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York

York has been around since Roman times, when it was one of the principal settlements in Britain. Constantine the Great was declared emperor there in 306, following the death of his father Constantius I during a visit to the city.

With the Romans were gone, York was an obvious attraction for invaders and it became a Viking stronghold in 866 for almost a century until the floridly named Eirik Bloodaxe was ousted by forces from southern England.

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York

Taking the train for a change, we spent a pleasant day out in the ancient city of York

 

York was barely out of the headlines thereafter in English history, excepting a temporary lull in influence under the Tudors. A great deal of this rich history is still visible today.

The museum from hell (about hell)

York Dungeon stinks, quite literally. As one of those hard-to-categorise hybrids twixt a museum and an “experience”, it revels in the synthesised stench of a plague-plagued, understreet netherworld in which the benighted denizens are members of only two groups: the persecuted and the persecutors.

With delightful tales of buboes, strappado and pilliwinks, a gaggle of young actors – some playing multiple roles, presumably because of the Bank Holiday – characterised bystanders in a colourful history of incarceration, inequality, disease and death.

It beggars belief how the next generation of Hamlets and Ladies Macbeth can tolerate such long hours sans daylight and the authentic-unwashed period costumes without throwing up their arms and crying out a tragic, despairing “what’s my motivation here?”

Somewhat luckier, we the paying customers emerged after 90 minutes with all limbs still attached, pained by sudden sunlight, dying for the loo, killing for a pint.

York Minster

The Minster is the spiritual symbolic office of the Archbishop of York, who also carries the curious title of Primate of England. The present incumbent, funnily enough not a gorilla or chimpanzee, is the thoroughly modern cleric John Sentamu.

York Minster is properly a cathedral in the Gothic style, with architectural roots in the early thirteenth century. It is the second largest of its type in Europe (narrowly surpassed by the stunning cathedral at Köln) and is considered particularly innovative in its details.

In 1984, a couple of weeks after I had turned five years old, the Minster caught fire. I have dim memories of the news footage: an indigo night sky and the flames engulfing the roof of the South Transept.

The damage was substantial and thought to have been caused by lightning. It cost £2.25m and an unprecedentedly grand Blue Peter competition to repair it.