How they spared York's windows for the world

IT WAS a rare propaganda slip-up by the Nazis. A careless word from an official revealed that its latest airborne offensive was not the 'retaliatory measure' Goebbels had claimed but a concerted attempt to destroy Britain's cultural treasures.
York Glaziers Trust director Sarah Brown. Picture by Simon HulmeYork Glaziers Trust director Sarah Brown. Picture by Simon Hulme
York Glaziers Trust director Sarah Brown. Picture by Simon Hulme

Exeter, Bath and Norwich had been hit already. Everyone knew that York and Canterbury would be next.

The Baedeker raids, named after the German tourist guide books from whose pages the Luftwaffe had reportedly picked its targets,set in motion a frantic race to remove the priceless stained glass from York Minster to somewhere the planes could not reach.

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Some 79 people died in April 1942 when the Nazis reached the city. Although the Guildhall and St Martin le Grand on Coney Street were damaged, the Minster was spared - but the 80 windows that had been removed in a few weeks took decades to fully restore.

Tomorrow, a select group of conservators and fundraisers will sit down to dinner in the Minster’s chapter house to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the organisation that grew out of the restoration.

The York Glaziers Trust, Britain’s oldest and biggest specialist in stained glass, was formally constituted just as the last of the wartime removals was reversed. The man who had done more than anyone to ensure its continued existence did not live to see the moment.

Eric Milner-White was a First World War veteran who had come from King’s College, Cambridge, in 1941 to be the Dean of York, and had supervised the post-war restoration.

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“He was extremely persuasive,” said Sarah Brown, the Trust’s director. “He died in 1963 but long before then he had been concerned that the expertise that was accumulating in the workshops could be dispersed and lost once the post-war work was completed.

“He was thinking ahead as to how it could be mobilised for national benefit in addition to being maintained as a resource to serve the Minster.”

The Trust that was his legacy now takes on stained glass restorations across the country, and its commissions include Beverley Minster and several Oxford colleges, as well as a canon of churches, museums and stately homes.

But it is the Minster that has been the beneficiary of its most spectacular work, not least the rescuing of the Rose Window from the south transept, whose 7000 pieces of glass were cracked in 40,000 places during the fearsome blaze of July 1984.

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Today it is not fire or bombs that most threaten the Minster’s 128 windows - the largest and most diverse collection in Britain - but the elements, and their preservation requires not only craft skills handed down through the generations but also 21st century tech­nology.

“We know now that stained glass is most susceptible to moisture. And in a building the size of the Minster, wind pressure can be very considerable,” Ms Brown said.

Her team now “double glazes” the stained glass, using an outer layer of modern material to provide a weather shield and allow air to pass over its surfaces.