Before Cromwell’s soldiers smashed the medieval glass of the Minster in 1643, one window was famous across the city, and not for the reason you would expect.
The Last Supper was shown in two places, once in the cloister and once in the great west window. In one of them a single fish had been set on the table in front of Christ. In the other there were three fish in a dish. There was no lamb anywhere.
Peterborough thought this was very funny, and the paschal pickerel became a standing joke in the city. A pickerel is a young pike, a good fenland fish, and the theory going around was that some devout and slightly confused glazier had reasoned that the Last Supper fell in Lent, that Christ would certainly have kept the fast properly, and that a fish had better be substituted for the paschal lamb.
Simon Patrick, who published the story, could not explain it either. He did note one thing. When the great destruction came, the single pane showing the three fish somehow survived, and it was handed to him for safekeeping.
Nobody knows where it is now.
Where: Peterborough Cathedral. Look at the west front and imagine the glass.
