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BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON
HISTORIC CHURCHES
22
ND ANNUAL EDITION
11
THE GREAT EAST WINDOW
OF YORK MINSTER
Andrew Arrol and Sarah Brown
T
HE REPAIR of York
Minster’s Great East
Window was a key
part of a larger programme
of repair and conservation
to the Minster’s east front,
which commenced in 2006.
It was completed under the
subsequent York Minster
Revealed project, which
received generous HLF
funding of £10 million.
The cost of fabric repair
(masonry and glass)
amounted to approximately
half of the overall
£20 million project cost.
York Minster Revealed
was a five year project,
allowing sufficient time for the
remainder of the east front
masonry to be repaired and
conserved and for the Great
East Window glass (and the
windows of the adjoining
fenestration) to be removed,
conserved and then reinstated
incorporating a new protective
glazing system. Other parts
of the project focussed on
improving visitor facilities,
creating a new below-ground
exhibition space in the undercroft
and forming a new approach piazza
outside the south side of the Minster.
THE GLAZING
The Great East Window of York Minster,
made between 1405 and 1408, is the
largest expanse of medieval stained glass
in England and one of the most ambitious
glazing projects ever undertaken.
Depicting the beginning and the end of
the Christian cosmos, from the Creation
in the Book of Genesis to the Apocalypse
and the Second Coming of Christ, it
summarises the medieval perception
of human history, which unfolds under
the feet of God the Father (top) and the
company of heaven.
While the Apocalypse had been a
popular subject in illuminated
manuscripts, to depict it
in glass and on this scale
was extremely daring. The
Chapter of York looked
outside the city for someone
with design abilities and
entrepreneurial skills equal
to the task and in 1405
contracted with the Coventry
glazier John Thornton. While
Thornton was required
to paint only some of the
glass himself, the contract
stipulated that he was
to ‘cartoon’ every single
one of over 300 panels
entirely with his own hand
which, in the Middle Ages,
meant marking up full-size
working drawings on the
whitened glazier’s table.
The complexity of the
Apocalypse subject matter,
in which each scene is a
unique narrative, made this
a particularly challenging
undertaking, and while recent
research by Professor Nigel
Morgan has demonstrated
Thornton’s familiarity
with other Apocalypse
imagery, the window is characterised
by the originality and freshness of
Thornton’s approach to the subject.
CONSERVATION CHALLENGES
The window was last restored between
1946 and 1953 under the direction of
Dean Eric Milner-White. With scant
regard for the efforts of earlier restorers,
Milner-White set about reordering glass
within individual panels, removing many
earlier restoration insertions.
Inadequate art historical research
meant that some scenes were
misidentified so that they were incorrectly
restored ( see illustrations of Panel 5b,
overleaf) and returned to the window
in the wrong location. The many holes
opened up by the removal of 18th- and
General view of the Great East Window and
the east front of York Minster
God the Father from the apex of the Great East Window