The
group woke at six this morning to walk the Wall and explore the town. I did
not, which turned out okay since the Wall doesn’t open until eight. The plan
was to explore first the Jorvik Viking center (the most Disney-ish place in
York) and then see where the day would take us. I wasn’t interested in a cart
ride through ancient York or the associated smells (they had preserved human
feces for your olfactory pleasure!) so I wandered a bit and found a notepad.
After that I regrouped with Mom and we explored the Yorkshire Museum together.
There was some neat Roman history and then a new exhibit on the Vikings running
this summer: after it finishes up here it’ll go on tour (it’s part of a
partnership with the British Museum). I liked the Viking stuff but I missed out
on all the Richard III history that was here last time. Ah well, the Vikings
were more interesting than one poor sod who ended up buried in a car park,
amirite?
One
fascinating thing was a room on William ‘Strata’ Smith, the Father of English
Geology. He spent his life collecting information on the various types of rocks
found in and around England (while doing other jobs like surveying) and
eventually published a whole book of maps and cross sections and whatnot. It’s
gorgeous, they had one of the 200-ish remaining copies of his book and we could
look at a page (it was in this case covered in velvet unless it was being
viewed, and then you flipped the cover back over when you were done). It was
beautiful.
After
the museum, we hopped in on a free walking tour of York and got to learn about
the city’s Roman, Viking, Norman, and more recent history. For example, Whitby
jet is a popular stone from here, although it’s not stone so much as petrified
wood. Specifically wood from the monkey puzzle tree, which grew here quite a
bit when the weather was warmer millions of years ago.
Monkey puzzle tree! Don’t
see so many of them here these days…
Then
we hit the Roman history with the multangular tower (a big almost round tower
with several chamfers cut out of it, the corner of the old Roman fort at
Eboracum). We learned about wall construction techniques, such as the band of
red bricks that were used to increase the wall’s structural integrity. We
skipped ahead to the end of the Middle Ages with St Mary’s Abbey across the
garden, which was destroyed by Henry VIII in the dissolution of the
monasteries. Apparently he yanked one wall down, took all the stone and whatnot
he needed, and then let York have the rest. A pretty good way to ingratiate yourself
with the town while you knock down your places of worship.
Most of the remains of the
abbey is this one wall of the…quire?
One of the four main
columns that held up the central tower of the abbey. This thing was about the
same size as the Minster (more on that tomorrow!)
After
we finished up feeling sad about destruction, we went through the backyard of
the York art museum, which was running an exhibition of minigolf courses that
local artists had designed. My favorite was the Bridges of Koenigsberg.
The card reads “Please
note there is no score for this hole as it is unsolvable.”
We
walked the wall from Bootham Bar to Monk Bar (bar in this case meaning gate)
and ended up at the Shambles, learning along the way about Trinity Church (one
of the old churches in town, one of very few anywhere that has the box pew
setup, where instead of a line of pews all facing the altar, each family gets a
box with benches facing in; the head of the family got the seat facing the
altar, and the lowest-ranked member had to sit facing backwards away from the
sermon) and the Minster. They’re still working at the restoration they were
doing last time I saw it, but they’ve finished the east side (although they’re
still finishing up the window).
You can see all the
lighter colored stones from the restoration mixed in with the old ones.
After
that we had dinner and finally rested for the night. Tomorrow, the Minster,
Fountains Abbey, and off to deep Yorkshire!
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