Dean's Park

Dean’s Park was on the north side of the Minster and was a delightful grassy area to find a free bench and spend a bit of time contemplating this magnificent building. Given that the park was on the north side, a lot of the park was in the shadow of the building. The glowing limestone from the other faces of the building now appeared dull and grey on its north. It was still impressive though.  Just to lower the tone, only slightly, there was a bench in the park with a life size statue of Paddington Bear sitting on it. Paddington was munching into marmalade sandwiches whilst looking up at the Minster. I sat down next to him, but surprisingly he wasn’t one for conversation. I guess that's what fame does to you. The statue had been installed to promote the Paddington In Peru film. Personally, I hope they keep Paddington there as a permanent fixture.   

The hexagonal Chapter House also extended into the park. Inside the Minster, this actually turned out to be my favourite building, but more of that later. The Treasurer’s House was just outside Dean’s Park, on the other side of Minster Yard. The short and free wander around its garden is essential for your itinerary in my view. 

East Window

The East face of the Minster is dominated by the massive East Window. The delicate lattice work of stone looks incapable of supporting the huge area of glass and surrounding stonework. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the country. It was created in the 15th century and has 311 stained glass panels. The window was originally created in 1408 by glazier John Thornton whereon he was paid the princely sum of £56 for his efforts. I don’t think there is a PVC window in my house that I could replace for double that sum nowadays. Apart from the black death, war and feudalism, things were definitely better back then. The story of the pictures on the window depict the beginning and end of all things from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation, which must be a lot to cover in 311 pictures. The window faces the open College Green and so it is possible to stand a distance away to get a sense of the scale of the window. 

Grotesques

On my tour of the perimeter of the Minster, I  followed my favourite pastime of inspecting the multitude of grotesques that are strategically placed across the many walls, columns, spires and parapets. Some of these date back to the 18th century and the limestone has worn a lot of  them down to be unrecognisable. The subjects are usually demons, dragons or other mythical creatures and many take human form with their faces often expressing  madness. Apart from a form of decoration they were intended to protect buildings from evil spirits, although I can’t grasp the logic of why showing evil to evil, will somehow deter it, rather than attract it. Gargoyles are similar to grotesques, but contain a water spout in their mouth.. Looking at the disturbing nature of the grotesques it does make you wonder what bedtime stories the stonemason’s read to their kids. A lot of the south face of the Minister was being renovated and three replacement grotesques were on display at ground level. Apparently each one can take up to 200 hours to complete. Given the intricacy of their designs, that actually doesn’t sound very long to me. 

West Face

The north face of the minister was dominated by the twin towers. I joined all the other tourists in the adjacent Precentor’s Court area, trying to squeeze all that western stonework into a camera image. Even my 18mm lens was still too long to cram everything in. The towers are 60m tall which make them 12m smaller than the Central Tower. During World War II the towers on the cathedral were used as navigational reference points to the planes returning to nearby airbases.    

The tour of the perimeter was now complete. It was now time to take a wander around the inside. I’d pre-booked my ticket online and was ushered through a VIP entrance by the bouncer at the entrance. 

Space

The first thing that struck me on entering the Minster was the amount of space. There are modern arenas that I’m sure create the same amount of volume of internal space, but there aren't any that I know of with the same height and relative narrowness. It just seemed like a huge volume of space disappearing into the distance. In fact I couldn’t see to the east face of the building since the Quire, situated east of the Central Tower, was in the way. The other thing that baffled me for the moment was that there didn’t seem to be a continuation of the huge twin west towers inside the building. I was expecting to find masses of stonework providing the foundations of the towers above. There were obviously some architectural shenanigans going on to intentionally confuse me. What I did see though was the wonderful west stained glass window, that is nicknamed the Heart Of Yorkshire. The huge heart shape at the top of the window is possibly an indicator of how it got its nickname. It is said that couples who kiss under this window will endure eternal love. Be careful what you wish for is my warning.  The window dates back to the 1330s.   

I walked towards the Central Tower area. 14 massive columns supported the roof. Both the south and north side of the building presented large stained glass windows. The windows let in a lot of light making the space feel bright and airy. 

Central Tower

I reached the central point of the Minster and looked up at the incredible height of the ceiling of the Central Tower above me. The effect was such that I seemed to get what felt like ‘reverse-vetigo’ and I stumbled backwards a little. The massive organ was placed a little east of this central position. The organ was destroyed by fire in 1829 and this new one was commissioned in 1830. The organ has over 5,400 pipes which must keep the Minster's plumber busy. Throughout my visit there were periods when there was an organ test going on which involved playing some scales. Even these simple notes sounded impressive. 

The St. John’s KOYLI Chapel was near to the central area and was dedicated to the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. I’d visited an exhibition about this regiment when I visited Doncaster Museum earlier in the year. The chapel had a cross and two candlesticks fashioned from gunmetal, dedicated as a war memorial. As might be expected, there were books of remembrance for those that have died in battle, regrettably some quite recent. KOYLI has been subsequently merged into other regiments such as the Rifles which is why you may see  references to them.   

To the north of the Central Tower is the intriguing Five Sisters Window. I would describe it as impressive rather than beautiful. It consisted of  five windows, each one being 16m high and 1.5m wide. Since it was on the north side it didn't let in as much light and so appears duller than the other windows. There also wasn’t really a discernible picture. It had been assembled using finely painted clear glass. It was so different to the other windows in the Minster that it was actually quite intriguing and engrossing. Nobody knows why it was called the Five Sisters Window. 

Chapter House

I headed off to the Chapter House on the northeast side of the Minster. I wasn’t really sure about the purpose of this annex and had to look it up. Apparently it serves as a meeting room for the Minister’s governing body. I have to say, the meeting rooms we used to have at work were nothing like this. The Chapter House turned out to be my favourite part within the Minster. There was definitely a ‘wow’ factor as I walked into it. It was a huge hexagonal area with each side supporting a large stained glass window. I got ‘reverse-vertigo’ again as I looked up at its decorated  roof from the central point. The best thing about the building though was the multitude of grotesques that had been placed around the building. There were dozens of them. No two faces were identical and they featured animals, mythical creatures as well as humans. Some are hilarious, some horrific, but all are stunning. It made me realise why we never had meeting rooms like this at work…you’d spend more time talking about the carvings rather than business issues. 

Crypt

The Crypt was accessed through an entrance north of the Quire. It was the oldest part of the current building and featured Norman architecture from the 12th century. Being a crypt, it was naturally a bit creepy. This atmosphere wasn’t helped by the appearance of the Doomstone. This was a limestone sculpture which showed a cauldron into which damned souls were being pushed. The cauldron was licked by flames. It wasn’t really something I’d want to hang in my bedroom. 

Quire And East Window

The Quire was east of the Central Tower. It was decorated in gothic style woodwork and had choir stalls. The organ was at its western end and so it presumably gets quite noisy here at times. At last I reached the eastern end of the Minster and got sight of that incredible East Window. It looked impressive from the outside, but that was really formed from the scale of it rather than the stained  glass. On the inside it had brightly coloured stained glass to add wonder to its scale. I sat down for a while to take it all in. 

Undercroft Museum

Back near the Central Tower I headed downstairs to the Undercroft Museum. This was really an added bonus to a tour of the Minster and tells the story of York’s history through displays and artefacts.     

 In the 1960s it was discovered that the Minster was in danger of collapse. The Central Tower had been built upon inadequate foundations and due to settlement there was a danger it would all tumble down. Between 1967 and 1972 a civil engineering project was carried out to underpin it. It must have been a nightmare project for the civil engineers since they had to work shoulder to shoulder with the archaeologists who wanted to investigate and document all that history that had been buried for centuries. They uncovered evidence of a Roman barracks beneath the cathedral which housed both the sixth and ninth legions. A massive column from the barracks Principia (headquarters)  was unearthed and this can now be seen on the South Piazza, outside the Minster’s South Transept. The Undercroft is a remarkable museum in that as well as the display of artefacts you can view the massive nuts and bolts that now tie the shaky foundations together. There was a slight feeling of claustrophobia to the place as you feel the full weight of that central tower on your shoulders as you walk around. You just hope that the engineers knew how to use their slide rule properly. Another remarkable feature about the museum was that in places there are transparent floors that allow you to view the remains of the Roman and Norman foundations.   

There are so many excellent artefacts on display that it would be impossible to document them all. My patience was disturbed somewhat by some teenagers who had taken the opportunity of the low light levels and warren-like floorplan to create their own sub-terranean version of LaserQuest. A museum official had obviously been watching them on CCTV and came down to restore some order.
‘Is that a bath?’ said one of the girls pointing to a Norman stone coffin. ‘Am I allowed to get in it?’ she continued.
‘No, I’m afraid not. That is an ancient coffin,’ replied the museum official drily. 

Return

It had been an excellent tour around the Minster and well worth the £20 entrance fee. It exceeded my expectations. For an additional £6 I could have taken an additional tour of the Central Tower. This would involve a climb of 275 steps and squeezing through 2 foot wide passageways. Given that I’d also been around the Treasurer’s House earlier in the day, I decided to leave the 'Tower Challenge' until another time. 

On my way back to the railway station I decided to drop in at the King’s Arms to have a pint of Sam Smiths. I visited the pub  3 weeks ago with a friend. It is an unusual pub in that it is situated alongside the River Ouse and gets flooded every time there is a drop of rain. Inside, near to the entrance, there was a floor to ceiling wooden display showing the various past flood levels and how far they reached up the wall, as well as the year that it had happened. The levels go right up to the ceiling of the bar. I don’t know if the display goes on to the next floor. 

Of course, given the monsoon weather that we’d had over the previous weekend, the water levels of the Ouse had risen and flooded the King’s Arms again. I went elsewhere in search of some refreshment.