YORK MINSTER, FIVE SISTERS' WINDOW. c. 1885.

Another of the Frith Series PC's collected by Septimus and Clara Miller in 1906 was this card of the Five Sisters' Window. It is No. 18421 and would have been taken around 1885.

The window was completed by 1260, and is the oldest complete window in the Minster. It is also said to be the largest single composition in Grisaille glass anywhere in the world. It consists of five lights, each of c.53 feet by c.5 feet (16.3 x 1.55 m), and (originally) thirteen compartments. The repeating pattern in each light is different.

At the bottom of the central light, there is a small, coloured vignette of Daniel being fed by Habukkuk in the Lions’ den. This is an earlier piece of glass; it does not belong to the original window, but was placed there at a later date, perhaps in the seventeenth century.

The name Five Sisters is interesting in itself although it probably only goes back to the eighteenth century when it first appeared in Drake’s "Eboracum". The tradition of the window’s name recorded here is that it was based on the tapestry designs of five sisters, though the origin of this story is unclear. Of note here also is the appearance of this story in Nicholas Nickleby. Dickens uses this story, or an elaborated and moralized version of it, to talk about transience and death, though note that he places the composition of the window in the sixteenth century.

"'A great many years ago--for the fifteenth century was scarce two years old at the time, and King Henry the Fourth sat upon the throne of England--there dwelt, in the ancient city of York, five maiden sisters, the subjects of my tale.

'These five sisters were all of surpassing beauty. The eldest was in her twenty-third year, the second a year younger, the third a year younger than the second, and the fourth a year younger than the third. They were tall stately figures, with dark flashing eyes and hair of jet; dignity and grace were in their every movement; and the fame of their great beauty had spread through all the country round." (Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens (1838-1839) - Chapter 6)

Another suggestion is that the name is in fact a corruption of ‘five Cistercians’.

It also is known as the "Jew’s Window". It seems it is possible that a large sum of money, paid by the Jews of York for a grant of land to John Romanus, the man most closely associated with the north transept, was channelled into the building fund.

At any rate it is a beautiful example of Grisaille glass work: it is made with grey monochrome glass. Grisaille was a style of glass that emerged around the same time as stained glass, though had a different evolution.

Luckily the five vast lancets of the north transept end still keep their beautiful original glass. There are fragments of Norman & Early English glass in the five sisters.

The “Five Sisters” are five very narrow and long windows separated only by slender shafts. They are, no doubt, the largest lancet windows in England: a bold idea to fill almost the whole of the mother transept with them, but the boldness was entirely justified by the result.

Below them is a blind arcade almost entirely without ornament, and above them another group of five lancet windows of different sizes, gradually diminishing from the central window to follow the outline of the gable.