More than 60 years after it was hidden, a Victorian glory has re-emerged into public gaze.

Winston Churchill was alive and Queen Elizabeth was a young woman when the owners of the York Art Gallery installed a glass ceiling.

The work made it easier to protect exhibits by controlling the gallery's humidity and temperature but concealed the Victorian roof void above it.

Now, as part of the major redevelopment of the gallery, the York Museums Trust will open a mezzanine gallery which will enable the public to see the roof again for the first time since the 1950s.

It will house exhibits from the gallery's British Studio Ceramic collection, the largest in the world, and be part of the Centre of Ceramic Art, which will also occupy a newly built gallery above the Madsen Galleries.

The gallery will reopen on August 1, when the Victorian roof void is expected to be an attraction in its own right, as well as part of the building.