Explore the Becoming a memorial of this artwork, Five Sisters window.
Mrs Helen Drage Little, widow of Colonel Charles Blakeway Little, had seen first-hand the efforts of women during World War I. While in Egypt she had seen wounded soldiers arriving from Gallipoli, about whose carers she wrote, "I was witness to the untiring devotion under great difficulties of the nurses and other women who gave themselves up, entirely regardless of their own health, in some cases with fatal results, to alleviate the suffering of the men." After the war, she noted that "when memorials on all sides were being erected to our brothers, I often thought that our sisters who also made the same sacrifice appeared to have been forgotten."In November 1921, Little wrote a letter, instructing that it be printed in The Times after her death, recording a dream she had had involving the Five Sisters window. In the letter, she described entering the Quire at York Minster and seeing two young children in the centre of the North Transept, beckoning and pointing towards the window. "I moved towards them and then recognised my two little sisters, both of whom had died as children. As I followed the little pointing finger, I saw the window move slowly backwards as if on hinges, revealing the most exquisite garden with wondrous flowers I had never seen before." Little noted that the garden was filled with women, and, as they approached, the window slowly swung closed, waking Little from her dream, and causing her to cry out "The Sisters' Window for the Sisters".
York Minster York Gallipoli memorial Quire Transept World War I Window