York Minster
Cathie was feeling good enough today to go to the other big attraction in York, the cathedral, York Minster.
I got tickets for the first tourist visit period on a Sunday at 1 PM. This was fine as it gave Cathie more time in the morning. I decided to go out again and visit the local art gallery, which was having a special Monet Water Lilies exhibit.
It was a fairly modest exhibit, with only one waterlily painting, but a series of paintings by other artists preceding Monet's work and who inspired him.
The one waterlily painting was a nice one, with the arched bridge over the waterlilies. It was also an early one before Monet's vision started failing and his paintings became looser and more impressionistic. This was fine with me as I think this is one of his best.
They had a whole room full of ceramic works by local artists, which was nice to see. Often local art galleries are full of old paintings by second-rate artists, not bad work but not interesting after you've seen the better works in other museums.
Then it was off to York Minster.
It is a large cathedral with a long and interesting history.
The first church at this location was a small wooden structure built in 627. This was soon replaced by a larger stone structure that survived the Viking invasion in 866. But not the Norman invasion of 1066. Northern England had resisted the Normans and they burned the church during the "Harrying of the North.
Between 1088 and 1100 the Normans build a new cross-shaped church in the Romanesque style. By 1225 they decided it was inadequate and started work on what would become the current Gothic structure. But like many Gothic churches it took hundreds of years to reach it's final configuration in 1472! But work was not done. In 1829 and 1840 fires destroyed the roof requiring major work. In 1967 it was found that the central tower was cracking and in danger of collapse due to a poor foundation. An extensive project was undertaken to excavate down to the foundations and reinforce them. In the process they dug through remainders of the earlier churches and the headquarters building of the roman fort.
With the tower on firm foundations things were now in good shape, until lightening struck the transept roof in 1984 burning a large section of the roof and only just avoiding burning the whole thing.
Note: I don't remember that at all. I was there with my parents in 1993, was it not mentioned or was I oblivious?
In any case it's now in good condition which means continued maintenance as might be expected on any 800-year-old building. It's clear that the maintenance has included cleaning of all the stonework inside, so it's much brighter than many churches this old. \
An interesting note is that the ceiling vaults are wood painted to look like stone. This is much lighter and less expensive than that stone vaulting. One could argue that it makes it more susceptible to fire, but as we saw in Notre Dame, the roof structure above can burn and bring down the stone vaulting, so I'm not sure that's a better plan.
One section of transept roof has not been painted so the wooden structure is evident.
Down below the floor in the excavations for the repair work the bases of the older Norman columns can be seen.
The stained glass windows are large, but to me they largely fail in their instructive purpose. The images are so small and cluttered that they are really not comprehensible to me.
Off to the left side is a beautiful octagonal chapter house. Despite it having a large dome it's been the most stable part of the building.
After finishing with York Minster we went for lunch at The Fat Badger, a local pub. With the badger being the mascot for U of Wisc teams, we didn't feel we could pass up a fellow badger. although this badger looked a little older than the UW fighting badger.
We had a good lunch of pig's head and pea ravioli. It was much better than it sounds. The pigs head was a pulled pork patty on slaw.
So much nicer than a pig's head on the table. I guess you could name it better, but Pulled Pig's Head is probably not an improvement.
The ravioli was a nice fresh-tasting spring dish.
Tomorrow we pick up a rental car and drive to the village of Settle in the Yorkshire Dales for 5 nights. We plan to do a mix of driving sightseeing and hiking (more hiking for me that foCathie.)
