York Minster: The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very High
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Medieval
- Civilizations
- English, Norman, Roman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page22 sections
History
York Minster, formally the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York, is a Christian cathedral in York, United Kingdom, whose present building belongs to the medieval English Gothic tradition. It is the mother church of the Diocese and Province of York and the seat of the Archbishop of York, the senior Anglican bishop of the northern province and the second-ranking archbishop in the Church of England after Canterbury. The present Gothic rebuilding began in 1220 and reached completion in 1472, following many earlier churches on or near the site.
Early Christian and Anglo-Saxon York
A Christian community existed in York by 314, when a bishop from the city was summoned to the Council of Arles. The physical evidence for Roman Christianity in York remains limited, but the later church developed within the Roman city known as Eboracum. The word “minster” derives from the Anglo-Saxon period, when it described a missionary and teaching church.
The first recorded church was a wooden building hurriedly erected in 627 for the baptism of Edwin, King of Northumbria. Its exact position is uncertain, as are the locations of the churches that preceded the present cathedral before 1080. It probably stood near the Roman principia, the headquarters complex of a Roman military fort or town, possibly north of the present Minster beneath Dean’s Park.
Edwin began a larger stone church around the wooden chapel, and Oswald, King of Northumbria, completed it in 637. Dedicated to Saint Peter, the church had fallen into disrepair by 670, when Wilfrid, then Bishop of York, repaired and renewed it. He added lead roofs, glazed windows, furnishings, a school, and a library. By the eighth century, the school and library were among the most substantial in northern Europe, and a choir-school tradition associated with the Minster continued from the seventh century.
Fire, invasion, and the Norman cathedral
A fire probably damaged or destroyed the church in 741. It was rebuilt on a larger scale, and the new building was said to contain thirty altars. The cathedral’s history then becomes less clear amid successive invasions, although York again had Benedictine archbishops by the tenth century, including Oswald of Worcester, Wulfstan, and Ealdred. Ealdred took part in the coronation of William the Conqueror in 1066 and died in 1069, after which he was buried at the cathedral.
York suffered during William the Conqueror’s campaign in the north in 1069. A Danish attack later that year caused a fire that burned the cathedral, and another Danish assault in 1075 damaged or looted it. Thomas of Bayeux, the first Norman archbishop, began organizing repairs after his arrival in 1070.
Work on a new Norman cathedral began in 1080 and was completed before Thomas of Bayeux died in 1100. Fire damaged the building again in 1137. Repairs followed, and its choir and crypt were remodelled in 1154, when a new chapel was also added.
The medieval Gothic rebuilding
Walter de Gray became Archbishop of York in 1215 and ordered a Gothic cathedral intended to rival Canterbury. Construction began in 1220 with the north and south transepts, the cross-arms of the church. The chapter house, or meeting room of the cathedral chapter, was begun in the 1260s and completed before 1296.
The nave rose from the 1280s on foundations belonging to the Norman cathedral. It was roofed in the 1330s and vaulted by 1360. After most of the Norman choir had been demolished, the eastern arm and its chapels were built between 1361 and about 1405. The central tower collapsed in 1407. Its piers were strengthened, and a replacement tower was constructed from 1420. The west towers followed between 1433 and 1472, when the cathedral was declared complete and consecrated on 3 July. The Gothic rebuilding therefore extended from the early thirteenth century to 1472.
The Minster also became associated with pilgrimage. York competed with Canterbury after the martyrdom of Thomas Becket increased Canterbury’s importance. Walter de Gray sought the canonization of William Fitzherbert, a former Archbishop of York, and Pope Honorius III recognized William as a saint in 1226. In 1279, William de Wickwane transferred Saint William of York’s remains to a shrine behind the high altar. Edward I carried the reliquary there with other bishops on 29 December.
Reformation and later history
The English Reformation brought the looting of much of the cathedral’s treasure and the loss of much of its land. Under Elizabeth I, tombs, windows, and altars were destroyed in an effort to remove visible signs of Roman Catholic worship. The Minster consequently became part of the Church of England, administered by a dean and chapter.
York was besieged and captured by Parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War in 1644. Thomas Fairfax prevented further damage to the cathedral. The floor was relaid in patterned marble between 1730 and 1736, and a major general restoration began in 1802.
On 2 February 1829, Jonathan Martin deliberately set fire to the cathedral. The blaze severely damaged the eastern arm and destroyed the organ, medieval choir furniture, the bishop’s throne, the pulpit, and about 40 metres of roofing. An accidental fire in 1840 left the nave, south-west tower, and south-aisle roof as blackened shells. Services were suspended during the cathedral’s financial crisis in the 1850s, and Augustus Duncombe led its revival from 1858.
A 1967 survey found that the building, particularly the central tower, was close to collapse. By 1972, £2 million had been spent strengthening the foundations and roof. Excavations connected with this work revealed part of the Roman principia of Eboracum beneath the south transept, together with remains of the Norman cathedral. The excavated areas reopened in 2013 within an exhibition on the Minster’s building history.
A serious fire struck the south transept on 9 July 1984. Firefighters deliberately brought down its roof with water to protect the rest of the cathedral, while clergy and staff rescued historic objects. Lightning striking a metal electrical box was assessed as the most probable cause. Restoration, including reconstruction of the roof, was completed in 1988. The cathedral is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled monument. The cathedral precinct received scheduled-monument designation in 1937, and the cathedral itself was listed at Grade I in 1954.
Continuing institutional and commemorative life
The Minster’s long connection with education continued through its choir schools. Paulinus of York founded a song school in 627. Surviving former school buildings include a schoolhouse built in 1830–33, two houses dating from 1837, and a Georgian building of 1755.
Change ringing, the practice of ringing bells in changing mathematical sequences, stopped in October 2016 after the volunteer ringers’ agreements ended. Ringing resumed about a year later after a new band was appointed. The interruption included Christmas 2016, reportedly the first Christmas in more than 600 years without the Minster’s bells. The York Mystery Plays were performed inside the Minster for the first time in 2000 and returned in 2016. In 2022, King Charles III unveiled a statue of Queen Elizabeth II in a niche on the west facade.
Remains
York Minster has a cruciform plan with a central tower, two west towers, and an octagonal chapter house attached to the north transept. It is 524.5 feet (159.9 metres) long, while the central tower rises 235 feet (72 metres) and the choir reaches an interior height of 102 feet (31 metres). Creamy-white magnesian limestone, quarried near Tadcaster, forms most of the building. Its fabric displays the development of English Gothic architecture from the Early English style through the Decorated and Perpendicular styles.
Transepts and chapter house
North and south transepts
The north and south transepts are the earliest parts of the Gothic church. Their simple lancet windows are narrow openings with pointed arches, and their roofs are wooden. The north transept contains the Five Sisters window, five lancets each about 53 feet (16.3 metres) high and 5 feet wide. Their grisaille glass is monochrome or predominantly grey painted glass, rather than the narrative scenes or symbolic motifs commonly used in medieval stained glass.
The south transept contains a rose window whose glass dates from about 1500 and commemorates the union of the royal houses of York and Lancaster. The glass survived the 1984 fire sufficiently intact to be removed and restored. The south-transept roof was rebuilt with oak trusses after the fire, with some trusses treated with fire-retardant plaster. New roof bosses were designed through a competition associated with the television programme Blue Peter. Purbeck marble decorates the piers of both transepts.
Octagonal chapter house
The octagonal chapter house and its vestibule were built after the transepts. Broad windows with geometric Decorated tracery cover almost all of the upper walls. Its innovative wooden roof has no central supporting column and rests on buttressed walls. Sculpted heads above the canopies show human faces, angels, animals, and grotesques, while Purbeck marble enriches the piers.
Nave and western front
Nave
The nave was built between 1291 and about 1350 and is the widest Gothic nave in England. Its wooden roof is painted to resemble stone, while the aisles have stone vaults. The foundations incorporate those of the Norman cathedral, linking the later Gothic interior with the earlier building.
Great West Window
The Great West Window, also called the Heart of Yorkshire, was designed and built with the west front by the master mason Ivo de Raghton in 1338–39. Its curvilinear, or Flamboyant Decorated, tracery was replaced in the late 1980s by an exact copy after the original stone deteriorated.
West towers
The two west towers are more heavily decorated than the central tower. Built in the Perpendicular style, they are topped with battlements and eight pinnacles each. They contain the bells, clock chimes, and carillon, a set of tuned bells played from a keyboard. The north-west tower houses Great Peter, weighing 216 hundredweight, or about 10.8 tons, together with six clock bells. The south-west tower contains fourteen change-ringing bells and a 35-bell carillon, giving the two west towers 56 bells.
Eastern arm and central tower
Eastern arm and Great East Window
The eastern arm contains a four-bay choir, the Lady Chapel, and a second pair of transepts that rise only to half-height and help illuminate the high altar. The Great East Window stands behind the altar. Designed by John Thornton in 1405 and completed in 1408, it is about 77 feet (23 metres) high and 32 feet (9.8 metres) wide. Its more than 300 panels depict scenes from the Book of Revelation, making it the largest surviving expanse of medieval stained glass in the world.
The Minster’s windows include glass dating from the twelfth century, with some white and coloured glass originating in Germany. Glass was painted and fired before being joined with lead strips, and the different installation dates preserve evidence of changing glazing and painting techniques. Approximately two million individual pieces of glass occur throughout the cathedral. The Great East Window’s 311 panels were removed in 2008 for cleaning, repainting, re-leading, and protective ultraviolet coating. An electrical fire in adjoining offices on 30 December 2009 did not damage them. Conservation was completed in 2017, and the panels were reinstalled between November 2017 and January 2018.
Central tower and choir screen
The central tower is a relatively sparsely decorated Perpendicular structure. Beneath it stands a fifteenth-century choir screen separating the choir from the crossing, the point where the transept intersects the nave and choir. The screen contains stone and gilded sculptures of English kings from William the Conqueror to Henry VI, set against a red background beneath canopies. The organ stands above it.
Glass, clocks, organ, and commemorative features
Stained glass
The stained-glass windows were removed during both world wars because of the danger of bombing. The Five Sisters window was restored in 1925 with funds raised by Almyra Gray and Helen Little. The surviving glass preserves several centuries of glazing and painting practice within the cathedral.
Clocks and bells
Great Peter strikes the hour, while the clock bells sound the quarters during the daytime. The carillon includes the Nelson Chime, used to announce Evensong, and can be played from a baton keyboard. Twenty-four additional bells arrived in 2008, making it the first new carillon in the British Isles for forty years and the first hand-played carillon in an English cathedral. John Taylor and Company cast the bells at the Loughborough Bell Foundry.
The south-west tower’s turret clock was built by John Moore and Sons of Clerkenwell in 1841 and started on 21 April 1842. Its hour bell weighed 53 long hundredweight, its frame measured 7 feet by 4 feet 6 inches, its pendulum had a two-second period, and it ran for eight days between windings. By 1858 it was regarded as unreliable, losing several seconds each day. Another clock is mentioned in the Minster’s fabric rolls in 1371. A clock supplied by Henry Hindley of York in 1750 was later moved to the east side of the north transept, where it was re-erected in 1891 with ornament designed by George Frederick Bodley. Two late-fifteenth-century figures in plate armour strike its quarters on tubular gongs.
Organ
The organ was destroyed in the 1829 fire. Elliot and Hill built the basis of the present instrument in 1832, and William Hill and Son reconstructed it in 1859 while retaining the case and largest pipes. J. W. Walker and Sons built a new instrument in the same case in 1903. Harrison and Harrison modified it in 1918 and 1931, adding a Tuba Mirabilis, revising the Great chorus, and installing a new console, electro-pneumatic action, and four new stops. Further work took place in 1960 and 1982.
The 1984 fire affected the organ without destroying it. Principal Pipe Organs of York, under Geoffrey Coffin, restored it between 1991 and 1993. A later refurbishment removed nearly all 5,403 pipes for work by Harrison and Harrison in Durham, and the project was completed in March 2021.
Shrines, tombs, and facade sculpture
The shrine of Saint William of York stood behind the high altar on a platform constructed over the crypt vaults. Walter de Gray’s tomb in the south transept has a Purbeck-marble effigy in full canonicals beneath a canopy supported by ten slender pillars. An iron screen installed by Archbishop William Markham in the early nineteenth century later partly obscured it.
The west facade contains a niche with a statue of Queen Elizabeth II, unveiled in 2022.
Nearby sites
