Best view of York Minster’s Great East Window is now the one from home

However, the best view of the monumental Great East Window inside York Minster has been reserved for those even further away.

With the cathedral currently welcoming only virtual visitors, a high-resolution visualisation of the 311 panels that make up the country’s largest single expanse of medieval stained glass, has been created online.

The “stained glass navigator” offers views of the intricately painted panes, each one a representation of a passage from the bible, in a detail impossible to see from the ground.

The resource is the work of the York Glaziers Trust, Britain’s oldest studio specialising in the conservation of stained glass, whose craftspeople have combined 21st century skills with those handed down from 600 years earlier.

“The biggest technical challenge was how to display an enormous photograph without users having to wait for it to download,” said the trust’s director, Sarah Brown, who is also the author of a book about the decade-long restoration of the window, completed in 2018.

The solution was to split up the photograph jigsaw-style, in a similar way to the panes themselves. Each is named and numbered, with a description of its biblical origin.

“Various resolutions are loaded as the user moves around and zooms in to the image of the window,” Ms Brown said. “High-resolution tiles are only loaded when needed.”

The photographs were taken during the restoration process, which saw each tile removed in turn for cleaning and weatherproofing.

The work cost £11.5m and was described at the time as a “once-in-a-lifetime project”.

It was initiated after the discovery that following centuries of exposure to the elements, the Minster’s stonework had weathered so badly that the window had begun to bow. The Heritage Lottery Fund contributed £9m to its repair, a figure matched by the York Minster Fund and the Chapter of York.

The project saw the first use in a cathedral of glass which protects the artwork from harmful ultra-violet rays, a technique which is now being used to protect the other windows in the Minster, which together constitute the largest collection of medieval stained glass in the country.

The St Cuthbert Window, which will be the next to benefit from the technology in a programme of work scheduled to begin next year, is included in the online viewer alongside the Great East Window.

Ms Brown said the online navigator created views of the window “which would be physically impossible for people to see even if they were standing inside the cathedral”.

The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has described the window as “a truly timeless masterpiece” whose biblical presentation of the story of time, from the Creation onwards, is “as relevant today as it was 600 years ago when it was painted”.

The online viewer can be accessed at stainedglass-navigator.yorkglazierstrust.org.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing subscriptions@jpimedia.co.uk. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson, Editor