YORK Minster has been handed half a million pounds towards the next phase of conservation and repair work.

The grant, which is coming from the government sponsored First World War Centenary Repairs Fund, will help pay for work on the 11 bays of the Quire Aisle on the south side of the cathedral and repairs of stonework in the Lady Chapel, located directly under the Great East Window.

The Dean of York, the Very Reverend Vivienne Faull, welcomed the grant, which is part of a £14.5 million funding package announced by the fund. Forty cathedrals across England will receive grants from £25,000 to more than £800,000 for essential repairs including roofing, stained-glass and stonework.

The Dean said: “Cathedrals continue to have a vitally important role in the lives of communities across the country.

"People come for worship, contemplation and sanctuary, to experience the most exquisite architecture and to sense and measure the immense histories of these buildings against our finite existence.

“This funding acknowledges a shared national responsibility to ensure that our cathedrals will endure for future generations. I am grateful to the First World War Centenary Repairs Fund for continuing to provide this critically important financial support.”

The fund has previously given a total of £300,000 to the Minster for repairs to the stonework and roof of the Camera Cantorum - a two storey structure dating from 1415, which today houses the Minster shop and provides rehearsal space for the Minster’s choristers.

Generations of choristers have been trained in the Camera Cantorum including twelve former choristers and an Alto songman who were all killed on active service in the First World War.