Hilary Wayment

Hilary Godwin Wayment OBE, FSA (23 April 1912 – 20 March 2005) was a British author and historian of stained glass.

Early life

Wayment was born in Woolwich, in London on 23 April 1912, the son of Alfred Wayment, headmaster of the local church school. His godfather Eric Milner-White, a curate at the church of St Mary Magdalen Woolwich, was later Dean of King's College, Cambridge from 1918 to 1941, and became a strong influence on Wayment's life, leading him a near lifelong study of stained glass, particularly the windows of King's College.

He was educated at Charterhouse School, then from 1931–1935 at King's College, Cambridge, where he took a first in Part I of the Classical Tripos before reading English for Part II, He was a contemporary at King's of Oliver Churchill, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship, and their paths crossed during World War 2 in Cairo where Wayment was working from 1937–1944 and Churchill was posted to SOE Headquarters, Middle East from 1942–1945. Wayment was godfather to Churchill's eldest son, Toby.

In 1952 he married Lilah Sykes (née Dixon) and had a son and a daughter.

Career

From 1937 to 1944, he served as Assistant Lecturer and then Lecturer in English at Fuad I University in Cairo, Egypt. The subsequent large folio volume, The Windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge published by the British Academy in 1972, was the first and became a standard for the Great Britain CVMA volumes, On retirement from the British Council he was elected a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge from 1973–1977 to study the windows of the St Mary's Church, Fairford, in Gloucestershire, which have a close relationship to those at King's, and wrote The Stained Glass of the Church of St Mary, Fairford, Gloucestershire published in 1984.

Four years later he wrote King's College Chapel Cambridge: The Side-chapel Glass.

He died in Cambridge on 20 March 2005, aged 92.