The Minster Church Of St John

The Minster Church of St John, Beverley

A former collegiate church, now serving as a parish church. The building represents a major rebuilding campaign beginning with the eastern arm around 1225, with the high altar dedicated in 1260. The nave dates from approximately 1308–1350, the north porch and west front from around 1390–1420, the east window from around 1410–20, and the north-east chapel from around 1490.

The church is constructed primarily of Tadcaster magnesian limestone, incorporating some oolitic limestone from an earlier structure and some chalk. The interior features Purbeck shafting and the nave vault webbing is built in brick with plaster finish. The roof is lead.

The building follows a cruciform plan with a seven-bay aisled chancel terminating in a square east end and single-bay eastern transepts, aisled to the east. There are three-bay aisled main transepts and a central tower. The nave comprises eleven bays with aisles, a north porch, and a twin-towered west front.

The 13th-century section is characterised by prominent shafted buttresses with flyers. Windows include lancets set in shafted arcades with moulded capitals, bands of blind arcading, sunk quatrefoils, and wheel windows to the transept ends. The nave features off-set buttresses with gabled niches, crocketed pinnacles, and flyers, together with curvilinear traceried windows. The north porch is panelled with angle buttresses and crocketed pinnacles, a gabled entrance flanked by niches for figures of saints, and an embattled parapet with further niches. The west front has twin towers with off-set angle buttresses and embattled parapets with crocketed pinnacles. The entire structure is adorned with panelling and canopied niches for statues, which were provided after 1897. A crocketed ogee gable surmounts the west door, topped by a canopied niche, with a nine-light sub-arcuated west window below.

Interior

The east end displays a three-storey elevation with an arcade of heavily moulded arches on clustered piers featuring keeled or filleted intermediate shafts. The triforium comprises two superimposed blind arcades. Clerestory lancets are set in stepped, shafted arcades. Dogtooth moulding and Purbeck shafting are employed throughout, with moulded capitals to the main elevation and stiff-leaf capitals to the wall arcades. Quadripartite vaults on shafts descend to corbels in the spandrels of the arcade. The aisles feature trefoil-headed wall arcading, incorporating steps to the former chapter house on the north side. The 14th-century work continues in a similar style with slight variations in detail and traceried windows.

The church contains numerous significant fittings and furnishings. A screen dating from around 1334 was designed to carry the shrine of St John and adjoins a very fine Percy Tomb. Wood sedilia in similar style date from around 1345. An Anglo-Saxon stone seat known as the 'Frith Stool' survives. Choir stalls from around 1520 feature 68 carved misericords. Screens date from around 1400. A late 12th-century Frosterley marble font has a cover of 1713. A tread wheel crane is positioned above the central crossing. The church preserves many fine monuments, including the tomb chest of Henry Percy of 1489 and other monuments of the 17th to 19th centuries.