York Minster
A lightning bolt burned York Minster's roof down in 1984, days after a controversial bishop was consecrated there. Some called it divine protest. The Minster has stranger tales too.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- York, North Yorkshire
- Built
- Main Gothic building begun around 1230 and consecrated in 1472
- Official name
- The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York
- Central tower
- About 71 metres (234 ft) high, with 275 steps to the top
- Great East Window
- Glazed 1405–08 by John Thornton of Coventry, roughly 23 m by 10 m
- Role
- Seat of the Archbishop of York, second-ranking archbishop in the Church of England
- Fire and restoration
- South transept roof destroyed 9 July 1984; reopened 1988
- Earlier sites
- Wooden church of 627 and a Norman cathedral, all on the site of a Roman fortress
The night the sky set the roof alight
In the early hours of 9 July 1984, lightning struck York Minster and the south transept roof went up in flames. Firefighters saved most of the building, but the roof was gone. The timing set tongues wagging. Only three days earlier, David Jenkins had been consecrated Bishop of Durham in the Minster. His doubts about the literal truth of some Christian miracles had caused uproar. Plenty of people decided the lightning was a message. Others pointed out that lightning does what lightning does. The rebuilding was finished in 1988. The new roof bosses, the carved decorative knots where the ribs meet, include designs chosen from a children's competition run by Blue Peter. The great rose window above the transept was cracked by the heat but survived.
Britain's biggest wall of medieval stained glass
The Great East Window is the Minster's showstopper. Glazier John Thornton of Coventry was paid to complete it between 1405 and 1408, and it is about the size of a tennis court. It is the largest single expanse of medieval stained glass in Britain. The story it tells runs from the Creation in Genesis to the end of the world in Revelation, across more than 300 panels. The scenes at the top are so far from the floor that you need binoculars to follow the plot. Look out, too, for the Five Sisters in the north transept. These five tall, narrow lancet windows date from the 1250s and are filled with silvery-grey patterned glass rather than coloured figures, so they glow in a very different way.
Emperor, king and Viking-era relic: the ground beneath your feet
The Minster sits on the site of the Roman fortress of Eboracum. In AD 306 Constantine was proclaimed emperor here, after the death of his father Constantius. A statue of him by Philip Jackson, unveiled in 1998, sits outside the south transept. In 627 King Edwin of Northumbria was baptised in a hastily built wooden church on the spot. A Norman cathedral followed, and the present Gothic building began around 1230. In the 1960s engineers found the central tower was in serious danger, and the foundations had to be reinforced. The dig revealed Roman and Norman remains, which can now be seen in the Undercroft below. There is also the Horn of Ulf, an ivory drinking horn given to the Minster around the 11th century by a local lord named Ulf, as a token of his land grant.
Fire, madness and a wooden vault painted to look like stone
The 1984 fire was not the Minster's first. In 1829 a man named Jonathan Martin hid inside after evensong and set fire to the quire. He believed he was following divine instruction. His brother was the painter John Martin, famous for apocalyptic canvases. Martin was found insane and ended his days in Bedlam. A second fire, started accidentally by a workman in 1840, wrecked the nave roof. It is worth knowing that many of the Minster's grand vaults are not stone at all. The nave and the quire have timber ceilings, painted to look like it. That wood is one reason fires have spread so fiercely.
A chapter house with no central pillar
The octagonal Chapter House, built in the late 13th century, has a wide timber vault with no central column to hold it up. That was a bold piece of engineering at the time. An inscription in Latin translates roughly as: as the rose is the flower of flowers, so this is the house of houses. Look closely at the carvings and you will find faces, beasts and grotesques. The Minster still has its own stonemasons and its own stoneyard, so repairs never really end. If you have the legs for it, climb the 275 steps up the central tower. At the top you can look out across the city's rooftops to the Vale of York and the Pennine edge beyond. When you are there, pick out the carved details in the Gothic stonework, stand under the east window, and check whether you can spot the children's roof bosses.
Notable people
- Constantine the Great
- King Edwin of Northumbria
- John Thornton of Coventry
- Jonathan Martin
- David Jenkins
- Philip Jackson
- Edward III