Beverley Minster's Lore and Legends: An Audio Tour

(7 reviews)

Beverley audio tour: Beverley Minster's Lore and Legends: An Audio Tour

This is an indoor tour

Beverley

The United Kingdom

$11.99

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About the Tour

Beverley Minster is an extraordinary medieval church with equally extraordinary origins, stretching back to before England was a unified country. On this indoor tour, you’ll hear about the Minster’s Anglo-Saxon origins and its evolution, along with some surprising historical facts about Christianity.

This tour of the church’s interior starts outside Beverley Minster’s impressive gothic entrance, and draws your attention to elements with wider historical significance. I’ll share information not generally made available to the public that will astonish those who’ve only ever heard the Church’s version of history – like why, for centuries, no one could be baptized inside these places of worship.

As you make your way around the minster, you’ll learn about the concepts of sanctuary and pilgrimage, and how to master the reading of medieval stained glass. I’ll also tell you how medieval Beverley became so rich.

On this entertaining yet rigorous tour of this church’s history, you’ll:

Discover the concept of killer saints
Brush up on the First King of England and his link with Beverley Minster
Peruse some of the finest medieval carvings in Europe
Appreciate some of the best Gothic architecture anywhere in the world
Uncover the extraordinary truth about King Henry VIII, the Reformation, and the Anglican Church
Familiarize yourself with some useful terminology, including the term ”minster”

By the end of this two-hour tour, you’ll have a deeper understanding of church architecture, the development of Christianity, and how Beverley Minster fits into the broader history of England.

Tour Producer

James McDonald

4 tours

James is a British historian specialising in church history and warfare in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

His special talent lies in presenting history in an easily digestible. He is able to make rigorous history entertaining, whatever your existing level of knowledge.

James is an expert in Catharism, a popular so-called heresy that flourished in the Languedoc during the High Middle Ages. He has been researching Catharism and its relationship with early Christianity for over twenty years.

He writes on a range of topics including Gnostic Dualism, the Cathars of the Languedoc, the Counts of Toulouse, Occitania, Medieval Warfare and the Inquisition.

His work is characterised by serious scholarship combined with an entertaining style. A polymath, he has also written on subjects as diverse as computer simulation, mathematical problems, early Christianity, English etymology, castle architecture, philosophy, and comparative philology. He is the webmaster of www.cathar.info and www.catharcastles.info

James has travelled extensively in Central Asia and Southern Asia, researching Zoroastrianism and other Dualist religions. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1990.

Preview Location

Location 48

Baptismal Font

Both the stone font and its wooden cover are exceptional works of art. If there's a cordon around the font, you can move around to get a good view.

The font is made of Frosterley Marble brought here from County Durham. This is probably the earliest surviving example of a fo... Both the stone font and its wooden cover are exceptional works of art. If there's a cordon around the font, you can move around to get a good view.

The font is made of Frosterley Marble brought here from County Durham. This is probably the earliest surviving example of a font in this material. If you look closely you will see fossils in the stone, which is not a true marble but a polished limestone. The font has been in use for over 850 years. It dates from about 1170, a few years before the fire of 1188.

Above the font is a carved wooden cover, which could have been raised and lowered to keep the holy water safe from theft. It is a wonderful example of Georgian carving, made in 1726 during the restoration of the Minster. It was designed by Hawksmoor and carved by William Thornton of York.

Baptism, or Christening as it sometimes known in the Church of England, is a ceremony that marks the entrance of someone into the Church. In the early Church it was the only rite of Christian initiation, and carried much more significance. It was available in two different circumstances: for adults after a two or three year course of teaching, examination and asceticism; but also for anyone on their death-bed, pretty much on request. The fist type of Baptism was literally life-changing.

When routine infant baptism was introduced in the west in the sixth century, baptism lost much of the significance that it had had in the early Church. If you look at the gold work above the font cover you will see that there is a golden dove there. I've included a photograph. In Christian art the dove represents the Holy Spirit. This is a reference to the invocation of the Holy Spirit - technically the "epiclesis" - which was, and in the Orthodox Church still is, the critical moment of the baptismal rite, when the Holy Spirit was believed to descend upon, and thenceforth inhabit, the baptizand's body. This was why baptism was so consequential: the body of a baptised Christian became henceforth, literally, a Temple of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Nowadays, the Church of England often baptises adults, children and babies, using fonts like this. Such small fonts can be used in the west because baptizands are sprinkled with holy water, whereas the Orthodox Church still baptises by total immersion, except in extremist.

You now have two options.

You can Dig Deeper and learn more about early Christian baptism and its far-reaching implications in the Early Church. This will add three minutes to the tour. To do so, tap "Dig Deeper".

To continue with the tour, walk to the west end of the nave, facing the great West Doors, and tap "Skip Location" once. Read More

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Major Landmarks

Beverley Minster
Minster Yard North
Minster Yard South
Central Tower, Beverley
Highgate
Site of Palace of the Archbishops of York
YHA Beverley Friary

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Getting There

Route Overview

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Start location
38 Highgate, Beverley HU17 0DN, UK
Total distance

396m
Final location
38 Highgate, Beverley HU17 0DN, UK
Distance back to start location

0m

Directions to Starting Point

The tour begins on the pavement outside the Minster, on Minster Yard North, opposite a street called Highgate, within sight of the public entrance to the nave.

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Tips

Places to stop along the way

Not exactly on the way, but within a few hundred yards of the minster you'll find Yorkshire pubs and tea shops.

Best time of day

The minster is generally open from 10am to 4pm every day, but best check the minster website just in case there is an exceptional closure on your chosen date.

https://beverleyminster.org.uk/#1654527839385-1fb1

Precautions

No precautions are needed, but you might find an electric torch and binoculars useful.

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