A piece of shattered glass collected from Bath Abbey during The Second World War has prompted a special visit to the city.
The glass was part of the abbey's east window, which was shattered on April 25, 1942.
It is now part of a memorial window in a Canadian church and today, Canadian Major Michael Allen visited Bath Abbey to celebrate an amazing historical link between the two churches.
Bath suffered three raids over the weekend of April 25 to April 27, 1942.
When the east widow was shattered, members of the abbey's youth group and volunteers helped sweep up the shattered glass.
They stored it on top of the Bird Chantry in the abbey for safekeeping, and later in dusty sacks in the vestry.
In the summer of 1942, Harold Appleyard, a chaplain with the Royal Regiment of Canada, arrived in England after joining up.
Appalled by the damage to English churches and the loss of life caused by the war, he began collecting fragments of glass from churches whose windows had been blown out by German bombing.
On November 18, 1943, Harold visited Bath and collected a piece of glass from Bath Abbey.
He wrote in his diary: "Picked up my baggage and headed for London. I had a 75 minute stopover at Bath and had a brief look at the city. It looks a bit grubby but has had a bad time. 400 were killed here by bombing. Bath Abbey has been beautiful, still is but has lost 60 per cent of its glass, I was given a nice piece by the verger."
Harold used two large metal boxes that had been used for carrying artillery shells to carry the pieces of glass in and recorded where he had collected them from in a book.
He planned to use the fragments of stained glass to create new memorial windows for his church, Christchurch in Meaford, Ontario.
The windows were to commemorate members of his parish who lost their lives during the war and damage to lives and buildings in Britain and western Europe.
By the end of the war, Harold had collected enough fragments of glass from churches all over Britain to create four memorial windows for his church.
The piece of glass from Bath Abbey, picturing a red shield, is in a window that was installed in the cloister of Christchurch on August 11, 1946.
In August 2013, Ted Appleyard, Harold's son, came to Bath Abbey and recorded his father's story as part of Bath Abbey's creating voices oral history project
The Abbey's new audio guides to the blitz tell the story of how its window was damage and restored, including the story of the Christchurch windows.
During his visit today, Major Allen presented The Revd Claire Robson with a picture of the memorial window.
Ollie Taylor, project manager for Creating Voices, said: "The presentation, which took place in the Abbey's war memorial chapel, underlines the international bond between the two churches and their people that has grown out of the creating voices project."
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