told in a new booklet.

A Pictorial Guide to St Andrew's Church, Chinnor, tells how parishioner June Cray, who died in 2002, “nearly jumped out of my seat” while researching the paintings at the V&A archives in London.

Miss Cray, former deputy head of John Hampden Infants School in Thame, showed that the apostles which had hung in the church for several hundred years were painted by Sir James Thornhill in the 18th century as designs for the glass-painter of the Great Rose Window in Westminster Abbey. Thornhill also designed figures for Blenheim, for Oxford colleges and the Clarendon Building in Oxford.

Unfortunately the Abbey window was ‘mutilated’ by Victorian church restorers, obliterating Christopher Wren's stone tracery which surrounded the stained glass. The original window is recorded in an engraving held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

*The booklet is available in St Andrew’s, Chinnor, and St Mary’s, Sydenham, or from the Parish Council Office in Station Road, Chinnor. It is on sale at The Book House, Thame, or from compiler and editor Paul Stancliffe, paulstancliffe@lineone.net.