The Minster is Seat of the northern archdiocese of York and “home” to the archbishop, now the popular Rt. Rev. Dr. John Sentamu. The magnificent Great East Window, created from 1404 to 1408 and the size of a tennis court, is the largest stretch of medieval stained glass in the world. A full-size print of the window currently hangs in front of it while the 15th-century panes are being restored in a major two-year touching-up project.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in British Heritage magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

What I love best about York Minster, especially compared to many of England’s great medieval cathedrals, is its lightness. The soaring tracery and colorful ceiling bosses stand out with light from the high clerestory windows and the pale building stone.

Outside the city walls near York Station sits the National Railway Museum. It is simply the largest railway museum in the world, and it offers free admission. The huge exhibition halls house virtually everything imaginable for train buffs’ delight. From Stephenson’s 1829 Rocket to a car from the Japanese “bullet train,” if it rolled on rails, it is represented here.

The museum exhibits early passenger coaches, were really just stagecoach bodies mounted on a rail undercarriage, and The Mallard, which holds the world’s record as the fastest steam locomotive ever (125 mph). A featured exhibit highlights The Flying Scotsman, the famous express service between London and Edinburgh begun in 1862. The daily 10 a.m. express from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh is still officially The Flying Scotsman. The journey took 101⁄2 hours in 1862; today it can be done in just over four.

Among the most popular exhibits is the collection of “Royal trains,” which have carried the country’s monarchs all over the island. The plush carriages of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII are just fun to see.

As if one world-class museum were not enough for York, across the river, behind Clifford’s Tower, is the Castle Museum. One of the greatest folk museums anywhere, the Castle is a veritable warren of eclectic galleries depicting York and Yorkshire’s populist past. Following the natural trail of galleries leads first to period rooms, furnished as they would be in successive periods of history. A Moorland Cottage of the 1850s, for instance, represents the family living area of a rural cottage of the northeast of Yorkshire. We also see the living room of a typical home in the 1950s—celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.

After galleries displaying domestic appliances through the decades, we emerge onto Kirkgate, a complete Victorian High Street of about the 1870s.

Caroline Richardson, in costume as a clerk in a shabby neighborhood shop, chatted with me about the realities of retail for the Victorian masses. “There would have been rats and vermin,” she advised. “In the posh shops, these canisters would be full of tea and things like that. Here we sell tea dust. Here, people get things like rice and tapioca, all your dry goods.” Richardson comes in to the museum on call to play her role. Meeting the people, especially the school children who visit Kirkgate, is “great, just great,” she enthuses.

But we’ve got to keep going. There is still a greatly touted Museum of Costume, galleries on the Civil War and more. The newest exhibition gallery in the Castle is devoted to the Sixties. It does seem so dated now to look back at the fashion, music, home décor, pop art and themes of those colorful, hurly-burly years.

The trail leads unblinkingly from the Sixties to the old debtors prison, where the old cells are now craftsmen’s workshops: the gunsmith, the cobbler, the brushmaker and such. Besides debtors, the prison held felons, and, in 1746, Jacobite captives after the Battle of Culloden. A lot of them were hanged here. Chartists and Luddites were imprisoned here as well. Somehow we end up in the cell of the famous highwayman Dick Turpin. They hanged him, too.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to