Location York

WE next witness a transformation which profoundly affected our churches. Georgian art gave way before the Oxford Movement, which looked on it as pagan, and the eighteenth-century art was despised. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Gothic revival was in full spate. The urns and caskets, the palm and olive branches disappear, replaced by the crocketed arch pinnacles, and the highly decorated surface. The memorials in the Parish Churches become less frequent, and are no longer met with after interment ceased inside the church. The Minster contains the finest examples of this period, with three fine memorials to Archbishops. The earliest of this series is that to Dorothy Langley, d. 1824, in the Minster (right), which dates from the early part of the century. There is a typical example in St. Helen's of James Atkinson, d. 1839 (below), architect.

The box tomb of William Etty, d. 1849 (below), in St. Olaf's Churchyard, is more interesting because of the painter it commemorates than the memorial itself.

The same can be said of that to William Mason, d. 1797, and his nephew, Henry Dixon, d. 1854, in the Minster (below). It is a highly decorated design by G. G. Scott, made of brass, of which it might be said-it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. 

The Minster contains a fine recumbent figure of Dr. Beckwith, d. 1843 (below), by Leyland, a Halifax sculptor.

There are very similar ones of Archbishop Harcourt, d. 1847 (below left), and Archbishop Musgrave, d. 1860 (below right), both of which are by Matthew Noble, a native of Hackness in Yorkshire, who was trained in London under J. Francis.

The recumbent effigy of Dean Duncombe, d. 1880 (below left), is by Sir Edgar Boehm, the elaborate Gothic canopy by Street. It is surpassed by that to Archbishop Thomson, d. 1890 (below right)-a composite work-the recumbent figure being by Sir W. H. Thorneycroft, R.A., the tabernacle work by G. F. Bodley. R. A.

A large number of small mural tablets have been erected in the Minster in the present century, departing from the Gothic tradition, skilful use being made of coloured marble and alabaster, free from Gothic ornament.

There are a number of War Memorials in the Minster-one of the most interesting is that to Admiral Cradock, by F. W. Pomeroy, A.R.A. The marble bust of the Admiral has an alabaster background.

Of the two tablets to the K.O.Y.L.I., the earlier one to those who fell in the Boer War, by C. F. A. Voysey (below left), is in the Gothic tradition; the more successful one to the 6th Battalion, with the figure of St. Michael in bronze by Miss Fortescue Brickdale (below right), has discarded it, and a classical background takes its place.

There are four large memorials in the City; two of them commemorate those who fell in the Boer War, and two are in memory of those who laid down their lives for their Country in the Great War 1914-18. They show the same change in taste from the Gothic design by G. F. Bodley, R.A., in Dunscombe Place (below left), to the memorial of the railwaymen who fell in the Great War, by Sir E. Lutyens, R.A. (below right), the obelisk, the urn and swag taking the place of the elaborate crocketed pinnacle and the Cross (below below left).