York Guides

The twelfth-century presbytery was aisleless, square-ended, and only two bays long, following Cistercian practice in all these things. The line of its foundations and those of the inner transept chapels, all destroyed during the thirteenth-century rebuilding, are indicated by markers set in the turf.

The thirteenth-century presbytery, started by Abbot John of York, continued by Abbot John of Hessle, and completed by Abbot John of Kent, all between 1203 and 1247, is five bays long and has north and south aisles that absorb the sites of the old inner chapels of the transepts. The main arcades and the walls they supported have gone entirely; in all probability they were severely damaged when the crossing arches collapsed after the dissolution, and their debris was removed when Aislabic tidied up this part of the church in the eighteenth century. The eastern responds of the arcade and the surviving south-west respond, together with fragments found on the site, show that the piers were alternately octagonal and clustered, the latter having a diamond-shaped freestone core with substantial attached shafts at the angles and four more slender detached shafts to the diagonals.

The aisle walls stand almost to their full height, their lancet windows in each bay flanked by curious ramping arches designed to fit beneath the curve of the vaults. There are slight differences in the external design of the aisles. On the north side the external buttresses ended in steep-pitched gablets and there was a gable over the window in each bay. On the south the buttresses had pinnacles and the walls had a horizontal parapet and corbel table. On both sides there were once flying buttresses crossing the aisles to support the stone vault of the main span of the presbytery.

Little is left of the ritual arrangements of the presbytery. Like the choir, it was enclosed by stone screen walls along the line of the piers, returned across its east end as an open arcade on triple shafts supporting a gallery. In the west bay, between the first pair of piers, arc the two presbytery steps with stone treads rebated to take a tiled floor; they are at present temporarily covered for protection. On the north side of the third bay there is a stone coffin, probably of an important benefactor. In the easternmost bay a tiled platform of two steps represents the site of the high altar. In its present position and form it is probably eighteenth-century work of Aislabie's time, but it is made up of thirteenth-century mosaic tiles from the pavement that Abbot John of Kent laid in this part of the church.