Interior of York Minster

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The interior of the cathedral is equal in every respect to the magnificence of the exterior. A vista of greater magnificence and beauty than that which is seen from the western entrance of the edifice, architecture has perhaps never produced.

The screen which separates the nave from the choir, rising only just high enough to form a support for the organ, does not intercept the view of the eastern end of the church with its columns, its arches, and its most superb windows.

The nave of the church, 250 ft. in length, 103 ft. in breadth, and 92 ft. high, and surrounded, as indeed every part of the church is, with aisles, consists of eight divisions marked by clusters of pillars.

Tracery of the richest kind appears in the windows, especially in the one which occupies so large a portion of the western front, and when the marvels of harmonized colours within these windows are illuminated by the rays of the declining sun, they cast a beautiful projection onto the floor and carved pillars that surpasses description.

The painted glass in the western window represents the portraits of the first eight archbishops and eight saints of the church, and here the arms of King Edward II. and of Ulphus, an Anglo-Saxon benefactor of the Church in early times, are sculptured.

In the elevation of the nave there are only two stories. The windows of the aisles and clerestory, the tracery in the headings of which is in the true style of Edward III.'s reign, retain nearly all the original painted glass.

The four great arches of the beautiful central tower rise the whole height of the nave; over these is the first story of the lantern tower.

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