Fairford Church, just over the county boundary in Gloucesteshire, has the most complete set of early 16th-century stained glass windows in England, consisting of 28 windows dating from 1517, miraculously left more or less undamaged by either Henry VIII’s henchmen in the Reformation, or the Puritans 100 years later.

The windows are of particularly high quality too, having been made under the direction of the King’s glazier, Bernard Fowler, using mainly Dutch artists.

Less well known is the fact that Oxford too has a wealth of stained glass.

The Encyclopaedia of Oxford [edited by Christopher and Edward Hibbert, Macmillan 1988] even remarks: “Oxford is the best place in the country to study the development of stained and painted glass, and the wealth of examples from the 17th and 18th centuries is of special interest.”

The dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s and 1540s halted the English stained glass industry; and even in the early 17th century, when much new college building in Oxford got under way, there was still a dearth of skilled glaziers.

In 1613, Wadham employed local man Robert Rudland to make the set of prophets for the north window in the chapel, but the authorities took one look at it and paid him off.

Instead they employed Bernard van Ling from Emden in Germany to make the east window. He was also employed at Lincoln College.

Abraham van Ling, probably a brother or cousin, made the extraordinary Jonah window at the cathedral, with its unusually bright colours.

Even windows that were, like these, made too late to be destroyed during the Reformation, were not safe from official vandalism: of the other ten van Ling windows made for the cathedral only fragments survived the attentions of the Puritans and Victorian restorers.

Some van Ling work also survives at Balliol and at The Queen’s College, but the best is to be found at University College.

Here the windows were put into store for the duration of the Civil War and the Commonwealth and only installed again at the Restoration of Charles II.

They include a scene of Christ driving the money-changers out of the Temple. Bankers beware.

Oxford’s oldest building, St Michael at the North Gate, appropriately enough contains the city’s oldest stained glass: the east window contains figures of the Virgin and Child, and three saints.