REPORT OF THE COUNCIL FOR 1912. 
VII 
other conveniences. The Vestibule to the St. Mary’s Abbey 
Chapter House, which was formerly open and exposed to all 
the ravages of smoke, frost, and tempest, has been covered in, 
the floor drained and concreted, and converted into one of the 
most interesting portions of the Museum. Into this Chamber 
has been removed and suitably exhibited the unrivalled collec¬ 
tion of mediaeval stone work, which had hitherto been almost 
unnoticed in the lower part of the Hospitium. Here may now 
be seen a considerable portion of the beautiful Shrine of St. 
William, removed from York Minster at the Reformation, 
together with the Reredos in Derbyshire Marble with its 
delicately carved canopies and niches. In this connection 
your Council would quote from a Report by Mr. Edward S. 
Prior, of Chichester, who examined a portion of this collection 
in 1907 when the fragments were in the lower room of the 
Hospitium ; he wrote : 
“12, Westgate, 
Chichester, 
24 th February, 1907. 
What you have at St. Mary’s is a most striking collection, and, as a series, 
unrivalled so far as I have seen in Cathedral and Abbey Museums. Your 
fragments shew what a workshop of the arts York was in the Middle Ages. I 
got so much pleasure from the view of your things, that I do not know that I 
have the right to criticise the arrangements for shewing them. But I must say 
it always seems to me, that our English work is badly treated when one looks at 
the spacious housing, and efficient exhibition, afforded to the fragments of other 
people’s arts (to Zulu and Kanaka monstrosities for example), whereas the 
really beautiful bits of mediaeval sculoture—the finest things in art that we 
English have produced—are as often as not, piled together like heaps of stone in 
a rockery, without classification or the least reverence or attempt to exhibit the 
beauties that remain. So at least it is at Winchester, Chichester, Fountains, &c. 
You at any rate at St. Mary’s had some careful hand efficiently sorting and 
grouping your finds, with the result that you have got together some really 
extraordinary evidence, which quite open our eyes, as to the abilities of the York 
Sculptors. If only the things could be better spaced and in a better light. 
It is, of course, the merest suggestion on my part, but seeing the value of 
what you have got piled up against the windows, would it not be possible to get 
them into the middle of the room and put together, so as to shew somewhat the 
connection of the fragments found (as it is done for example in the British 
Museum and at Oxford). 
There are two special periods shown in your fragments of a flourishing 
sculpture at York, which should make you famous—one at the latter part of the 
12th century and the other at the end of the 13th. There seems, as to the former, 
a grouping of your remains, as it were, round two compositions. One, no doubt, 
on a front of bt. Mary’s a Virgin and Child in a tympanum niche and the 
Apostles and Prophets flanking the doorway jambs. To show this work, the 
Virgin Torso should be set up in the centre and the Apostles, &c., grouped on 
