York & a few things medieval

First glimpses of York & the Minster was from a long, rather wide sweeping road from an easterly direction that lead under the Monk Bar (Monkgate), with arrow-slit windows, vaulted on three floors of one of the finest preserved of the medieval gates embedded in the city walls, with a portcullis still in working order & a Richard III museum. From here the wall ran high above a narrow roadside & overlooked long treed gardens that seemed to stumble into the grounds of the Minster, majestic & mysterious with its own history of fires, collapses, sieges, civil wars, constructions & restorations, with a large expanse of 14th century stained glass. Several gates were embedded in the pale, earthy grey & ochre colours of the crenellated, parapet stone walls & in the spring, daffodil-filled green banks, sloped up to its base.
The town spilled out from the centre with a cacophony of architectural styles, the streets narrowing so much, that the overhanging shop signs nearly met in the middle of the Shambles. A pedestrian street where the road was as narrow as each pavement either side & old shops & house fronts wiggled & wobbled, it was a wonder they managed to stay upright at all. The crooked rickety walls amassed a jumble of different style lead lighted windows, that bowed out onto the street with tiered overlapping upper floors, dormer windows at the top, under low sloping rooftops. Such places now cater for books, jewelry, antiquated bits & pieces, coins, clothing & cafes, adorning the shop fronts of the street, where once butchers hung their meat.
Elsewhere, Tudor style heavy timbered oak, embellished  white walls containing obscure vertical, oblong shaped, heavy lead-lighted glass.
Opposite a small square planted with deciduous trees, situated amidst the town's buildings, an old clock protrudes out from an upper floor of a multi-coloured red brick building, its lower floor containing a deeply recessed heavy wooden door painted black. Twisting lanes & alleys weave here & there amongst the town's other buildings, old & often triple storied, winding around to the different gates held within the outer stone wall. Very old buildings tumbled over the pavements, crooked as ancient bent oaks, rooftops sagging with the centuries, beams dipping with dilapidation, windows leaning every which way. Houses & shop fronts, history hidden within the walls, bow this way & that, sturdy still with old age, oak-beamed buildings that have experienced the test of time scatter through the town, nesting birds flit around the low rooftops of High Petersgate, mice scamper in the rafters of Micklegate & tiny spider's occupy dark corners of book shops. Stained glass  gothic windows, demurely reflect the sun's rays as they flood into the hymn singing churches, cascade down the upright pulpits & creep in & out of the timbered benches.

The castle on a hill withstood nine centuries of conquering kings, wars, imprisonment, royal administrations & tumultuous defenses, fortifications & explosions, reinforcements & rebels. There was once a moat & artificial lake, water defenses against marauding foe.

 The Minster, established from the Anglo-Saxon period, but dating back to where the possibility of a hurriedly built wooden church stood upon the site in the 7th century, retains many collections, both of manuscripts dating from over a thousand years ago, monuments & worked stone of archaeology, silver & books in a library, decorative iron work & stained glass windows. The city of York within the vicinity of the surrounding walls, exudes a timeless charm. And York will continue in the annals of history.