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Half a million reasons why York Minster is celebrating today

@ in History, News

Some of the cash will go to the repair of stonework in the Lady Chapel, located directly under the Minster’s Great East Window. Photograph: Richard McDougall

The work to maintain one of the world’s most spectacular buildings never stops.

Just months after the newly renovated east front of York Minster was revealed, the great cathedral has been awarded £500,000 for the next tranche of conservation.

The Minster has been given the money by the First World War Centenary Repairs Fund. It will be spent on the next great phase of repair and restoration already underway at York Minster: the 11 bays of the Quire Aisle on the south side of the cathedral.

Funds will also be directed to the repair of stonework in the Lady Chapel, located directly under the Minster’s Great East Window.

The York Minster quire. Photograph: Allan Harris on Flickr
The York Minster quire. Photograph: Allan Harris on Flickr

The Dean of York, the Very Reverend Vivienne Faull, welcomed the grant. She said:

Cathedrals continue to have a vitally important role in the lives of communities across the country.

People come for worship, contemplation and sanctuary, to experience the most exquisite architecture and to sense and measure the immense histories of these buildings against our finite existence.

This funding acknowledges a shared national responsibility to ensure that our cathedrals will endure for future generations. I am grateful to the First World War Centenary Repairs Fund for continuing to provide this critically important financial support.

In 2014 and 2015 the First World War Centenary Repairs Fund awarded a total of £300,000 to York Minster for repairs to the stonework and roof of the Camera Cantorum – a two storey structure dating from 1415, which today houses the Minster shop and provides rehearsal space for the Minster’s choristers.

Generations of choristers have been trained in the Camera Cantorum including twelve former choristers and an Alto songman who were all killed on active service in the First World War.