St Martin’s Church, Coney Street, York

The church of St Martin, Coney Street (otherwise known as St Martin-le-Grand) is a familiar and much-loved York landmark because of its overhanging clock surmounted by the figure known as the “Little Admiral”.

The actual clock is mounted in the tower, and the hands are turned by a drive-shaft that runs the length of the building.

The clock, the dials and the Little Admiral were restored in order to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the “Baedeker” blitz which gutted the church and the Guildhall nearby, along with the railway station and the Bar Convent, and killed some 79 people on the night of April 28th-29th 1942.

St Martin’s is a mid-fourteenth century rebuilding of an earlier building, and it traditionally gained prestige from its proximity to the Guildhall and the Mansion House.

After the War, the decision was taken to rebuild only the south aisle of the gutted church, keeping the rest of the shell as a memorial garden.

The outstanding restoration was carried out by George G Pace (1915-1975) between 1961 and 1968, and the church was rededicated as “a shrine of remembrance for all who died in the two world wars, a chapel of peace and reconciliation between nations and between men”.

The stained glass of 1437, which had been removed from the west window before the bombing, was installed in the new north transept:  it depicts the life of St Martin.

The east window, in contrast, dates from c1965 and shows the night of the bombing.  It was designed by the artist Harry Stammers (1902-1969), instigator of the York School of Glaziers after the Second World War.

There is a well-illustrated description of the building at http://www.yorkstories.co.uk/churches/st_martin_le_grand_york.php and a detailed history of St Martin’s and its sister church, St Helen Stonegate, at St Helen with St Martin, York | Brief history of St Martin (sthelenwithstmartinyork.org.uk)

There are oral testimonies of the Baedeker Blitz in York at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-17872823.

The parish has a ministry of peace and reconciliation, affirmed by the coincidence that the feast day of St Martin is November 11th.

The 44-page, A4 handbook for the 2009 Historic York tour, with text, photographs, and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  To view sample pages click here. To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

All Saints’ Church, Pavement, York

York has churches to spare.  There were forty-five of them in 1300.  Nineteen of these still stand, though only eight are used for worship.

They’re worth seeking out, because most have hidden treasures, and many have been so much altered that they are fascinating archaeological jigsaws.

Perhaps the most distinctive is All Saints’, Pavement, which stands higher than the surrounding streets, directly aligned on the Ouse Bridge.  Its lantern tower was an inland lighthouse, guiding travellers through the Forest of Galtres towards the city.  Now it’s lit as a war memorial.

Though the present building dates from the fourteenth century, the site has been used for worship for much longer – possibly back to the time of St Cuthbert c685 AD.  There was certainly a church in existence by the time of Domesday Book (1086).

This was an imposing cruciform church, with transepts and an aisled chancel, until the east end was demolished for road-widening in 1782.

It now contains the 1634 pulpit from which John Wesley once preached, as well as the fifteenth-century lectern and the 1688 Royal Arms from the nearby lost church of St Crux, which became structurally unsound and was demolished in the 1880s [http://allsaintschurchpavementyork.co.uk/StCrux.aspx].

The stained glass ranges in date from the fourteenth-century west window (transferred from the church of St Saviour), to four Victorian windows by Charles Kempe and a modern addition of 2002.

All Saints’ is the Guild and Civic church, with a ministry for the shops and businesses of the city-centre, and the regimental church of the Royal Dragoon Guards.

The parish clergy and congregation take pride in welcoming visitors.  There is a website at http://allsaintschurchpavementyork.co.uk/default.aspx, but it’s not necessarily up to date:  current services are posted at http://www.achurchnearyou.com/venue.php?V=18961.

There’s a positive “mystery worshipper” report at http://ship-of-fools.com/mystery/2009/1686.html.  The choir and the chocolate biscuits are particularly commended.

The 44-page, A4 handbook for the 2009 Historic York tour, with text, photographs, and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  To view sample pages click here. To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

York Minster (1979)

York Minster is a symphony in stone – Tadcaster stone, actually.  The great church dominates the city from a distance and when you glimpse it through the streetscape.  It tells you where you are as you walk round the city walls, and it tells you where you’ve arrived when you pass north on the train.

The Yorkshire:  York and the East Riding volume of Pevsner’s Buildings of England comments, “it tells us a more consistent and complete story of the Gothic styles in England than any other cathedral”.

Throughout what we now call the Middle Ages it was a building site, rebuilt not once but twice between c1230 and c1472.  That’s as if we were now to see the completion of a building begun the year Captain Cook discovered Australia.

It’s likely that its builders at some point intended it to be bigger and even more dominant than it is.

Misjudgements in rebuilding work in 1407 caused the collapse of the central tower, which contained a belfry.

The replacement central tower is an oddity.  It’s only two feet higher, at 198 feet, than the western towers, which were built in the same period (south-west, 1432-56; north-west, 1470-4).

It has an oddly truncated appearance, abruptly cut off above the great windows which light the crossing within.

It seems unlikely that this huge structure would have been built simply to act as an empty lantern, but it’s never had a belfry:  the Minster’s bells have hung in the south-west tower ever since it was built.

Perhaps the fifteenth-century builders got nervous about the foundations, and decided that a peal of bells swinging around two hundred feet up might not be a good idea.

If so, their judgement was sound, as became clear in the mid-twentieth century when active settlement around the central crossing required a vast stabilisation programme, directed by Dr Bernard Feilden, between 1967 and 1972.

Huge medieval spires had a poor track-record.  Lincoln Cathedral used to be the tallest building in the world:  it had a 524-foot spire until it blew down in a storm in 1549.  The 493-foot spire of London’s Old St Paul’s Cathedral was destroyed by lightning in 1561.

It’s interesting to gaze at York Minster from a distance and visualise it with a taller central tower and perhaps a spire.  Even if they had been built it’s unlikely they would have lasted.

As with Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony”, we must be grateful for what we have.

Tourists are charged admission to York Minster [see http://www.yorkminster.org/visiting/opening-times-prices/], with the customary concession that you can enter free of charge to pray or light a candle.

The 44-page, A4 handbook for the 2009 Historic York tour, with text, photographs, and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  To view sample pages click here. To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.