York Minster

When I showed some photographs recently of our holiday in York in October I said that I'd show some more photographs of York Minster at a later date and here are a few more photographs that we took there.

This is the view approaching York Minster from the west, with St Wilfrid's Catholic Church on the left here.....

.....and here is the West Front of the Minster.....

.....and the Great West Door.

Dean's Park Garden is on the north side of the Minster and on the north side of the park is a series of stone archways, part of the old Archbishop's Palace which once stood here, and is now the Kohima Memorial to the Army's 2nd Division that was based in York before and after the Second World War. Behind the middle arch is a cross surrounded by a wreath and a brass plate on which is inscribed John Maxwell Edmonds' famous epitaph:

When you go home, tell them of us and say

For their tomorrow, we gave our today.

Which is also carved on the memorial of the 2nd British Division in the War Cemetery in Kohima in north east India commemorating the Battle of Kohima in 1944.

Adjacent to the Kohima Memorial is the Minster Library, now known as the Old Palace  - previously the chapel of the Palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the only part of that Palace left standing. A plaque on the wall of the building commemorates the fact that it was here in 1483 that Richard III invested his son as Prince of Wales.

Just round the corner from the Minster Library is the Treasurer's House, which takes its name from the Treasurers of York Minster as part of it in medieval times was their official residence.

A little further round, on College Street is St William's College, originally built in 1465 for York Minster's Chantry Priests.

Facing St William's College is the east side of the Minster with the Great East Window.

Continuing round to you south side of the Minster you pass the Minster School, an independent preparatory school that was founded to educate choristers at York Minster, although it does not now exclusively do so.

You are now on the South side of the Minster and can see the South Transept with, high in the gable, the huge Rose Window.

Adjacent to the South Transept sits a statue of the Emperor Constantine the Great who was proclaimed Emperor in York on the death of his father there in AD306. Photographs of the statue show him with a sword in his left hand, but apart from the pommel there's no sign of it in my photo. Apparently the statue had been vandalised about a month before we went to York.

Opposite the statue of Constantine, on the other side of Deansgate, stands a solitary Roman column which came from the interior of the Roman Basilica that stood on the present site of York Minster and dates to around the year AD300.

A plaque which is affixed gives you some information about the column.

This last photograph was taken from the city walls close to the railway station - it's a pity it wasn't a sunny day though...

I'll show some photographs soon of the inside of the Minster.