A FORMER City worker who helped York Minster receive essential funding has said his MBE is ‘for the whole team’ behind the building's restoration work.

Michael D’Arcy Benson, 76, of Westow, near Malton, was the director of the York Minister Fund from 2007 to 2016 and played an instrumental role in the successful application for £10 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The money was used for renovation work to the Minster’s stunning Great East Window which is the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the country.

The Northern Echo:

It also helped with work in the Minster’s undercroft and Mr Benson spearheaded a joint initiative bringing together the Chapter and York Minster Fund to deliver the £20 million project.

Mr Benson, who spent his career in the City of London before moving to North Yorkshire to retire, was humble about his mention in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, saying: “I am the lucky guy who gets his name in the press and goes along to the Palace and gets the medal, but actually I don’t regard it as being for me.

“It is of course a great honour and I feel humbled that I should have been thought of at all, but actually it isn’t for me - I am the lucky guy but it is for the whole team who all worked so hard to get the work done.

“I had a little role, of course, but they did the hard work.”