The weather is starting to get a lot more changeable here, and we took advantage of the last warm day recently to spend a quick afternoon showing my mum around York. We never quite managed it because of the large number of tour buses, traffic, and parking challenges, but we did spend a significant amount of time at York Minster.
In England, a Minster is an honorific title given to a large or major church. The term originally referred to an Anglo-Saxon monastery served by a community of clergy rather than a single local priest. The most famous example is Westminster Abbey, but York Minster is one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in Northern Europe and is famous for its history and architecture.
Because of the cramped location, it’s difficult to get exterior photos of the Minster without weird angles, as the building’s enormity tries to fit into a single iPhone camera frame. As we walked inside, the guide told us that at it’s tallest, the entire leaning Tower of Pisa, if straightened, would fit inside the Minster.
There are two options for tickets – you can just buy the Minster tickets for a tour of the place, or you could buy Tower tickets, where you climb right to the top for views of the city. Because of mum’s mobility issues, we skipped the tower tickets.
Why is York Minster important?
York Minster isn’t just a big church on a pretty square. it’s the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Saint Peter in York, the mother church of the northern province of the Church of England and one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in Europe. The site has been a place of Christian worship since the 7th century, with the current building dating mostly from the 13th to the 15th centuries. You are stepping into thirteen hundred years of faith, politics, and everyday life etched into stone and glass.
What makes York Minster stand out is its sheer scale and its stained glass. The Great East Window is the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in Britain, and the nave is so wide that people seem to shrink inside it. It is also still a working church with daily services, a full choir, and a packed calendar, so it never feels like a frozen museum. You are visiting a living building that just happens to be jaw-droppingly beautiful.
What York Minster is actually like inside
The most beautiful part of the Minster (to me) is what they call the Chapter House. This is a non-religious extension of the main building, and here the artists were given free rein to create what they wanted, without being restricted to religious motifs.
The result is a stunning building with a high, vaulted ceiling, with huge panels of stained glass, and a beautifully tiled floor. I wish I had taken more photos of the place, but I was just so overwhelmed by it that I didn’t really capture its beauty. I also think it’s one of those places meant to be experienced rather than photographed or filmed. Still, here’s a video from Rick Steves that attempts it. I felt quite dizzy watching the video below, but that is the actual impact of the place, too. I was spinning around so much, just trying to understand what I was looking at, that “dizzy” is the right emotion.
Another super-beautiful part of the Minster is the church organ, housed atop a panel of sculptures of the various kings of England.
We were lucky enough to hear the choir singing (this is a working church, and people can enter for free for worship), and the echoes of their voices and the music were mind-blowing!
Overall, we spent about 3 hours at York Minster, which was 2 more than we expected to spend (based on our experience at Salisbury Cathedral), but it was worth it, I could have happily spent even more time there wandering the outside and seeing it from different angles.
Overall, a lovely afternoon spent. However, York is just not home to the Minster; there is a fort, an old shopping street called the Shambles (it was an inspiration for Diagon Alley in Harry Potter), and more to see.
Definitely need to plan another visit in the near future!
