Masons carve major new milestone in multi-million pound Minster restoration

The Dean of York, Keith Jones, and the cathedral's Canon Chancellor, Glyn Webster, joined the York Minster Stoneyard team at the top of the East Front yesterday for the "topping out" of the Area 2 East Front Buttress.

Work on the East Front is being carried out in eight sections. Numbers three to eight are under the banner of the York Minster Revealed scheme, which is backed by the Yorkshire Post.

But areas one and two were separate projects, not dependent on Lottery funding, of which the first was finished some time ago. The completion of Area 2 East Front Buttress, located above the Great East Window, marks the end of the largest reconstruction, redesign and restoration project at the Minster in the past 30 years.

Initial work began three years ago with major structural works to the buttress and involved the entire Minster Works Department of more than 40 staff, including joiners, electricians, masons, carvers, scaffolder, and labourers.

The Superintendent of Works, Rebecca Thompson, said: "This has been a complicated project and shows the exceptional quality of craftsmanship carried out within the Stoneyard.

"It was like taking down a seven-storey building and putting up a parish church."

She added: "A lot of the stonework has been replaced due to structural problems with that particular buttress. Some areas of the turret walls were down to five inches thick and also needed to be replaced."

The spire is mostly original stone but the corona, a decorative area of masoned pieces and grotesques at the bottom, is newly carved.

Serious decay was revealed in areas once restoration work started.

"The East Front is out of level so setting out the corona stones was like a mathematical jigsaw puzzle," Ms Thompson said. "But our Master Mason John David managed to put it all back together with incredible efficiency."