York Minster: Memories of how a building steeped in history was nearly lost - Christa Ackroyd

Let me explain. In those days not only did we not have a phone in our pockets, we also didn’t have emails, the world wide web, laptops or computers, so journalists like me appeared on list after list of people to call in the case of a major emerging story. It was how I had discovered the arrest of Peter Sutcliffe some three years earlier. And they didn’t usually ring us either. We rang them. Unless the news was big.

Every journalist worth his or her salt would carry out a constant check on all the emergency services throughout Yorkshire to see what was going on. Working in radio would demand physically calling either the press office or the control centres of every emergency service throughout the county at least once an hour before the bulletin. It was rare indeed that someone would call us, let alone at that time in the morning. Rarer still that it was the fire service and as head of a West Yorkshire radio station to receive a call from North Yorkshire had to be ‘an incident’ of major significance. And it was.

Calmly the voice on the other end of the phone told me York Minster was on fire. I asked him the usual questions. How many firemen in attendance? Is the blaze under control? Is anyone hurt? His answers told me all I needed to know. More than 100 firemen were at the scene. Flames could be seen leaping from the roof. No one was hurt although they had stopped minster staff and clergy from re entering the building to continue their task of trying to remove as many artefacts as was possible. And no it was not yet under control.

By the time I had raced to my newsroom at Radio Aire in Leeds and recorded my first interview for the 6am news bulletin the minster, Yorkshire’s most important and significant building, had been saved. But in order to do so fire chiefs had had to make the difficult decision to deliberately bring down part of the roof to safeguard the rest and allow the flames to escape upwards into the sky. That decision was daring yet genius. Within an hour the blaze, to use common journalistic parlance, was under indeed under control. But the devastation was there for all to see. And people wept as they gathered outside. Understandably. The history of Yorkshire is forever symbolised in that one building.

Beneath the main tower the remains of the Roman headquarters of Eboracum can still be seen. A church had stood on the exact same spot since 627 when a wooden structure had been built just as Christianity was replacing paganism. As a result the minster is the only church to allow mistletoe, a pagan symbol, on its alter at Christmas. The Minster had stood in its present form since the 1200s. It had taken 250 years to complete. Henry VIIIth had allowed it to stand when all others were being torn down as the northern headquarters for the newly formed Church of England. And one of my heroines Anne Brontë insisted on visiting one last time on her way to Scarborough where she was to die content that she had experienced it’s glory one last time. And so it goes on. And it all could have been lost.

As dawn broke that morning it was clear to see for everyone, including me, who gathered outside that one third of the roof had gone completely. The glass within the famous and historic Rose window was cracked in 40,000 places but miraculously it was still in tact. The fire had come within inches of spreading to the central tower which weighs incidentally the equivalent of more than 40 jumbo jets. But it hadn’t. As restoration staff arrived on the scene the scene they were greeted with brought them to tears too.

But as I was to find out many years later they are a passionate dedicated bunch. Within a day restoration work had begun. And Yorkshire, as Yorkshire does, joined in.

By the time the day ended farmers and foresters had offered more than 200 oak tees to repair the roof. Some thought rebuilding it with timber was foolhardy. This was after all the fifth time the building had been on fire.

In 1753 a fire in the South Transept was blamed on workmen burning coals. In 1829 a disgruntled parishioner set fire to the choir using torn up hymn books and wooden pews leading to the formation of a Minster police force, that was to become a blue print for Robert Peel’s nationwide bobbies.

In 1840 the blaze was caused by a candle being left unattended’

In 1971 a fire broke out in the south nave roof after a tarpaulin caught fire. And this time in 1984 it was thought an act of god in the form of a lightening bolt had caused the devastation people woke up to that morning forty years ago. Small wonder this time as well as timber, fireproof plaster was used.

Until that day four decades ago York Minster had not really figured in my psyche. Of course we had visited on school trips but it seemed so vast that I didn’t connect. Now, as is so often true in life, you don’t realised what you have until you almost lose it.

York Minster stands proud and tall as a symbol of the importance our part of the world has in history. But I had never until that fateful day considered what it takes to keep its wondrous facade and interior for a nation and beyond. It is the finest example of medieval stained glass in the world. One window alone, the Five Sisters, is bigger than a tennis court. It is the second largest Gothic cathedral in Europe. And behind the scenes the world’s best archivists, stone masons and glass restorers constantly work to preserve its grandeur.

I have been lucky in my journalistic life to witness many things. But none more so than being taken to the roof of York Minster for a recording on Our Great Yorkshire Life (a third series is now being shown on Channel 5) to see the skills of those world renowned experts. Young people undergo apprenticeships in the stone mason’s yard. It is said if you are trained there you can work anywhere in the world, such are the skills they learn. And across the road in a quiet room experts in mediaeval glass constantly restore and rebuild that which needs work. The work on the Rose window after the fire took four years alone. To have the honour of touching a piece of glass being lovingly cleaned and restored that was first put in position 700 years ago or more is a gift I will never forget.

Much of my world has centred on the here and now but when those two worlds collide, the past and the future are brought into sharp focus. That some 40 years after we nearly lost that which is so precious I can talk of the privilege of seeing York minster up close is not lost on me.

My father always taught me to look up so get the true measure of a place, to examine how it was built and what history lies above its streets. There is none more towering, precious or significant than York Minster. I know we now have to pay to go in and many didn’t agree. But that is a small price to pay for securing its future, one so nearly lost forty years ago, forever.