(I almost called this “You won’t believe what they found under York Minster.”)
Minster is Old English/Anglo-Saxon term, used for an important church, and cathedral is a new-fangled term the base for an archbishop. A church can be either or, as with York Minster, both. It’s been built, (partially) destroyed and rebuilt many times since the 8th century, so I’m not going into that. (If you’re interested.) Instead, just three interesting things:
Interesting thing 1: The Minster is inhabited by teeny, tiny people. (Some are so small you might need to click on a picture to get a bigger version so you can see them.)
The Yorkshire Museum in York has a lot of Roman artefacts (for reasons mnetioned below). Like any sensible museum, they are displayed in different rooms with themes (e.g People of York) but I’ve just pulled out some interesting ones to share. Unfortunately, like any sensible museum, the lighting is low so my selection of objects is further reduced by the those that photagraphed reasonably well. Text is italics is from the panels accompanying the objects.
Catimandua was queen of an Iron Age tribe called the Brigantes. Her tribal territory, which extended across the northern Britain, formed a buffer zone for the Roman Empire with the Picts to the north in Scotland. Her position was threatened by an open revolt led by her husband Venutius. The imperial authorities were forced to intervene. The Ninth Legion was sent north from Lincoln to quell the revolt. They constructed a permanent fortress at the confluence of two rivers and prehistoric route way. This fortress became Eboracum.
This aerial photo shows the location of the fortress overlaid on modern York, to give an idea of the size. The red square on the right marks the location of the fortress, now under the central city area. The “You Are Here” at the very top is the museum. On the left side of the river was the (civilian) town. Just above that is now the railway station. If I remember correctly, it was the site of a cemetery.
This was the Roman city of Eboracum from about 70 CE to 400 CE. Ahead on the left of the river was a large fortress, built for the 9th legion, covering about 50 acres. On the right side was the town. Today we call it York.
There are a lot of photos. It was one of those see how you can do in a day trips. A lot, as it turned out. More than I expected. So it’s just a couple of photos from each place I went to and some random buldings along the way. But none of the interesting corners and details photos. I might do some individual posts later. (Quietly ignoring that I am just going to get more days like this, and not enough time to do posts. But if you’re interested in something, I can share some more photos.)
The Multangular Tower. The lower smaller bricks are Roman. The top part is Medieval. It was part of the fortress wall, built in the early 4th century and replacing an older tower.
