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Published: March 6th 2014
Nave
The atmosphere of awe in York MinisterThis morning I pulled my suitcase to the train station and paid £5 (a stiff fee) to store it. Then I walked back to the Minster to spend the morning – except it was almost 11:00! The entry fee was £5.50. A
tourled by a volunteer was just about to start.
As a retired teacher, the guide was excellent. She was so enamoured with her “job” that she took the training before she retired so she could start without delay after retiring.
First we sat in the
nave and learned about the
Roman HQ and the
Norman church, for which the foundations are still under the Minster, although the original warden and stone churches are not – discovered when reinforcement was done on the tower foundations. Then we looked way up and learned about
bosses and stained and painted glass windows. The most important
Minster windows were saved in both WWI and II by being taken down and stored– the North
transept window was put back up in 1925 and had to be taken down again in 1939! The big Seven Sisters window has been taken down now and is stored in a chapel while it is being restored. This work
Tree of Jesse window
One of the prettiest in the Minster is part of the refurbishment and saving of the East façade, which was falling off the church.
Outside in the yard are the new stones to replace disintegrated old ones. The guide explained how difficult it is to find matching new stone, because the original quarry has been worked out – the quarry was a gift, as was the forest for all the oak used in building the Minster.
We did walk around inside also, seeing the display of examples of stained-glass windows with bad repairs. (They just added more black lead, even across faces.) An epoxy mix is being used on cracks now, and if any new glass must be used, the date is etched on it in tiny letters. Actually, one window on display has an etched message from 1796 by a 15-year-old apprentice plumber (the original glass workers), this information supplied by the apprentice. Also, the guide pointed out samples showing us how the glass sags in its frame over time, one cause of deterioration.
Finally we had to stop. I wanted to take some video and discovered that the tape was at the end and my blank ones were at the train station
Holy Trinity altar
Old box pews and Parliamentarian altar in my suitcase. This was a sign to eat lunch – a badly made but relatively tasty tuna mayonnaise sandwich with “crisps”, salad and tea at a café recommended by the morning’s tour guide. Then I wanted to see the
Treasurer’s House, the home of the treasure of Queen Elizabeth I among others; but I couldn’t find my Heritage Canada card to get free admission (which I later discovered exactly where I had thought it was).
So, I went down the street to the oldest church in York,
Holy Trinity, built mostly in
medieval times . It is small and very plain, and still contains the box pews, because they never could afford to modernize it, according to the docent. The altar is plain, backed by a wooden structure. Apparently this structure was required by the
Parliamentarians and meant the removal of the lower pane of the main stained glass window.
With my last half-hour I went through the Crypt under the Minster. It is a walk-through display about the history of the foundations and of the treasures of the church – pewter and silver. Also interesting was to see the massive cement reinforcements of the tower foundation held fast by
Conference View B&B
Charming host in his family home huge bolts every couple of feet.
Then back to the station, which took much less time than planned. Actually the train came almost the moment I got to the platform, although it didn’t leave for 25 minutes, which gave me time to drink my large cup of hot mint tea. Once underway, I mostly looked out the window at all the harvested wheat fields.
At
Harrogate Station I had to ask a couple of students for directions to get started on my Google map. Although it seemed to lead me on a crazy zig-zag path, I arrived exactly at the
Conference View Guest House and my Peach Room.
After more tea and a rest, I found a Bangladeshi restaurant. Unfortunately the food wasn’t particularly good, although the waiter was personable and was interested in moving to Canada - Toronto, of course.
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