On one of the coldest days of the recent very cold weather in March went to have a look inside Hull Minster now all the internal work has been completed. Given the weather on stepping inside the west door the most immediately impressive feature was the under-floor heating, truly welcoming. Three factors re Holy Trinity often highlighted are its size, its status until 1661 as a chapel of ease (rather than independent parish church) and the probability that it was the earliest surviving church building built mostly of brick. This last feature is potentially confusing as the earliest part of the building programme from 1285 onwards was the transepts and the lower crossing tower but clearly the exterior bricks visible today are mostly not medieval, in fact they date from one of the three 19th century Gothic Revival restorations. This is also true of the brick-walled chancel, although here clearly some earlier bricks were re-instated. So it is mostly the window tracery which evidences the building sequence of the 14th and 15th centuries, and even here the 19th century restorers may have ‘tinkered’.
Hull Minster, then, is not quite so straight-forward a ‘readable’ history of medieval architectural change as, for example, Beverley Minster ( what Geoff. Bell use to call a ‘teaching church’). Also whereas Beverley Minster followed the usual sequence of a long-term medieval church building programme, start at the east end finish at the west end, Hull Minster’s medieval building programme started in the middle, went east (chancel), then west (nave and west front). The reason for this requires some speculation but may relate to the fact that it was planned from day one as a crossing church so the central crossing tower had to be the anchor around which the remaining structure depended, and this on virtually water-logged estuarine lowland soil liable to flooding.
Not only does Hull Minster now have under-floor heating but also café, toilets and well prepared information boards. They also allowed me to take in my dog. Hull Minster is great.