Medieval parish churches of York

The land on which the church was erected was reputedly donated by Ralph de Paganel, a Norman tenant-in-chief whose name is commemorated in the Yorkshire village of Hooton Pagnell.

[2] All Saints Church is attractively situated near the River Ouse and next to a row of fifteenth-century timber-framed houses.

Attached to the west end is an anchorhold or hermitage built of concrete in the 1920s on the site of a house occupied by a hermit on the early 15th century.

Internally there are fifteenth-century hammerbeam roofs and much medieval stained glass, including the Corporal Works of Mercy (derived from Matt 25:31ff) and the "Prick of Conscience" windows.

As with St. Denys (below), part of the building was demolished in the late eighteenth century: the east end (chancel and aisles) was removed so that the market-place in Pavement could be expanded.

The most noticeable feature of the church's exterior is the octagonal lantern-tower of about 1400, which for many years housed a light to guide travellers.

It is about as close as you can get to how a church would have looked after the Reformation: dark, quiet, homely, with uneven floors, high box pews and plain walls.

The church quickly fell into serious decay after the dissolution of the priory in 1538, and the extensive restoration from the 1850s onward included a chancel and vestry 1886–7 and a north porch and rebuilt west front 1902–5.

St Crux, (literally Holy Cross), was the largest medieval parish church in York after its rebuilding in 1424, and a brick tower was added in 1697.

The Hall contains a number of monuments from the old church, and other fittings are now in All Saints, Pavement, to which the parish of St Crux was joined in 1885.

St Denys's Church, York stands in a churchyard raised above the level of the surrounding roads.

St John's Micklegate is simple rectangular building, with the earliest parts including the tower base dating from the 12th century.

Much of the current building dates from the 15th century, though the east end was rebuilt in the middle of the 19th to enable the widening of North Street and there was extensive restoration at that period.

The present St Lawrence building is Victorian, but in its churchyard is the small tower of its predecessor (in which Sir John Vanbrugh was married in 1719).

The old nave and chancel is marked out in medieval and 18th-19th century gravestones, including those of the Heskeths and Yarburghs of Heslington Hall.

The porch originally belonged to the church of St Nicholas's Hospital, which was situated outside Walmgate Bar and was ruined during the Civil War.

It was subsequently used as a store for the York Theatre Royal until its adaptation for use as a performance space and conference facility by the National Centre for Early Music, which opened in 2000.

The church was largely destroyed in a bombing raid on 29 April 1942, but the 15th-century tower and south aisle remain, with a new vestry and parish room at the west end of the site.

It is generally agreed that St Mary Bishophill Junior is the oldest surviving church within the city walls.

The tower itself is of the late Anglo-Saxon period with masonry of very mixed materials, including blocks of brown sandstone and limestone blocks, some laid in herringbone fashion; the quoins are mainly of brown sandstone laid in a "side-alternate" fashion and with no buttresses, factors which often mark Anglo-Saxon architecture.

Adjacent to this site there was formerly St Mary Bishophill Senior, with early Anglo-Saxon features such as monolithic construction, on the base of a Romano-British wall which could possibly also have been a church.

St Mary's Castlegate is in use as an art space with changing exhibitions organised by York Museums Trust.

Called DIG: an archaeological adventure, it is open for visits by individuals or groups such as schools, and has changing exhibitions.

[12] Largely rebuilt in the nineteenth century, closed in 1886 and fell into disuse (by 1896 it housed a small flock of sheep).

St Giles, the church of the Skinners Guild, was situated at the north end of Gillygate, on the west side of the road near where The Salvation Army building is now.

St Helen, located in what is now Winterscale Street, east of Fishergate, was granted to Holy Trinity Priory by Ralph Paganel in 1086.

The church's name relates to the adjacent turnpike (now Chapter House Street) that leads to York Minster Yard.

[21] Few references to the church survive, apart from a single bequest of a hive of bees,[21] until it was used during the 1644 Siege of York during the English Civil War, when it was severely damaged by the Parliamentary forces' cannon fire from the city walls.

The steeple and south wall were still standing in 1730,[21] but other parts of the building were re-used or stolen; Lord Fairfax arranged for its Norman doorway to be re-erected at St Margaret, Walmgate.

Meanwhile, neither the parishioners of St Peter's nor those of All Saints would accept the union of the parishes until in 1583 they finally agreed to a decision to that effect of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the church was officially suppressed in 1586.