Apologies

Apologies for the lack of postings recently; I've been diverting my time to my passion of painting and textiles combined, but will be back in a while with more travels.

York Minster

The York Minster posting is so large that I'm doing it in two pieces, this being the first.

And a view of the Minster at night. (I was on a Ghost Walk and the Minster was our starting point....pretty, I thought)

This is the last cathedral posting - having done Worcester, Gloucester, Durham, Lincoln before this one.

York Minster is a very beautiful place. Like Lincoln, you have to pay to get in. The ticket lasts a year so you can go back as many times as you wish within that time; if I lived closer I most definitely would!


Why's it called a Minster?  Yes, it is a cathedral  (cathedra, and hence cathedral,  being an old word for the seat of the Bishop, in this case the Archbishop of York). It was built at the end of the Roman empire as a centre for the Christian faith in the north of England. Minster (from the Saxon word mynster, simply means a mission church. So it's three things; a church (a christian place of worship), a Minster, (a missionary church) and a cathedral (the seat of a bishop and mother ship to the local diocese!)

I recommend you take advantage of the frequent free tours on offer as you find out so much more than if you would by reading the leaflets or wandering around on your own. I was highly amused.


The Minster is built from magnesium limestone, and is the largest gothic church this side of the Alps, measuring 150 yards by 28 yards.

It has 128 stained glass windows, which need to be cleaned and re-leaded every 80 years. It takes 2 years to remove a window and 22 years to clean and put back in, so you can see they need a lot of looking after - hence the entrance fee I guess.

 Much of the cathedral is built out of wood, which means that it burns quite well and there have been a number of fires. In 1840 a candle started a fire and destroyed the roof of the nave (right) which had to be replaced. They tried to restore it to the original condition and did quite a good job except that there is a carving of a baby being bottle fed on one of the bosses!

If you look carefully at this photo on the left, about half way down above the right hand arch, you can see something sticking out into the Nave. This is a golden dragon's head but no one is quite sure why it's there - probably part of a mechanism for raising a heavy lid probably over the font or some reliquary long gone.

There is also a memorial to William Wilberforce in the nave. He was a Yorkshireman who led the fight for the abolition of slavery.

At the far end of the nave is the Quire. (Quire/Choir?? Quire is the place, and the Choir are the singers that sing in the Quire) It's slightly askew to the Nave because of a mistake by the medieval builders. It's still standing though, so no harm done.

 In 1829 another fire destroyed the roof and most of the woodwork in the quire, including the organ. It was rebuilt, recreating the medieval and is a most wonderous thing.  The organ has over 4,000 pipes which if laid end to end would stretch for over 4.5 miles.

The fire was started on purpose by Johnathan Martin, who spent the rest of his life in an asylum.

These rows of seats (right) are the quire stalls. They have symbols on the back of each seat which represent the various parishes in the north of England.

 The organ above the quire stalls.

This is the cathedra, or throne, of the Archbishop of York. The quire also contains 267 memorials.

Another York Minster posting soon.

Durham Cathedral

I couldn't quite get to grips with Durham as a city; it seemed very small, and without heart, but perhaps we didn't spend enough time there to investigate it properly.  We went to look at the Cathedral, and were there for less than 24 hours.

Durham Cathedral, unlike many cathedrals these days, does not charge an entrance fee, but you are not allowed to take photographs inside. They rely on sales of the guide book I think, and the images on this blog,  of the insides of the cathedral, were taken from it.




The outside.

Durham is known for its cathedral, University and Castle. We had heard that the cathedral was magnificent and worth a visit, so off we trekked.

Durham is a city, above Yorkshire but below Northumberland in the top right hand side of England. (the bottom bit of the UK)

The picture above gives the impression that the cathedral is quite austere, and it certainly is "high church".  The outside left me with an overwhelming feeling of workhouses and puritanism!

These two towers (the Western Towers) are built above the gorge and date from 12/13th centuries. They hang on the side of the hill and can be seen for miles (below)

The building is huge and is 143 metres long, and is at one end of a very pretty green opposite Durham Castle.

Many of the other buildings around the green belong to the University of Durham, including in this row, the University's Police.

The great central tower (above) is 66 metres high and was the last bit that was built, in the 15th century.

The Insides

The inside of the Cathedral is truly wonderful.

The stone pillars and roof give a feeling of an enormous strong powerful place. They are highly decorated with carving rather than with paint and gilding. I tell you, it fair takes your breath away.

 The Nave (looking East)

 The Nave (looking west)

 Looking north across the nave. (the tomb belongs to a member of the Neville family)









































Until the late 1800's there wouldn't have been any seats in the Nave. The carved pillars have stood for almost 900 years and are 6.6 metres round and 6.6 metres high. They support the ceiling.

There is a long narrow slab of black marble set into the floor and this marks the point behind which women had to remain, a restriction that continued until the mid-sixteenth century.

From about 1093 to 1539 the church was highly decorated and the windows filled with stained glass. but during the Reformation the walls were whitewashed and all the windows were broken.  What you see in the windows now is mostly Victorian.

 The Quire, where services are held every day.

Whilst we were visiting the choir were practising for Evensong, and the accoustics and the beautiful voices actually made me cry. (I really am quite soft, you know!)

 The highly decorated organ pipes which were also playing during our visit.

 The high altar, and behind it the Neville screen.

 The Shrine of St Cuthbert.

 The Daily Bread window.

This window is by the main north door, and was designed by Mark Angus in 1984, and paid for by the staff of Marks and Spencers, to mark the firm's centenary. It illustrates the Last Supper.

 The Galilee Chapel.

The Venerable Bede's tomb (right, and in between the candles)

Bede was born in 673, a saxon, who joined a monastery at Jarrow where he spent all his life. He was a scholar, historian, theologian, poet, scientist, biographer and wrote extensively about the Bible. He died in 735.























And finally a look at the wonderful architecture of the roof of the central tower.

A day in Whitby

Whitby has long been a family favourite. It's a small fishing port and seaside resort in Yorkshire.  Captain James Cook, set sail from Whitby in the Bark Endeavour, on a voyage which charted the east coast of Australia and New Zealand.  (I shall be taking you on a voyage on a 40% scale copy of the Bark Endeavour at the end of the posting, which will be exciting won't it?! Snort.)

You can read about him on the website for the Whitby Museum here - it's located in the very house he grew up in, on the harbour front.

Whitby's skyline is also famously known for the ruins of St Hilda's Abbey which is on top of the East Cliffs. It attracts hundreds of Goths for the twice yearly Whitby Goth Weekend, and is the largest gathering of Goths in the world!

Why do Goths come to Whitby? Because of the churchyard of the parish church of St. Mary, which gave Bram Stoker the inspiration to write his book, Dracula.

From the Abbey on top of the cliff you walk through the graveyard of St Mary's (above) and down the famous 199 steps to the small town.

It's a pretty place full of Whitby Jet shops and the usual seaside paraphernalia. Whitby Jet is the fossilized remains of a tree from the Jurassic period and is only found along a seven and a half mile stretch of the North Yorkshire coastline centered around Whitby.

There are lots of little alleyways to explore.

And lots of seaside-y and fishing things to look at, like these lobster pots on the quay.

The beach is beautiful but usually quite quiet. There's a fabulous pier to walk down, and you can catch boats here to take you out fishing or for short scenic trips.

One for the textile artists amongst you. What a glorious confusion of texture and colour, washed up on the beach.

 This is the quayside with the replica Bark Endeavour. It's a 40% size scale model, but I think you can imagine the real one must have been very tiny... especially when you consider how many crew members there were, and what it would have been like to be on board her for months on end.

 The rigging on the front end.

 Tied up on the quay. 

Out at sea;  it took me ages to get the mouth of the cannon lined up with the Abbey on top of the cliff!











And finally so you can experience it for yourself, a short video I took on board. Please forgive the background noise in some places.....it was a very windy day!  (Oh, and remember, real pirates don't have to worry about chucking rubbish overboard.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF9072B3Iso