York is England’s most visited city outside London and as soon as you arrive, you’ll see why. This beautiful medieval city with its stunning culture and history is a magnificent historical record of the past, with narrow winding streets enclosed by 13th-century walls and, at its heart, the awe-inspiring minster.
But why is it a minster and not a cathedral?
Traditionally a minster is the Anglo-Saxon name for a missionary church and a minster was a church that had its own clergy or a church attached to a monastery. The word is associated with the Latin monasterium or monastery. Today it’s an honorific title given to particular churches in England. A cathedral is the seat of a bishop and the word is derived from the chair he sits on – the ‘cathedra’ – which means that York Minster is both a minster and a cathedral.
The first minster was built in Saxon times, built when King Edwin converted to Christianity in 627, and today’s building, which is 800 years old, is actually the fourth minster to occupy the site. It was one of the first mighty cathedrals to be started after the coming of William the Conqueror, the biggest building in the north of England at that time and a big ‘up yours’ to the bishop of Canterbury, who had earlier claimed primacy for his cathedral over York. Today it’s considered one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in England with the widest Gothic nave in England and also one of the longest.
Treasures in the cathedral
Its treasures include the famous Rose Window, with its stonework from 1240 and glass from the early 1500s, medieval ceiling bosses (with the addition of a few contemporary versions known as the ‘Blue Peter bosses’), the Five Sisters window that dates from the 13th century and features in Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby and the magnificent Decorated Gothic Chapter House, which has played home to English parliaments.
York: cathedral city
York began life as a Roman garrison, used by Hadrian as the base for his northern campaign. From the Romans, the town passed into the hands of the Anglo-Saxons and several centuries later it became the Viking capital in Britain for a hundred years. And they left a big legacy. The name ‘York’ is derived from its Viking name ‘Jorvik’.
What to do: Visit the Jorvik Viking Centre; walk the city walls (four and a half miles), following the lines of the original Roman walls; learn more about the city’s Roman past in the Yorkshire Museum and its reinvigoration by the arrival of the railways in the National Railway Museum; trace the history of the ill-fated royal princes, in the Richard III Museum, who may have been murdered by their uncle, King Richard; sate your need for art at the York City Art Gallery and shopping around the antiques and bric-a-brac shops around the areas of Colliergate and Fossgate.
Where to stay: Steep yourself in the cathedral’s history by staying in the former home of its treasurers, up until the time they were retired from use in 1547. Part of Gray’s Court Hotel, tucked in behind York Minster in Chapter House Street, dates back to 1080, when it was commissioned by the first Norman Archbishop of York to provide the official residence for the minster’s treasurers. It’s possibly the oldest continuously occupied house in the UK and retains the only private access to York’s city walls, which surround the edge of its lovely gardens.
Cathedrals of Britain: North of England and Scotland by Bernadette Fallon is published by Pen and Sword books, £12.99, buy online here