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Home, Gordon, 1878-1969

"Yorkshire"

Mary's Church on the left, quaint Georgian
houses, and a dignified hotel of the same period on the opposite side,
while straight ahead is the broad Saturday Market with its very
picturesque 'cross.' The cross was put up in 1714 by Sir Charles
Hotham, Bart., and Sir Michael Warton, Members of Parliament for the
Corporation at that time.
Without the towers the exterior of the Minster gives me little
pleasure, for the Early English chancel and greater and lesser
transepts, although imposing and massive, are lacking in proper
proportion, and in that deficiency suffer a loss of dignity. The
eulogies so many architects and writers have poured out upon the Early
English work of this great church, and the strangely adverse comments
the same critics have levelled at the Perpendicular additions, do not
blind me to what I regard as a most strange misconception on the part
of these people. The homogeneity of the central and eastern portions of
the Minster is undeniable, but because what appears to be the design of
one master-builder of the thirteenth century was apparently carried out
in the short period of twenty years, I do not feel obliged to consider
the result beautiful.


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