Stained glass artist William Frater's early works for EL Yencken & Co. followed a similar style to this two-light window at Birregurra. It is marked by minimum shading, except for the facial features, and a simplified canopy and base, all of which owe much to his Arts & Crafts training in Glasgow. Similar windows can be seen at St. Stephen's Anglican Church, Wynyard (Tas.), Holy Trinity, Anglican, Maldon (Vic.) and a later version at St. John's Uniting Church, Essendon (Vic.). By the mid 1920s Frater used glass paint to model his figures in a more realistic style as seen at the commemorative windows at Kyabram Methodist (now Evangelical Uniting) Church.
The men commemorated in the window at Birregurra came from around the district and two of them were Edgar Henry Abbott and Frederick Joseph Wallace whose mothers were both widowed. Abbott enlisted on 29 January 1916, almost a year after his older brother, Sergeant Harold Edward Abbott, who, despite a gun shot wound to the arm, jaundice and a hernia operation returned to Australia in 1919. Private Edgar Abbott reached Suez on 15 April 1916 and headed for Marseilles at the end of June. He was taken on strength, 8 Machine Gun Company, on 22 August 1916 but was killed in action on 23 November the same year. He was initially buried a couple of miles north of Combles but was reinterred later in Guards' Cemetery, Lesbouefs, France.
Frederick Wallace enlisted on 24 January 1916, aged 25 years, becoming a Gunner in the Australian Field Artillery. After training in Egypt and England he arrived in France on 13 December 1916. He was posted to 43 Battery of 11 Brigade, AFA; he was killed in action on 15 April 1917 and buried in HAC Cemetery, Ecoust-St Mein, France, not far from Bapaume.
A window to EC Rothery was erected in his home town of Myrtleford (Vic.), at St. Paul's Anglican Church.
References & Acknowledgements
AWM Roll of Honour; NAA: B2455, Abbott EH; NAA: B2455, Abbott HE; NAA: B2455, Wallace Frederick Joseph; Alan M. Cole, Christ Church Birregurra: one hundred years of Anglican faith, Colac, c1970.
