York Guides

Foreword

Written by yorkguides.co.uk

FOR two centuries the beauty of York has been by English painters regarded as a classic theme for pencil and brush; but the full wealth and range of its artistic treasure are scarcely yet appreciated even by its own inhabitants. Despite its Roman remains, its mediaeval walls, bars, churches and streets (each more completely represented than in any other English city), York belongs pre-eminently to the eighteenth century, the artistic splendour of which, except in the fields of portraiture and furniture, has only recently begun to dawn on the popular consciousness. Now, just not too late, we salute it as an age of supreme craftsmanship - perhaps the last ever. In York we can make that salute in street and dwelling and church alike; and not least in its Gothic Minster. Both in the preservation of the past and in imaginativeness of outlook towards die future, Alderman Morrell has put his city deeply in his debt. His vision of the York that might be in The City of Our Dreams is a model and a mine of practical suggestion. I cannot be too grateful for the instruction and inspiration the book gave me within a few days of my coming to York in 1941. The good dreams were based on the only right foundation, a detailed knowledge of the city both extensive and intimate. This volume is proof of that. For here he unveils a treasure of mural and sculptural monuments owned by a single English city, each with its witness to English design, English craft and English life. It is only one room of the city's artistic and architectural possession, a small room, one seldom trodden and little appreciated at that. Yet it not only constitutes a revelation in its own masonic department, but suggests what volumes might be written of other departments - glasswork, woodwork, ironwork, leadwork, illumination, printing - only the first and last of which have hitherto received adequate treatment. And it has additional interest, in that it illustrates so surely and vividly, first, the changing history of taste, and, secondly, the craftmanship, in the main, of a genuine regional school. Geographically, York, in the days of slow communications, was independent of London ; politically and
socially. the capital of the North; ecclesiastically, the metropolis of a Province. All
these factors and phases, which give York its history, individuality, dignity and rightful pride, can be traced in its mural monuments; and many others besides its citizens may be grateful to Alderman Morrell for his pains and skill in concentrating
them before our eyes.
ERIC MILNER -WHITE,
Dean of York,

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