I do wish you success with this.
I have tried for years to track down a Sanctuary lamp,placed in St John the Evangelist Church ,Manchester.
It was my grandmother’s memorial ,hung in the transept of what was a beautiful church in the Italianate style.
It burned throughout the years ,never going out thanks to a fund started to make sure there was always oil.It hung on a chain and could be lowered for filling.
Red glass rather like an Aladdin’s lamp but the symbol of Sanctuary.
Sadly the church was demolished in the sixties,I was living abroad when I found out as my father in law sent us weekly the local newspaper.
I appealed to the Diocese but got no answer,kept trying but no luck.
As well as the church going all the houses were demolished too and so congregation( which would be very few)were dispersed to the new housing estates.
There seemed to be no record of the fund ,though what would be left I have no idea,but the lamp belonged to our family and was in memory of a woman much loved and respected , O.K we were few by that time and I was abroad so it was too late when I found out .none of us were regular attenders to that church as we lived a good way away.
I have a photograph of the church interior and the lamp can be plainly seen hanging there .
Never mind ,she is often mentioned here on RootsChat ,I think of her and I am sure the few of her close descendants left do too .
Never met her but my Mum’s stories were of a wonderful woman.
But the high handed treatment of such memorials is pretty disgusting .
We don’t all live close by the churches in question but at least a central office for such things could settle people’s minds.
It could be argued once donated to the church they are no longer our possessions but we have some right to know where they go.
Well ,that is what I feel,that little lamp that burned for almost forty years
is either landfill or hanging in the home of one of the demolition squad.
At the church I now attend ,there are various memorials , marble panels .brass vases inscribed ,a silver shell for Christenings,etc. The actual people long gone and not personally remembered.
Sad ,but life is ever moving forward.
Sometimes I wish it would just stand still.
Viktoria
