Florence Wheeler, who commissioned the window, was born in Shanghai in 1878, the daughter of a Canadian merchant and American mother. Living in China as a child, she was educated in Boston, Massachusetts, where she met and became the lifelong friend of the poet Amy Lovell. Returning to China, she collaborated with Lovell on an anthology of Chinese poems which she translated and became historian of the Royal Asiatic Society, dedicating her professional life to studying and interpreting China to the rest of the world. She died in Chicago in 1942. It was in Shanghai that she met Francis, a successful businessman and prominent administrator in what was then an outpost of the British Empire.

After Francis retired in 1923, they moved to New Brunswick, Canada, where their coastal garden extended to 28 acres. Francis suffered a painful and prolonged blood disorder which eventually necessitated amputation of his legs. Their last home was on Guernsey in the Channel Islands, with its clement climate, closer to Francis’s family, and which also had a beautiful garden overlooking the sea. The window reflects both the love of gardens shared by Francis and Florence in their different homes, and the beauty of nature to be found in the English countryside.

Visitors to Cradley church often ask why this beautiful window is in the north-east corner of the chancel. Florence asked for it to be installed within the altar rails, befitting the memorial to a priest. What is more, when you stand at the Communion rail, the window is in a direct line with the grave in which Francis, his mother and younger brother Ralph Fearon are buried in the north churchyard; two sisters Ethel and Hilda are buried nearby.