York Highlights

Did you know that York was once comparable to London in wealth and power? Well, neither did we until we took a free tour of the city with a dapper old man as our volunteer guide.

We saw old Roman walls, tombs, the first established hospital, an abbey, and more walls.

Then we visited York Minster. There are really no words to describe the size, decoration, history, and intricacy found there. Just look at the pictures and you can imagine our feelings.

There is scaffolding surrounding the Great East window, which is as large as a tennis court. They have taken out the window and are essentially fixing it. The pieces in each pane were held together with lead, and later cracks and breaks were also pieced back together with lead. All this lead has begun to darken and distort the original picture. So, they are taking the panes apart and putting them back together with glue, instead of lead, which will actually enhance the scenes depicted. If there are pieces that are missing or need to be added once the lead piping is removed, the artist working on it actually can put their name and date on the pieced. Once all the panes are fixed, they will place a sheet of glass over the entire window to keep the panes stable and hopefully, intact for a long time to come.

Next, we visited the York Castle Museum. Our favorite parts were the Birth to Death exhibit, the Victorian Street and the dungeons. The Birth to Life exhibit started with accounts of childbirth (it is estimated that a women spent 1/3 of her life either pregnant or with small children), christening gowns, the views of marriage (with book titles such as How to be Happy Though Married and How to Master a Wife), and coffins, funerals, and appropriate mourning clothes. The Victorian Street is an actual re-created street complete with shops, a school, and a horse and buggy.

The Castle museum used to be York's jail (mostly for debtors in those times). So the dungeon exhibit was very realistic and well done. The cells had projected videos of actors and actresses portraying actual prisoners and their stories. It was a little eerie to duck into a cell and see an inmate telling their story, from the highway man to a woman falsely accused of murdering her husband.

Finally, we went to the Railway Museum. It had Royal train cars, steam engine trains, coal engine trains, a replica of the Silver Bullet, and the Flying Scotsman. It was overwhelming how many actual trains they had in one museum... How did they even get them in there?

And I would be remiss in leaving out all the silly moments in these places.