The First Fruits
Alfred Webster
1912
North Nave
New Kilpatrick Parish Church
Bearsden
Webster owed much to Stephen Adam whose training he had received and absorbed. This debt is movingly expressed in one of Webster’s finest windows - a hidden miniature in a narrow corridor in New Kilpatrick Church in Bearsden. Titled The First Fruits, the window is inscribed to the memory of a teacher and friend, Stephen Adam. The model for the boy angel was Alfred Webster’s young son, Gordon, who in due course would inherit his father’s studio to become a leading Scottish stained glass artist in his own day, Adam’s legacy passing in this way from one generation to the next. Alfred Webster’s developing genius was abruptly cut short by the First World War when he was fatally wounded at Le Touquet on the French battlefields on 24 August 1915, whilst serving as a combatant officer with the Gordon Highlanders.
Photograph by Iain B. Galbraith