“The second window appears to have been largely restored. The tabernacle work is very crude in colour. It contains figures of St. Laurence, St. Christopher, another saint, and three coats-of-arms below. The top lights are fine, and perhaps of Perpendicular date.
“The third window is one of the richest in colour in the minster, with its gorgeous arrangement of crimsons, greens and blues. There are inscriptions by Peckett, with the date at the bottom, 1789. His deep blues on the top lights are particularly unfortunate.
“The sixth window is also very bright. It probably contains Norman fragments. All the windows except the fifth contain insertions by Peckett.
“The clerestory window contains fragments and coats-of-arms.
“In the westernmost light of the second window from the west, on the north side, are portions of an Early English Jesse window. The wheel of this window, and those of the next five, also contain fragments of Early English glass. And in the lower lights of the fifth and seventh windows from the west are remains of the same date.
“The wheels in the clerestory windows on the south side of the nave all contain Early English glass, except the third from the west. There is also some Early English glass in their lower lights.
“The aisles of the nave are bolder in design and altogether more satisfactory than the nave itself. Like the nave they are unusually wide and lofty. In the two farthest bays to the west, above which are the western towers, the rough wooden roof, which has never been covered with a vault, may be seen. The vault of the aisles is of stone, with only structural ribs, finely moulded and with carved bosses. The aisle windows are, like those of the clerestory, of the geometrical Decorated Style, but of an earlier and simpler, uniform design. They each contain three lights. Above the three lights are three quatrefoils, pyramidally arranged.”—(A. C.-B.)
The second window from the east in the north aisle of the nave is said to have been given by a guild of bell-founders, or by Richard Tunnoc (died 1330), Lord Mayor of York. Tunnoc appears in the design kneeling before the Archbishop and around the picture of the casting of a bell is the legend “Richard Tunnoc me fist.” Above Tunnoc is a window. Bells appear in the border of the glass.
The window at the west end of the north-aisle of the nave is also very fine. It represents the Virgin and Child and St. Catherine with her wheel. In the west window of the south-aisle of the nave the subject is the Crucifixion. The head of Christ is supposed to be of the Eighteenth Century.
The choir-aisles are very similar to those of the nave. They have stone vaults and their windows are very beautiful. They have been described as representing “a design of which the tracery is arrested half-way in its process of stiffening from the curved lines of the Decorated style to the straight of the Perpendicular.” Each window is divided into three lights, each ending in an obtuse arch. Above these are three other arches and above them again two quatrefoils, and above them a sexfoiled opening.