Video: Bones that flesh out history of a bloody conquest at York Minster
IT WOULD have been hard to comprehend that York Minster would become the towering cathedral it is today when a small wooden church was built on its site in 627.
That building was created for the baptism of an Anglo-Saxon King, Edwin of Northumbria, who then ordered it should be re-built in stone. The stone structure developed over the passing centuries before it was badly damaged in 1069 when the Normans stormed York.
The Normans took the decision to rebuild a far grander cathedral and it was during its construction that the human remains uncovered this month would have been reburied. The Minister was built from 1220 onwards on the orders of Archbishop Walter Gray.