York Minster

In 1967 engineers discovered that the central tower of York Minster — sixteen thousand tons of it — was standing on foundations that could no longer hold it, and that the building was in real danger of coming down. Digging it out took five years and uncovered a Roman fortress, a Saxon cemetery and a Norman cathedral underneath. Seventeen years after that, lightning set the south transept on fire. This is a building that has spent thirteen centuries nearly not surviving, and it holds more medieval glass than anywhere else in the country. This guide walks it object by object.

A wooden church, a Norman one, and 250 years of Gothic

627, and the Roman fortress underneath

The Minster stands on the headquarters building of the Roman legionary fortress of Eboracum, founded in AD 71 — not near it, on it. The first church here was a wooden one, built in a hurry in 627 for the baptism of King Edwin of Northumbria, and rebuilt in stone shortly after. Almost nothing survives of that or of the Saxon minsters that followed; the Normans levelled the site and started again around 1080.

The Gothic building you walk into was begun in about 1220 and finished in 1472, and you can read its two and a half centuries in the changing style as you walk east to west: the transepts Early English, the nave and chapter house Decorated, the east end and towers Perpendicular. It was consecrated in 1472 — which is worth noting against Cologne, the other great northern Gothic cathedral, which sat with a crane on its unfinished tower for three hundred years.

Constantine, outside the south door

The seated bronze figure by the south door is Constantine, by Philip Jackson, unveiled 1998, and he is there for a good reason. Constantius Chlorus died at Eboracum on 25 July 306, and his troops proclaimed his son emperor on this spot — the only place in Britain where a Roman emperor was made.

One qualification, since most signage skips it: what the army acclaimed him as was Augustus, and Galerius refused to recognise that, allowing him only the junior title of Caesar. Constantine's undisputed rule came years later. “Proclaimed emperor by his troops at York” is correct; “became emperor at York” is a step too far.

Beside him stands a Roman column, eight drums of magnesian limestone about 9.5 metres tall, from the basilica of the fortress headquarters. It was found in the 1960s excavations under the Minster and re-erected here in 1972 for York's 1,900th anniversary — deliberately set the way it was found, upside down.

The visitor's cheat sheet

What to see, in the order you meet it

The nave

Built between about 1291 and 1350, and at 99 feet the widest Gothic nave in England. The ceiling is not stone: it is a wooden vault painted to look like stone, which is how a span that wide was possible at all — and which is why the 1840 fire in this part of the building was so destructive. What you are looking at is largely a careful nineteenth-century replacement.

Two things to find while you are here. High on the north side, projecting from the triforium, is a carved wooden dragon's head with a hole through it for a pulley — almost certainly a crane arm for lifting a font cover, though nobody has documented what it actually did. And the west window above the door, of 1338, has tracery forming a heart shape, universally called the Heart of Yorkshire.

The Kings' Screen

Across the entrance to the quire is a stone screen of the 1440s carrying fifteen kings of England, William the Conqueror to Henry VI, each under a canopy. Henry VI's figure is a replacement — the original was removed because it was attracting the wrong kind of veneration from people who thought he should be a saint.

The quire

Through the screen, and this is where the Minster's daily life happens: services sung here every day, as they have been for eight hundred years. Almost none of the woodwork is medieval. In 1829 a disturbed man named Jonathan Martin hid in the building overnight and set fire to the quire, destroying the roof and the entire set of medieval stalls; everything you see is a reconstruction of the 1830s. Attend Evensong if you possibly can — it is free, it is sung by the choir, and it is the only way to see the quire used rather than looked at.

The Great East Window

The east wall is almost entirely glass, and it is the single most important object in the building. John Thornton of Coventry signed a contract in 1405 to glaze it and finished in three years, which for 311 panels is astonishing. The scheme runs Genesis and the Creation across the top, 157 panels of the Apocalypse below that, and historical figures at the bottom: the beginning and the end of the world in one window.

The Minster's own comparison is that it is the size of a tennis court, and that is the figure to use — metric dimensions circulate widely but the Minster does not publish them. It was conserved between 2012 and 2018, in two phases, as part of the £20m York Minster Revealed programme, of which the National Lottery gave £10.5m. Every panel came out, was cleaned and repaired, and went back behind new protective glazing.

The Five Sisters

In the north transept, five lancets sixteen and a third metres high and a metre and a half wide, filled not with pictures but with grisaille — silvery-grey glass in geometric and foliate patterns, around a hundred thousand pieces of it, made about 1250. It is the largest expanse of thirteenth-century grisaille glass in the world.

It is also a war memorial, and a rare one. Restored in 1923–25 with money raised from 32,000 women, it was rededicated on 24 June 1925 by the Duchess of York to the women of the Empire who died in the First World War — the only memorial in the United Kingdom dedicated specifically to them. The oak panels beside it name them. It was taken out for safety in 1939 and put back in 1950.

The Rose Window, and the fire

Opposite, in the south transept, the Rose Window — and the story everyone in York knows. Fire broke out in the transept roof at about one in the morning on Monday 9 July 1984; the alarm went at half past two; the roof burned for three hours and the fire brigade brought it down deliberately, inward, to save the rest of the church. Debris lay five feet deep on the floor.

The window above survived. It reached 450 degrees and cracked in something like forty thousand places — and lost not one piece of glass, because it had recently been releaded and the lead held every fragment in position. Restoration took a little over four years and cost more than £2.25 million; the transept was rededicated in 1988. The new roof bosses include six designed by children who entered a Blue Peter competition, which is why there is a moon landing and a famine relief scene in the roof of a medieval cathedral.

The official cause was lightning, rated eighty per cent probable by the fire brigade against ten per cent each for arson and an electrical fault. The arson theory, tied to a controversial episcopal consecration three days earlier, was never supported by anything.

The astronomical clock

Also in the north transept, and easily walked past: a clock designed in 1944 and installed in 1955 by Robert d'Escourt Atkinson of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. It shows the sky not as an astronomer would draw it but as a pilot would see it from the cockpit, because it is a memorial to the 18,000 airmen from bases in Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland who were killed in the Second World War. A book of remembrance stands beside it, and a page is turned every day.

The Chapter House

Octagonal, begun about 1260 and finished around 1286, with forty-four canopied stalls round the walls — and no central pillar. Every other great English octagonal chapter house has one: Wells, Salisbury, Lincoln, Westminster. York does not, and the reason is a trick. The vault is not stone. It is a timber frame under an enormous external buttressed cone of a roof, light enough that the walls can carry it alone.

The carving on the stall canopies is the other reason to come: human faces, animals, grotesques and souls in torment, some of them comic, and among the finest naturalistic sculpture of thirteenth-century England. Much of the glass around the walls is original. Take your time here; most visitors give it ninety seconds.

The crypt and the Doomstone

Down the steps, in the crypt, is a Norman carved capital of the twelfth century known as the Doomstone. It shows the Mouth of Hell: a cauldron of the damned with demons stoking the fire beneath it, a toad, and jaws. It is vivid, unpleasant and very easy to miss, and it is one of the best pieces of Romanesque carving in the north of England.

The Undercroft, and why it exists

The Undercroft is the direct result of the building nearly falling down. By the 1960s the central tower — 197 feet, sixteen thousand tons — was settling on foundations that had never been adequate, and the cracks were serious enough to threaten collapse. Emergency underpinning ran from 1967 to 1972, driving new concrete and stainless steel beneath the piers.

It also handed archaeologists an opportunity that will never come again. Under the floor they found the Roman fortress, an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, and the foundations of the Norman cathedral, all in situ. The voids left by the engineering became the Undercroft, and the museum in it is included in your ticket. Note the wording, because the Minster is careful about it: what you can see below is part of the Roman fortress, described on their own pages as barracks, while the re-erected column outside came from the headquarters building.

The Horn of Ulf

In the Undercroft Museum, and probably the single most remarkable object the Minster owns: a carved elephant-ivory drinking horn, southern Italian work of about 1030, given by a Yorkshire magnate of Viking descent named Ulf.

The point of it is not that it is beautiful, though it is. The horn was the legal conveyance. Ulf gave his estates to the Minster by handing over the horn; there was no document, the object itself was the title deed, and the Minster held its land on the strength of it for centuries. It was lost at the Reformation and recovered and returned in the seventeenth century. Around it in the same museum are the York Gospels, Anglo-Saxon coins including a ninth-century sceatta found in 2012, and an eleventh-century Viking-age burial.

The Central Tower

If the weather holds, climb it: 275 steps, timed slots, minimum age eight, and the best view in Yorkshire — the walled city laid out below, the Vale of York beyond it, and the Minster's own roofs and flying buttresses close enough to read. It is a separate £6 on a ticket and it closes in high wind, so book it and be prepared to be turned back.

What it costs to keep standing

The Minster spends over £33,000 a day on maintenance, which is the number that explains the admission charge better than anything else. It also explains the most interesting thing the institution has done recently: rather than buying in specialist labour, it has built its own — a £9.3m Centre of Excellence for Heritage Craft Skills, opened in the precinct, with a stoneyard, glaziers, CAD and 3D scanning, and residential accommodation for first-year apprentices. It is the largest change to the precinct since the 1850s, and it exists because nobody else is training enough masons.

Tickets and tours

Don't miss

• The Great East Window 311 panels, glazed in three years by one man from Coventry from 1405, and conserved panel by panel between 2012 and 2018.
• The Five Sisters North transept: 13th-century grisaille, and Britain's only memorial specifically to the women who died in the First World War.
• The Rose Window Cracked in 40,000 places in the 1984 fire and did not lose a single piece of glass.
• The Chapter House No central pillar, because the vault is timber — plus the best carved heads in 13th-century England.
• The Horn of Ulf In the Undercroft: an ivory horn that was not a gift but the legal deed to an estate.
• The Doomstone In the crypt: a Norman Mouth of Hell, easy to walk past and worth finding.
• The astronomical clock North transept: the sky as a pilot sees it, for 18,000 dead airmen.
• The dragon's head High on the north side of the nave — a medieval crane arm nobody can fully explain.

Insider tips

Avoid Sunday for sightseeing. The window is 12.45 to 2.30 and that is it — worship has priority all morning. A weekday at half past nine gets you an almost empty nave.

Bring binoculars. As at every great glass cathedral, the things worth seeing are forty feet up: the East Window panels, the chapter house carvings, the dragon's head, the nave bosses.

Book the tower with the ticket and accept it may not happen. It closes for wind, and the weather in York obliges more often than visitors expect. If it goes ahead, do it first, while your legs are fresh.

Use the year. A twelve-month ticket turns a rushed three hours into two comfortable mornings, and York is a city people come back to.

Where to stay and eat nearby

Stay inside the walls. York's centre is small, medieval and almost entirely walkable, and the streets around the Minster — Petergate, Stonegate, the Shambles — are the whole point of coming. It is busier and pricier than outside the walls, and worth it: the Minster floodlit at night, from an empty Minster Yard, is a different building from the one you queued at.

More English cathedrals

• Canterbury Cathedral — the seat of the other English archbishop, and the site of Becket's murder.
• Lincoln Cathedral — the Angel Choir, the Imp, and a vault built deliberately crooked.
• Durham Cathedral — the greatest Norman building in Europe, an hour up the line.

See all the English cathedrals in this guide →