Plaque and window, The Church of St Helena (Austerfield, 1955 and 1990s)

William Bradford, the second (and arguably most famous) governor of the Plymouth Colony, was born in Austerfield and baptised in this small Norman-origins church in 1589. By the final decade of the nineteenth century, when interest in the Pilgrim Fathers was growing rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic, the church was in great disrepair. In 1897, the newly formed General Society of Mayflower Descendants and other Americans paid for the rebuilding of the south aisle in memory of Bradford - ‘the first American citizen of the English race who bore rule by the free choice of his brethren’, as the commemorative plaque puts it.

In 1955, a special return pilgrimage of 104 American Pilgrim descendants (plus 48 guests) toured Holland and England to visit the birthplaces, churches and departure points of their ancestors. Led by the Governor-General of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, Society, Lieutenant-Colonel Waldo Morgan Allen, they came ‘in the name of Anglo-American friendship’ and to perpetuate the memory of the Pilgrim Fathers. In the Church of St Helena, as part of this trip, they gifted and unveiled a bronze plaque – embossed with the Mayflower – to mark the occasion. The Rev Cornwell welcomed the delegation to the church, and they were served tea at Austerfield Manor.

In the 1990s, a striking stained-glass window was installed in the north aisle to again commemorate the link between Bradford and the church. Sep Waugh, a noted stained-glass window artist from York, undertook the work, paid for in part by the ‘Governor William Bradford Compact’ – an American genealogical/historical society that propagated his memory. The three-panelled window depicts: Bradford outside the church, with ‘William Bradford Baptised 1589 at Austerfield’ below; the Mayflower at sea; and Bradford and others signing the Mayflower Compact (with the new settlement in the background). Two quotes from his manuscript history – ‘we knew that we were pilgrims’ and ‘one small candle’ are above the window.

The Mayflower Quarterly, vol. 63-4 (1997), p. 127.

Mike Laycock, ‘Renowned stained glass artist dies, aged 79’, The York Press (30^th October 2015), https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/13925553.renowned-stained-glass-artist-dies-aged-79/

‘150 American visitors’, Lincolnshire Standard and Boston Guardian (24 September 1955), 9.

Frances Reyer, The Mayflower Descendants’ Return to the Pilgrim Country of England and Holland, 1955 (unpublished memoir), p. 31.