Treasured icon

IT is only right that the iconic York Minster is the beneficiary of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant worth nearly £10m. The ongoing restoration work to preserve the building and its historic Great East Window is precisely why John Major created the lottery.

The former Tory Prime Minister wanted to provide money for traditionally under-funded areas like art, sport and heritage; a noble approach rejected by New Labour which viewed the lottery as a convenient means of funding various social enterprises.

Yet York Minster encompasses both approaches. It depends upon the HLF for financial support, and rightly so, but much of the painstaking restoration work is undertaken through various apprenticeship schemes.

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This is particularly important. Without a new generation of craftsmen, it will become more difficult to preserve historic buildings in the future. Such skills are timeless. For as Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, says with such eloquence: "The Minster as a whole is a masterpiece which speaks of the glory of God, and the creative imagination of human beings."