Ernest Williams Adams was the vicar of St John’s from 1906 to his death in 1937. The quote at the top of the window comes from St Matthew’s Gospel (19:14), when Jesus says, ‘Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven’. Three children are shown gathered around him.
In the bottom left-hand corner is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, symbolising His love for humanity in his death. It is a distinctively Anglo-Catholic symbol. Adams had studied at Hatfield Hall in Durham and oversaw a difficult period in St John’s history – the terrible losses of the First World War and a period of declining membership and difficult finances. A plaque to his son, Ernest Geoffrey, who was killed in France in 1918, can be found in the chancel.