Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of York / A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Archi-Episcopal See

by A. Clutton-Brock

After the fire in 1829 it was proposed to remove it, and one is almost tempted to regret that it was not removed. The nave at York would be enormously improved by a closer connection with the choir. Under any circumstances the nave must be somewhat cold and ineffective; it would be far less so if the eye could pass with scarcely a break into the sumptuous choir. The naves of English cathedrals are too apt to look like splendid museums rather than places of worship, and this is peculiarly the case with the nave at York. Doctor Milner has stated, though apparently without authority, that this screen was taken from the Abbey Church of St. Mary, close to the cathedral. It is difficult to understand how it could have fitted so much narrower a building.

The choir itself, with the retro-choir or Lady Chapel, is divided into nine bays. It is considerably the largest and loftiest in England, beingover 100 feet high and 99 wide. The altar is three bays from the east end, and one bay west of the altar are the eastern transepts. The choir was begun at the east end in 1361, and finished in 1405. There are differences between the earlier work east and the later work west of the transepts, which will be pointed out, though the plan of both is the same.

The plan, allowing for differences in detail caused by the change of style, is very like that of the nave. It is, therefore, an interesting example of a Perpendicular building carried out on the lines of an earlier Decorated design. When the east end of the choir was begun (1361) the Gothic style was fast reaching its fullest development in England. The nave of Winchester, a contemporary building, is the finest example of that development. There, as has been pointed out, the vertical division made by the vaulting shafts and the mouldings on each side of them becomes the most important feature in the design. The window tracery is planned merely as a frame for glass, and not as a design interesting in itself. Decoration supplied in earlier work by carved foliage, deep and various mouldings, and elaborate tracery, gives way to a system of lines emphasising construction as completely as possible. The contrasts between masses of ornament and blank walls, which play so great a part in earlier Gothic, disappear; and the only contrast is between the orderly lines of the stone and the kaleidoscopic decoration of the windows. Architecture loses much of its fancy and its delicacy, but becomes more logical, more reasonable, and more organic.

In the choir of the minster this change is only half carried out. There is a much greater emphasis of line than in the nave, and there is less delicacy of detail; but the vaulting shafts are no more important, and the window tracery still plays a considerable part in the design. Hence the choir lacks that air of decision, that extreme lucidity, to be found in the design of the nave at Winchester. If it were not for the choir furniture, the stalls, the throne and pulpit, and the altar, this want of decision in the design would be much more evident than it is. But the builders of this choir are not therefore to be blamed. They designed it as a choir, counting, no doubt, on the effect of the furniture, and as a choir it must be judged. It might have been expected, perhaps, that a building designed on the lines of the nave, but without the beauty of detail of an earlier age, would show all the faults of that nave and few of its beauties. But this is not the case. The architects were certainly most skilful; they had the immense advantage of seeing the design of the nave actually carried out, they understood its faults, and by a few dexterous alterations they produced a "fair copy" of it, avoiding most of those faults, and keeping all its structural merits.

As in the nave, the triforium is merely the continuation of the clerestory, the proportions, of the western bays at least, are almost the same as those of the nave, and the whole is covered again with a wooden vault, plastered and ribbed to look like stone; and yet that air of leanness, flatness, and emptiness, the chief fault of the nave, is almost entirely avoided.

A comparison of the differences in the two designs, and a demonstration of the small means by which the success of the later one is produced, must be both interesting and instructive, but, to be fully carried out, it would require more space than can be given in this book. We must confine ourselves, therefore, to pointing out some of the more obvious changes.