STAINED glass windows from the company founded by iconic designer William Morris are among the features highlighted in a recently published book on St Mary's Church in Alderbury.

Author Peter M Hammond, a member of Alderbury and Whaddon Local History Research Group, wrote the book to mark the church's 150th anniversary last year.

Built in 1857, the Victorian building has been blessed with many fine stained glass windows, some produced by the most renowned workers in that craft of the day.

One window even has a link, albeit a tenuous one, with the architect Augustus Pugin, who designed the Houses of Parliament and who lived for a time in Alderbury at St Mary's Grange.

The window in the south transept is possibly the work of William Hardman, a friend of Pugin.

The pair met in 1837 and Hardman founded his business in collaboration with Pugin the following year, producing metalwork and later stained glass based on Pugin's neo-Gothic designs in his Birmingham workshops.

Pugin died five years before the church was built in Alderbury, so the windows had no direct link with him, but their designs might well have come under his influence, although, on balance, says Hammond, it is more likely that they are the work of Clayton and Bell.

The beautiful colour illustrations show some of the fine detail in each of the windows illustrated and the book gives a detailed account of the subject, context and origin of each of them.

It looks back briefly at the history of the church in Alderbury - it dates back to Domesday when a Saxon church was thought to exist on the same site.

The book is available, £5, from Cross Keys Bookshop in the Cross Keys Chequer, or by post (p&p 85p) from Alderbury and Whaddon Local History Research Group via Hawthorns, Old Road, Alderbury, Salisbury SDP5 3AR.