The Nation’s Favourite Stained Glass Window – York Minster – Great East Window – 2nd Place

The runner-up in our search to find the Nation’s favourite stained glass window goes to the Great East Window at York Minster.

Stained Glass Runner Up – Great East Window – York Minster

117 narrative panels in rows of nine from the Creation to the Apocalypse, with over 300 panels in total, by John Thornton of Coventry (active 1405–33), 23.2 × 9.8 m

In the winter of 1405, as a political crisis rocked the city of York, the Cathedral Chapter entered into a contract for the creation of the largest expanse of stained glass ever made in medieval England.

The project was breathtakingly ambitious, spanning as it did both the beginning and the end of human history – from Creation as it is related in the first book of the Bible (Genesis), to the end of the world and the second coming of Christ as explored in the last book (Revelation – known as the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages). With the Archbishop of York having recently been executed for treason and the city’s civic privileges having been suspended by the King, apocalyptic imagery must have seemed all too relevant to the surrounding community.

No one had ever attempted an Apocalypse in stained glass before, and the window, completed in 1408, is a tribute to the audacity and imagination of the medieval Cathedral community that commissioned it, as well as being a monument to the genius of the window’s creator, John Thornton, the master glazier of Coventry to whom the commission was entrusted. Although Thornton is known to have been a glass-painter, it was his reputation as a designer of rare talent and a project manager of exceptional skill that commended him to his York clients.

Not only was he able to develop an action-packed narrative out of one of the most challenging books of the Bible, he was also able to create a masterpiece in the stained-glass medium, delivered on time and on budget.

Read more about all the windows in our campaign here.

You can buy the book, Divine Light – The Stained Glass of England’s Cathedrals here.