Location York

THIS volume is the first of a series it is proposed to publish on the Arts and Crafts in York.

This volume is directed towards the art of the sculptor and illustrates the changes in style and taste during the years it covers. It is only to be expected that the more important people connected with York should be buried in the Minster, and here we find the memorials of the Archbishops, Deans and dignitaries of the Church. Before the Council of the North was abolished by the Long Parliament, its officials were important people in York, and some of them are commemorated here. Again, we have monuments to the aristocracy of the County, like those to the Wentworths and Lady Mary Fenwick.

The civic dignitaries, Lord Mayors, Aldermen and Sheriffs, were usually buried in the numerous Parish Churches, which contain many interesting memorials up to the period, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when interment in churches ceased. They show us the development of the art of sculpture as practised in England over seven centuries. There are five distinct periods; we have Gothic memorials with Purbeck marble effigies, like the one to Archbishop Gray in the fourteenth century, followed by a series of Tudor or early seventeenth century wall monuments, with coloured alabaster figures. After these came the Caroline and Georgian periods, when imported marbles came into use. The Gothic Revival followed the Oxford Movement, which is again outmoded, modern taste having come back towards the simpler Georgian style.

There is considerable variety of form-the canopied tombs, such as those of Archbishop Gray and Dean Duncombe, box tombs with and without effigies, mural tablets, and stone slabs ; and an equal variety of materials-Purbeck marble, alabaster, white and coloured marble, and freestone.

The statues on the memorials, which are recumbent in the Gothic period, are shown on their knees in the Tudor and Jacobean tombs, rising to their feet in the Georgian.

The notebooks of Nicholas Stone, which fortunately have been preserved and published by the Walpole Society, tell us that he was responsible for both the Anne Bennett and Belassis monuments in the Minster, and give the prices he charged for them. Gibbons's receipt in the Bodleian Library establishes the fact that Archbishop Lamplugh's monument was carved by Grinling Gibbons.

Bird's authorship of the monument to Archbishop Sharp was found by Mrs. Esdaile in the MS. of Le Neve's Monumenta Anglicana in the British Museum, and her knowledge and scholarship has enabled the work of some of the London sculptors to be recognised in the York monuments.

When no authorship is known, and the style differs from that of contemporary London sculptors, the work is probably by a local man ; examples of which are those to Archbishop Hutton, Dr. Swinburne and Sir Thomas Ingram.