The Gordon Window in Booloominbah

The Designer

A large window dominates the entrance hall and the fine staircase. The window contained plain glass until about 1901 when the window commemorating the life of General Gordon was installed. Although White consulted his architect, John Horbury Hunt, about the possible theme to be used in the window, the decision was solely the owner's, with Hunt recommending the artist to make the window. The London firm of Lavers, Barraud and Westlake, used before by Hunt, notably for the Anglican Cathedral in Armidale, was commissioned, probably in 1900. By this time the principal of the firm was Nathaniel Herbert John Westlake who had joined the Lavers and Barraud firm in 1860 and became a partner in 1868. Westlake, born in 1833, fell in love with mediaeval art and became one of the Pre-Raphaelites. As well as being busy with his own artistic work and management of the firm, Westlake wrote a four-volumed History of Design in Painted Glass, published between 1891 and 1894.

Frederick White

Frederick White's choice of Gordon's life for the theme of the large window dominating the hall of Booloominbah was a statement of the amalgam of cultures enjoyed by Australians of this period, especially by those with enough education and wealth to know something of Britain as well as Australia. Gordon's death in 1885 was the occasion for an outburst of British loyalty and Imperial pride, combined with an assertion of a colonial pride and confidence. The contingent of New South Wales troops which went to assist the British in the Sudan, and perhaps to avenge Gordon's death, was seen by one Englishman visiting Australia at the time as a 'demonstration in favour of national identity'. A similar mixture of loyalties was once more being experienced by Australians when White was considering a theme for his window during the Boer War. Gordon's life was well suited to White's need because it contained, as well as the link with Australian nationalism, all those personal and public virtues which White admired.

The Window

The window contains seven scenes from Gordon's life, each given a year and a place.

Woolwich MDCCCXLVIII

The earliest of these is at Woolwich where, in 1848 at the age of fifteen, Gordon entered the Royal Military Academy.

Sebastopol MDCCCLV

The next scene shows him in 1855 at the siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War, where as a military engineer he supervised trench-building and reconnaissances of the Russian fortifications.

China MDCCCLXIII

The third scene is of Gordon in China in 1863 where he commanded the 'Ever Victorious Army' of mercenaries which assisted the Manchu rulers to suppress the Taiping rebellion. He made good use of gun boats on the canals and creeks of the Yangtze River delta region, and the scene recalls these tactics.

Gravesend MDCCCLXVII

With his reputation as a Victorian hero well established, Gordon spent about six years in charge of the erection of new fortifications to defend the Thames. He was based at Gravesend and spent much of his time, energy and money trying to help the poor children of the area. He clothed and fed hundreds of boys and, as the scene depicts, taught many in his home and in the ragged schools. The year shown for this scene, 1867, was in the middle of this period, which he counted as the happiest of his life.

In 1877 Gordon was made Governor-General of the vast region south of Egypt including the Sudan. In the Darfour area of the Sudan he had a dramatic confrontation with Suleiman, one of the main slave-traders, and managed by little more than the force of his personality to end a threatened rebellion.

The 1879 incident depicted is the futile negotiation he conducted with the King of Abyssinia. It was a minor business but showed something of Gordon's persistence, endurance and bravery.

Khartoum MDCCCLXXXV

The scene at Khartoum in 1885 shows Gordon in the moments before his death at the hands of the rebels led by Mohammed Ahmed, who had proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi. The pose of Gordon, calm and unarmed while trying to reason with his enemies, was the one which became central to the legend built up around his death; the exemplary British and Christian hero whose death was a martyrdom which required British military action to restore the honour of the nation, and to make some moral compensation to his memory. This image of Gordon's death, captured in the Booloominbah window, was to endure and to have a great influence on British and world politics.