Church shines light on 600 years of fishing heritage

The window, called Tranquillity, was commissioned 10 years ago to stand in the city’s fish auction house Fishgate, but was only seen by merchants and the people who worked there.

But now following the auction’s closure last year it has now been rehoused in a back-lit display cabinet and placed in Holy Trinity Church.

The £6,000 window, made by Lazenby’s Stained Glass company, in Cayton Bay, near Scarborough, was designed on a “scrap of paper” by Alan Hopper, former Fishgate director, naval architect and maritime historian, and Ken Knox, a retired skipper and chairman of the Hull committee of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.

Its evocative design shows the life of a Hull fisherman through 600 years, and features a 15th century fishing vessel copied from a church pew in Kings Lynn, a stern trawler from the 1970s loosely based on The Gaul, and an early 20th century sidewinder trawler.

It also features a compass pointing North North-East, the course plotted from Hull to the fishing grounds.