practicalguideto00unse_0

19
transept and clioir aisles, before being fixed each stone was
steeped in boiled oil, cliemically prepared, by wbich means it
is hoped the work will be preserved for ages : Time alone will
tell. Approaching the Minster by way of Duncombe-street;,
The Western Front first strikes the eye. It is thus described
by Britton : ^'
Two uniform towers, strengthened at
their corners with buttresses which diminish at four divisions
as they ascend, rise from the western ends of the aisles of the
nave. Between these towers, the front of the middle aisle is
carried up to the same height as its side walls, and an open
battlement runs across the whole breadth, round the towers,
and continues along sides of the nave. A number of niches,
adorned with a beautiful variety and richness of sculpture,
cover almost the whole front, and are wrought in each of the
principal buttresses, as well as in the walls between them. The
chief feature of the middle division is a grand window, an
unrivalled specimen of the leafy tracery that marks the style
of the middle of the fourteenth century. From the arch
of this window rises an acute gable, or pediment, the point
.of which, rising above the line of the battlement, is pierced
on open tracery; behind which is seen the proper gable
of the roof, adorned in front with tracery mouldings, similar
to the window, and crowned at the top by battlements of
open work raking on the sides, up to a tabernacle on
the apex or summit. The principal door has a gable over its
arch with strait sides, but not so highly pitched as that over
the window. The doorway is divided by a slender pillar,
composed of three clustered columns, with polished capitals,
into two smaller arches, above which is a circular glazed
compartment with tracery ; the whole is enclosed within
a splendid recessed arch, the headway composed of various
mouldings relieved by hollows. The mouldings round the
doorway are ornamented with sculpture of exquisite delicacy
and beauty, and exhibit the story of our first parents in the
garden of Eden." The figure in the centre niche above the
doorway is that of the Archbishop Melton, in whose time this
front was completed, and the statues on either side represent
a Percy on the north and a Yavasour on the south, each
holding pieces of stone in their hands, with their arms and
shields near, in commemoration of their having contributed
the stone for the building.