William Clark HainesPrint Page

The stained glass window, erected by friends, commemorates politician William Clark Haines who died in 1866.

Haines became well known in the Geelong district as territorial magistrate, district trustee of the Port Phillip Savings Bank and member of the Grant District Council in 1843. In 1851 he was a government nominee in the first Legislative Council; his resignation in August 1852 in protest against the intended issue of leases to the squatters won him the support of smallholders and radicals, although Haines was always a conservative. He was elected member for Grant in the council in August 1853 and became an official nominee from December 1854 to March 1855. He served on many council committees, including one for licensing in September 1854 when he took a firm anti-temperance stand. With John Foster, (Sir) William Stawell and others he helped to draft the new Victorian Constitution.

Two memorial windows have recently been placed – the one in St. John’s Church, Toorak, and the other in Christ Church, South Yarra, which enable us to judge, under peculiarly favourable circumstances, of the efforts of our own artists in glass painting, as compared with those of England. The window in Christ Church has been raised in memory of the late Hon. W. C. Haines by a few of his private friends, and is the work of the well-known form of Bell and Clayton, of London. The window is in the early English gothic style of architecture, and is perhaps scarcely florid enough to harmonise with the rich colouring of the glass. The memorial window consists of seven tableaux illustrative of the history of Joseph.
The Argus (Melbourne), 26th June 1868.

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