The Minster has the most medieval glass in Britain. This church, ten minutes’ walk away and free, has the most readable. The nave is 12th century, the arcades 13th, the east end and chancel chapels 14th, and into it were fitted about ten medieval windows, three of which are among the best-known pieces of parish glazing in England.
The Pricke of Conscience window (c. 1410, north aisle) illustrates the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday, taken from the Middle English poem of the same name, with the relevant verses lettered into the panels beneath each scene. Read upward: the sea rises above the mountains and then sinks, fish howl, the buildings fall, the stones grind against each other, the dead climb out of their graves, and finally everything burns. It is believed to be the only depiction of that poem anywhere in stained glass, and it is the closest thing in York to seeing directly into a medieval head.
The Corporal Acts of Mercy window (also c. 1410, north aisle) is the counterweight and, for our money, the more useful one. Six of the seven acts of mercy — feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the stranger, visiting the sick, visiting the prisoner — are shown being carried out by a prosperous York man in the ordinary clothes of about 1410. The donors were the Blackburn family, York merchants. It is a documentary photograph of what people in this city actually wore, sat on and ate off. The third to find is the Nine Orders of Angels (c. 1460).
At the west end is the anchorhold: a cell built in the 15th century, with a squint cut so that the anchoress Emma Raughton could see and hear Mass without leaving it. The present structure was rebuilt in 1910 by E. Ridsdale Tate, and from the early 1930s until the 1970s Brother Walter Wilman lived in the 8 ft by 10 ft cell as anchorite and sacristan of the church. Anchorites are usually a thing you read about; here is one of the very few places in England where the room is still standing and still identified.
Two practical points. The panels are small and set high, so a pair of binoculars turns this from a pleasant twenty minutes into the best hour of your trip. And this is a working Anglo-Catholic shrine church, not a museum: there will be candles, incense and a Mass schedule, and services take priority over sightseeing.
One warning about the name. The lantern tower with the lamp that guided travellers in through the Forest of Galtres belongs to All Saints Pavement, a different York church on the other side of the river. Do not walk to the wrong one.
