York Minster History

From Roman times to the present day the site on which York Minster stands has been at the very center of England's religious and political life. This short history of York Minster is intended to introduce some of the stories behind the development, construction and traditions of this extraordinary cathedral and the people who helped make it what it is. In the Beginning During the Roman occupation of Britain, York was a thriving, well-defended settlement containing the army headquarters from which the Romans administered the north of England. These military headquarters were the first buildings on the Minster site. No-one knows when Christianity first arrived in the city, but by 306 when Constantine The Great was proclaimed Emperor in York, it is probable there was a small Christian community among those who proclaimed him. In 312 he issued a general edict of toleration for the Christian Church. However, by the year 314 York already had its own bishop, implying that the Christian community had been meeting there for some time, probably since long before their faith was officially tolerated. The history of north-eastern England between 400 and 600 AD is obscure but York itself survived with its fortifications kept up and even strengthened. However, it seems that the organized Christian community disappeared during the pagan invasions that followed Roman withdrawal in the 5th century.  In 625 Christianity returned to York when Bishop Paulinus accompanied Ethelburga, a Christian princess from Kent in southern England, who came north to marry Edwin, the pagan king of Northumbria. Edwin accepted Christianity two years later and was baptized, along with his court, by Paulinus in a church built especially for the occasion - this building is traditionally regarded as the first York Minster. Bede records that the church was built in a hurry ('citato opere'), that it was made of wood, and that it was small.  Before Edwin's death in 632/3 work began on a larger stone church designed to enclose the earlier wooden building. Edwin died before his stone church was completed and it was finished by his successor Oswald, dedicated to Saint Peter as the cathedral in York has been ever since. A period of instability followed with York vulnerable to attack from Penda of Mercia and the Britons of North Wales. We know that the city was overrun at least twice and probably three times between the death of Oswald in 641/2 and the Battle of the Winwaed in 654/5. In about 670 St. Wilfred took over the see of York and found the structure of Edwin's church fairly lamentable 'The ridge of the roof owing to its age let the water through, the windows were unglazed and the birds flew in and out, building their nests, while the neglected walls were disgusting to behold, owing to all the filth caused by the rain and the birds.' Saint Wilfred set to work renewing the roof and covering it with lead, whitewashing the interior walls and installing glass windows. Based on descriptions given of other churches built at a similar time it is possible to understand something of how Wilfred's restored church at York would have looked to the 7th century worshippers who entered it. The altar, within which relics were deposited, would have been decorated with purple silk hangings of intricate woven design. Upon the altar, raised by a book rest and in a jeweled binding, would stand the illuminated gospel book. The walls and probably also the testudo (a wooden partition screening the altar) would be adorned with icons painted on wooden panels depicting the types and anti-types of the Old and New Testaments. These church painting were essential to the evangelization of England, being the only effective way of explaining the 'the new worship' to an illiterate population. Gregory the Great called them 'the books of the unlearned'. Saint Wilfred held the see of York for 40 years until 705 but only when not in dispute with Canterbury or for some other reason out of the country. His successors were much more in accord with the wishes of Canterbury and Rome, at last making York a center where both the Saxon and Roman church were at peace. In the period that followed until the arrival of the Vikings, the Church in York went through a great period in its history. Egbert, who ruled from 732 to 766 and was the first archbishop approved by Rome, hugely expanded the cathedral school and library, which became famous throughout the Christian world. The school's most famous pupil Alcuin, wrote a verse in which he listed the books in the church library. They included not only the Latin fathers, Jerome, Augustine and Gregory, and more recent authors like Boethius and Bede, but classical texts, Virgil, Cicero and Pliny among them. No other such school and library existed north of the Alps and York was truly at the center of civilization.  Meanwhile, in 741 , the Minster Church had been burned down. The fire left the old church in ruins but the people of York were in a position to rebuild it and judging by the account of Alcuin it must have been a work of great splendor. He describes it as lofty, supported by columns, and having round arches and paneled ceilings. It contained thirty altars , and was surrounded by many beautiful side-chapels. In 793, after 'dire portents' in the shape of whirlwinds, lightning and 'fiery dragons…flying in the air' the first Viking attacks fell upon Britain, destroying the church of Lindisfarne. After years of sporadic attacks, the Viking army wintered in England for the first time in 855. By 867 the Danes were occupying East Anglia, and the following year they went north and captured York. Despite losing both their kings in the fight to repel the invaders the English seem to have negotiated a truce which left them in possession of the city; but in 892 the Danes restated their claim and the see of York was vacant for eight years. For the first half of the tenth century there is very little recorded history of the church of York. Occupied in turn by the Danes, the armies of the West Saxon successors of Alfred and Norse raiders from Ireland, it was not until the reign of Edgar that the English were safely in possession of the whole of Northumbria. These years were not, however, a time of entire depression, either for the city or its Christian population. The trading Vikings brought a measure of prosperity and the Anonymous Life of St Oswald in 980 describes York as a densely populated city, full of Danish merchants, even if its buildings were somewhat down-at-heel. The Minster survived and remained a center of Christian worship with archbishops continuing to serve, although they are little more than names to us. Some of the Danes even showed an interest in Christianity and as early as 895 a Danish king, Guthfrith, was buried as a Christian in the Minster. In 934 King Athelstan made the Church a very significant grant of land and in 946 King Eadred presented it with two large bells. Even so, the pagan element among the north-eastern Vikings made York an insecure base for a bishop in the mid to late tenth century. When the clouds of history rise again we find something altogether new; a line of archbishops, Benedictine monks but of Danish origin, restoring some semblance of order to the Christian life of the city and its Minster. The most distinguished of these were the second Saint Oswald, archbishop from 972 to 992 and Wulfstan from 1003 to 1023. The York of their day had become a largely pagan place, the most thoroughly Viking town of the whole Danelaw. Although none of these new monk-archbishops managed to restore a single monastery to the north they were far from negligible figures: it was the last of their line, Archbishop Ealred, who traveled south on Christmas Day 1066 for a truly momentous engagement… The Norman Minster On Christmas Day 1066 Ealdred anointed and crowned William the Conqueror king of the English in Westminster Abbey, an event which radically changed the course of history for Britain, York and its cathedral. When Archbishop Ealdred was buried in the Saxon Minster in 1069 the building was virtually intact. However, within days of his burial it was severely damaged during conflicts between the Danes, rebellious Saxons and William I and his followers, with many of its charters and fittings lost. William had faced rebellion in the north in that year and always feared York as a center of Viking sympathizers. His answer was characteristic: a fearful devastation from which the city took several generations to recover fully. In 1070, Thomas of Bayeux was consecrated the first Norman archbishop, and on his arrival began to put the affairs of the church back in order, re-roofing the church and rebuilding the refractory and dormitory. In 1075 the Danes came again to York and destroyed the church entirely. Undaunted, In 1080 the archbishop, decided to rebuild the Minster. Remains of this Cathedral can still be seen in the Foundations Exhibition below the present Minster. The first Norman church was remarkable, 365 feet long with walls seven feet thick, the exterior was rendered with hard white plaster and lined in red to look like ashlar. Perhaps the greatest change to the everyday life of the church in York after the arrival of the Normans was caused by the introduction of a secular Chapter. Archbishop Thomas, who died in 1100, reorganized his cathedral on an institutional pattern that survives to this day. In York, unlike some other medieval cathedrals, the foundation was never monastic. Thomas of Bayeux introduced canons living the common life at York, later converting the Chapter to conform with the model to which he had been accustomed in Normandy, a fully secular Chapter of canons living in their own houses, enjoying separate incomes or 'prebends'. From among this Chapter of canons the four offices of Dean, Treasurer, Precentor and Chancellor were created to manage the running of the cathedral, while the Archbishops themselves became increasingly significant national figures, often away from York on the business of King or Pope. In 1137 York Cathedral was damaged by fire. The worst damage was to the eastern arm with the remainder being as patched up or improved. Newly quarried limestone was used in repairs to the walls which were re-rendered with red lines as before. However, even if the eastern arm had not been damaged in the fire, it would have been antiquated by the standards of other large churches of the twelfth century. When Roger of Pont l'Eveque became archbishop in 1154 he set to work and built anew the choir and crypt of the cathedral. Evidence of this rebuilding can still be seen in the western crypt. Over the years the east end was entirely rebuilt with the west end enlarged by the addition of a pair of towers, close together and projecting only a little beyond the side walls of Thomas's nave. Also at the west end a large chapel known as St Sepulchre's was built at an angle to the north wall of the nave. By the early thirteenth century the fame of the Norman cathedral at York had spread beyond the Alps: it was one of the great Norman cathedrals of Europe. But fashions were changing and the first cathedrals in the 'Gothic' style had already been built, including the new church at Sens, finished in 1168, a new choir at Canterbury. York Minster must have seemed dark, heavy and antiquated to anyone who had visited Canterbury or Ile de France. Rebirth Toward the end of 1215 Pope Innocent III brought a long and ill-tempered election process to an end by telling the representatives of the York Chapter that 'By Saint Peter, virginity is a great virtue; and we will give him to you.' The events of the next forty years were to reveal to the canons of York that chastity was only one of their new Archbishop's many qualities. The accession of Walter de Gray marks the most important turning point in the history of the medieval Minster. During the previous generation the clerks of the cathedral had suffered from the lack of an effective and respected leader. By formulating a strict code of conduct for members of the Chapter, regulating the size and distribution of prebend payments and , for the first time, keeping careful records of his acts, Gray redefined the position of the archbishop in his diocese and his cathedral. It was in 1220 that construction of the Minster as we know it began. Archbishop Gray and the Dean and Chapter decided to rebuild the Norman Minster on a scale to rival Canterbury. The South Transept was the first section to be rebuilt between 1220 and 1250 with the North Transept both started and finished a few years later. Both transepts were built in the Early English Gothic manner and with similar interiors. The very different atmosphere created in each transept is attributable to contrast between their end walls. The south wall is in an elaborate French style featuring gables, arcading and lancets thick on its surface with two tiers of doubled lancet windows below an ornate rose window. The north wall is so different it is hard to believe it was built at the same period: the Five Sisters, five tall, even lancets, rise above a blind arcade and are crowned by five graduated lancets in the gable. The effect is austere and graceful. While the South Transept is believed to have been the personal scheme of Walter de Gray it is his sub-Dean and eventual treasurer, John Romanus who is associated with the North Transept - whether the design was dictated by aesthetics or economics, it makes him a noble memorial. Romanus was also responsible for the great central tower built at this period, which held the Minster bells and was almost certainly topped by a wooden spire. It is thought to have been heavier than the present tower, though carried on smaller piers, which probably explains its collapse in 1407. Walter de Gray died in 1255 an elderly and wealthy man and his burial place is the Minster's most beautiful tomb, in the South Transept he and his Chapter created between the dark nave and choir of the Norman cathedral. The rebuilding of York Minster that began with the transepts went on almost continuously for two hundred and fifty years. The Chapter House When work on the North Transept was completed in the 1250s some of the masons who had worked on it moved straight on to the Chapter House which was begun in about 1260. Completely invisible from the inside of the church, the Chapter House and its vestibule are attached but separate with an architectural style altogether different from the main body of the Minster. While the rest of the interior is grand and majestic the Chapter House is exotic and delicate, experimental and in keeping with the Decorated style fashionable during the thirty years in which it was built. This contrast is appropriate. The Chapter House was built primarily for business. Here the members of the Minster Chapter, for the rest of the Middle Ages and beyond, administered the business of the richest corporation in the north of England. The four dignitaries of the Chapter were responsible for the day to day running of the Cathedral both as a building and institution. The Dean was chairman of the Chapter and retained the right of enthroning a new Archbishop, and in York (uniquely among secular cathedrals) the Dean could decide whether or not to allow the Archbishop to attend Chapter meetings. Second in rank to the Dean was the Precentor, responsible for the liturgy and ceremonial in the church and for the selection and training or choristers and vicars-choral. Third came the Chancellor, overseer of the intellectual life of the Minster, of its grammar school, the theological skills of its clergy and the organization of its preaching. Lastly came the Treasurer in whose care were the relics and plate of the cathedral and the fabric of the building. The rest of the Chapter consisted of the thirty Canons or Prebendaries (an endowment of land that supported a canon of the Minster). As they went about their business the members of the Chapter had plenty to look at. Elaborate stone canopies above the stalls are carved with intriguing and amusing heads, animals and leaves, while above the iron-traceried doors stood thirteen silver statues (now lost) of Christ and the apostles. A star-ribbed wooden roof of ingenious mathematical construction looked down from high above. In the vestibule, even finer carvings carvings can be seen on the capitals and bosses of the arcading and in the stone vault. The most glamorous decoration of all, however, must have been the windows. The tracery, patterned and complicated, is much more elaborate than the Five Sisters, so recently completed. In the vestibule the glass depicts a series of tall figures, saints and symbolic personifications, under tall canopies. In the Chapter House itself, finished a little earlier, the seven large windows are a complete pictorial scheme: the central window, facing the door, showed scenes from Christ's passion, death and resurrection. Other windows depicted stories of the Virgin, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Katherine and episodes from the histories of five other saints. The Nave By the 1280s, when the Archbishop, Chapter and their master-masons turned their attention to the nave they were surrounded by a just-finished, up to the minute Chapter House separate from the daily liturgical routine of the Cathedral. Down the passage and across the tranquil space of the North Transept stood Archbishop Thomas's old, gloomy nave, the only part of his church still intact. The decision to replace it with a new aisled nave, its vault even higher than the transepts, its interior lit by huge and complicated expanses of glass and tracery would involve the Minster in seventy years of building work. It was decided early on that the new nave should stand on the deep, well-constructed foundations of the old Norman foundations, in this way the two lines of piers would run directly westwards from the pillars that supported the tower. The distance between them, that is the width of the Norman church, was the guiding measurement. The new outer walls were half this distance from the piers and each pier the same distance again from its neighbor. The whole structure was therefore exactly twice as wide as its predecessor. The result of this simple but highly ambitious scheme is the widest nave in England and, after Westminster Abbey, the tallest. In about 1320, when work on the nave had already been in progress for 30 years, it was decided to demolish Archbishop Roger's Norman towers and build a completely new west front with two new towers. What these western towers were intended to look like is now impossible to tell, since the front was finished only as far as the height of the nave roof with the present top story, parapet and pinnacles added at a much later date. The outer roof of the nave was finished by the 1330's and the glazing of the windows began, but the vaulting caused a great deal of trouble. The planned stone vault was abandoned, either through concern about the foundations or the technical difficulties of spanning almost fifty feet in stone. In the end wood had to be used and all kinds of problems held up completion of the work. Supplied of the necessary oak timbers were hard to come by and in 1345 the master-carpenter was found to have lost his head for heights and had to be replaced. Four years later the Black Death killed the master mason and many of the craftsmen. In the end, the vaulting was not completed until 1360. The Eastern Arm The intention of successive archbishops since the beginning of the new nave had always been to replace the whole of the Norman cathedral with a larger, more modern building. When Archbishop Thoresby laid the first stone of the new eastern arm in 1361 he was continuing a process that had already been going on for almost 150 years. The Zouche chapel (in memory of Thoresby's predecessor) and the vestries behind it had been started and the masons and carpenters who had finally completed the nave simply moved their tools and equipment eastward. Beginning on fresh ground with the Lady Chapel, the four easternmost bays of the present Minster, the furthest wall was a good sixty feet further east than Archbishop Roger's east front. With its massive proportions and the unadventurous tracery of its aisle windows it is remarkably consistent with spirit of the nave. Only the external screenwork of the clerestory, which, against the more exuberant tracery of the clerestory windows, produces one of the most dramatic architectural effects of the building. In the early 1390's, under Archbishop Thomas Arundel, demolition of the choir, the only surviving part of the Norman building commenced. In 1395 construction of the new choir began and celebration of the liturgy was transferred to the vestry. The design was close to that of the Lady Chapel but not identical, in particular, the tracery and screen were reversed so the tracery was now on the outside wall and the screen, across an internal passage, on the inside wall. During the decades that saw the building of the new choir the drama surrounding the throne of England produced repercussions in the see of York. Richard II had close connections with Archbishop Arundel and gave money for the work at the Minster. In 1396 he translated Arundel to Canterbury and York received an Austin friar Robert Waldby for its archbishop although in the two years left before his death he never actually visited the Minster. The Chapter elected a Yorkshire cleric, Bishop Skirlaw of Durham as Waldby's successor in 1398 but were immediately over-ruled by the now desperate Richard II who installed another aristocratic friend, Richard Scrope. A brave and learned man, Scrope nevertheless betrayed two kings and died a traitor's death. Only a year after Richard II had personally secured him the archbishopric, he was in the Tower Of London with other lords to hear the king's statement of abdication. In 1405 he led several thousand men in revolt against the new king Henry IV. After being tricked into surrender he was executed under the walls of York amid a huge crowd on the feast of St William. After this disaster the see of York was vacant for two and a half years while Bishop Skirlaw, ousted by Richard II's appointment of Scrope, attempted to regain office. He never succeeded and died with the matter still unresolved but in the meantime made the Minster a gift which ensured him immortality. In 1405 Skirlaw commissioned and paid for the glazing of the east window of the Lady Chapel by master-glazier John Thornton of Coventry who finished the window (with studio help) in three years. This window is not only the largest expanse of medieval glass to survive but is a masterpiece of narrative design. It tells the story of God as alpha and omega, of those who praise Him, of the beginning of the world and the end. At the center of the bottom row of panels which show legendary and historical figures from York's past, Skirlaw kneels at his altar. The End of the Middle Ages In 1407, while work on the windows and vaulting of the eastern arm was still in progress, part of the central tower of the Minster collapsed. Although this was blamed on 'a horrible tempest' it is more likely that alterations to the crossing weakened the tower's support. The master-mason William Colchester was dispatched from Westminster Abbey to solve the architectural problems and supervised the completion of the eastern arm and the strengthening of the crossing. He also inserted two screen arches (with a sliding joint against the piers which actually allowed them to move while adjusting to their load) at the entrances to the choir aisles and is thought to have planned the exceptionally solid choir screen (which was not built until later) and was definitely responsible for the design of the new central tower which was begun after his death in 1420 and never completed according to his intentions. During the middle of the fifteenth century the church was absolutely subordinate to politics. In 1465, as the conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York raged, Archbishop George Neville (bother of Richard Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker) was enthroned at the Minster. It was a magnificent occasion, fraught with dynastic tensions, the Neville family parading their Yorkist allegiance. At the feast afterwards the chief guest was the Duke of Gloucester, who eighteen years later became Richard III. By this time the Minster was, at last, almost complete, the building program of two and a half centuries slowly reaching its close. Master Colchester's plan to rebuild the central tower with the bells in its second stage had been abandoned because of concern for the strength of the piers and foundations. Instead, the south western tower was designated the new belfry and the new central tower was raised only to the top of the lantern. In 1472 the Dean and Chapter decided that the Minster was at last complete and held a great re-dedication ceremony to mark the occasion. In 1536, after suffering several weak, ineffectual and often absent archbishops York witnessed the Pilgrimage of Grace, the only serious popular protest against Henry VIII's proceedings against the church. The archbishop at the time, Edward Lee, was a nervous man who had presided over an historic meeting at the Chapter House on 5 May 1534 where it was declared that the Bishop of Rome had no greater jurisdiction in the realm than any other foreign bishop. However, when the Pilgrimage passed through York, the Minster clergy met its leaders and Lee himself, under duress, first joined then disowned the revolt. This rebellion, brutally put down by Henry VIII was a protest against the first dissolutions of abbeys and priories. When Henry VIII made his only visit to York in 1541 the city fathers crawled before him and the new Dean Richard Layton smashed St William's shrine as a gesture against popery. The Reformation changed English life forever. To the Present Day The first protestant archbishop of York (and also the first to be married) was Robert Holgate. Throughout the reign of Edward VI he saw the Minster stripped of half its clergy, all its chantries and altars, much of its plate and treasure and the daily ritual familiar for centuries. He also handed over to the king sixty-seven manors, a large slice of the endowment of the see of York. However when Edward's Catholic sister Mary came to the throne Holgate quickly shed his wife and his protestant faith to save his skin. With the accession of Queen Elizabeth I the church settled in a compromise between the Catholicism-without-a-pope established as a state religion under Henry VIII and the Protestantism of those martyred or exiled under Mary. This has remained the basis of the Church of England ever since. Although Elizabeth was no bigot - she had noted the counter-productive effect of her sister's persecution - her archbishops in York set about removing every trace of the old ways from the Minster and the city. There was more physical destruction inside the Minster during the reign of Elizabeth than at any other period. To remove the lingering belief in purgatory and prayer for the dead, so strong an element in pre-Reformation worship, tombs, brasses, coats of arms, portraits in the glass windows and the memorials of many archbishops and Deans were removed along with altars, hangings and vestments. By the 1570s the Catholic Mary Queen Of Scots, and Philip of Spain were beginning to threaten England and an anti-papist campaign had become a necessity. Catholics in York were forced to listen to Protestant sermons in the Minster; by 1600 thirty-four of them had died for their beliefs. In the reign of Charles I the religious pendulum swung again as the influence of his French-inclined court and the high ritualism of Laud, the then Archbishop of Canterbury eased the pressure on Catholics. In line with the new trend, Archbishop Neil reorganized the liturgical life of the Minster, introducing bright colors and gilding and reinstating plate and altar-frontals along with 'a most excellent-large-plump-lusty-full-speaking organ' which cost a thousand pounds. In 1639 York became the effective capital of England. War with Scotland was expected and Charles set up his headquarters in the city. Although the final outbreak of civil war was delayed for three years, the alliance between the Scots and the parliament which Charles was compelled to call in 1641 put York at the strategic center of the realm. By the spring of 1644 York was entirely surrounded by roundhead soldiers and a siege commenced, lasting over 3 months. On 5 July Cromwell defeated the Royalists at Marston Moor, seven miles outside the city and the fate of the nation was decided. By this time the archbishop had fled to Wales and the Dean was in a London prison for debt. After the surrender, the parliamentarians held a victory service in the Minster although, unlike many cathedrals caught up in fanatical Puritan wrecking, it was never damaged (thanks largely to Sir Thomas Fairfax, Cromwellian general and Yorkshire gentleman, who allowed no damage to be done.) For sixteen years the Minster belonged to the citizens as never before or since. It echoed to puritan sermons attended by merchants and aldermen relishing the absence of pomp. With the restoration of Charles II in 1660 the pendulum swung back again as bishops were restored, revenues and authority returned to Deans and Chapter, and the reappearance of the Book of Common Prayer, organ music, altars and the Anglican ceremonial. By 1700 the attempt to impose religious conformity on the nation had been abandoned and the persecution had stopped. Eighteenth century taste regarded the Gothic centuries with something approaching disdain. In 1730 the Palladian architect Lord Burlington designed a new floor for the whole Minster. This monochrome, key patterned marble expanse took six years to lay and involved the destruction of every tomb in the nave and many in the transepts and choir. This handsome floor reflects the classical style aggressively over the whole church. Dean Markham (1802-22) commenced the first major restoration of the outside of the cathedral. The west front was repaired and the long disused chapel of the ruined archbishop's palace was made into a new library. In 1829 a disastrous fire, started by a madman, destroyed the roof of the eastern arm, the choir stalls and the organ. Subscriptions towards the hugely expensive repair work were generous but did not meet the whole cost. In 1840 a second fire, started accidentally, burned down the nave roof and left the nave , the south west tower and south aisles as shells. This time the public response was less generous and by the 1850s the Minster was deeply in debt. In all the centuries of its history this was the moment when the Minster's fortunes were at their worst. Attendance was in decline, the music was in a poor state, and the Dean had, for a time, stopped the celebration of even a weekly Communion. It wasn't until the appointment of Augustus Duncome, an aristocratic cleric, in 1858 that the Minster's fortunes began to improve. Duncombe had no obvious qualifications for his post apart from his wealth but was extraordinarily successful in his attempts to reinvigorate the life of the cathedral. Old houses were cleared from the east and west fronts, the South Transept was restored and a new conviction, purpose and beauty was inspired by the high-church idealism Duncombe brought with him from his Oxford youth. The nave was lit and heated for the first time, allowing it to be used for large services and musical events and the morale and enthusiasm of the choristers and organist were raised by the introduction of a regularly celebrated sung Eucharist. At Duncombe's death in 1880 the Minster's worship was set in a pattern that his successors have followed with only minor alterations ever since. In the years since 1880 the Minster's story is largely one of the struggle to preserve it. Ordinary running costs: heating the building, paying the staff and, above all, the constant repair and replacement of fragile stonework are huge charges on the generosity of the ever-increasing number of visitors who visit the Minster each year. In the emotional aftermath of World War One a surge of generosity financed the creation of several regimental chapels and other memorials to the war dead and also allowed for the restoration of the Five Sisters window with lead which had been buried beneath Rievaulx Abbey since its dissolution in1538. In the period between the end of the Second World War (when all the glass had been taken out for safe keeping) and his death in 1963, Dean Milner-White organized an heroic restoration of all the medieval windows, the solving of a huge jigsaw puzzle which the confused efforts of centuries had created. In 1967 a two-year survey of the building by the new Minster architect, Bernard Fielden, revealed a structural crisis of horrifying proportions. His report showed the cathedral to be in danger of collapse. Within fifteen years it would be unable to withstand the repairs necessary to save it. Two million pounds was raised in the subsequent emergency appeal and the piers of the central tower were strengthened with collars of concrete tied to the Norman foundations by twenty thousand feet of steel rods. The central tower was also re-roofed and braced, high above ground, by more steel rods. In 1972 the Minster celebrated the completion of the restoration work during the five hundredth anniversary of the original completion of the building. On 9 July 1984 a fire, probably caused by lightning, destroyed the roof of the South Transept. It was agreed that the roof should be repaired using, as far as possible, the traditional structure and materials of the medieval builders. Fortunately, the sixteenth century Rose window had been re-leaded 12 years before the fire and the glass stayed in place despite being fragmented into 40,000 pieces by the intense heat. The basic cost of restoration was in the region of £2¼ million with another £350,000 raised to install modern fire protection systems. The opportunity was taken to carve the 62 new bosses needed with figures and scenes instead of the uniform foliage designs that were on those that were burnt. All aspects of God's creation, sun, stars, earth, plants, fish, animals and humans are represented and six of them are of modern events to praise God for, chosen by competition from thousands of designs submitted by children. In 1998 work was completed on the restoration of the great West door with new tracery carved by the Minster's staff of permanent craftsmen. Then could begin the 10-year program for the restoration of the worn stonework on the west front. Two major decisions were made: first, to replace entirely the tracery of the Great West window to ensure the survival of the original medieval glass and second, to create an entirely new Great West door, so worn and illegible had the original designs become. The former is an exact copy of the original stonework made by the Minster's carvers, and the latter is a new interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis, which was a co-operation between theologian, designer and carvers, more true to the medieval spirit than trying to reproduce an original scheme would have been. So, as work is undertaken and prayers continue to be said, our short history of York Minster ends. Bibliography Although dealing with most of the major events and personalities that have shaped the cathedral's history, this online history is by no means the whole story. For those interested in learning more about York Minster following works are suggested: A History Of York Minster Edited by G.E.Aylmer and Reginald Cant Oxford University Press, 1977, (updated 1979) ISBN 0 19 817199 4 The standard modern work on the history of York Minster. A detailed, wide-ranging and academic text. York Minster Lucy Beckett & Angelo Hornak Philip Wilson Publishers, 1981 (updated 1995) ISBN 0 85667 089 8 An entertaining and colorful history of the Minster with many illustrations. More suitable for the general reader than Aylmer and Cant's history but still full of illuminating detail.

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