The Dean of York, the Very Rev Keith Jones, retires at the end the month – after the small matter of escorting the Queen around the cathedral during her Maundy visit. He talked to STEPHEN LEWIS.

SEEN from the windows of the Deanery, York Minster soars against the skyline; majestic, inspiring, a monument in sculpted stone to the hopes and dreams of the people who built it, and those who have worshipped there ever since.

“You are going to miss that view, aren’t you?” I ask the Dean of York.

The Very Rev Keith Jones, who retires later this month, smiles. “When I come out of the Deanery and look at that, I don’t see the most beautiful building in Christendom,” he says. “I see health and safety, and responsibility.”

Yes, he is joking. But there is an element of truth there, too. Being Dean of a cathedral is a stressful job. The Dean and the Chapter he heads are responsible for running this magnificent building. And that means managing everything from worship, and the mission of spreading the word of God, to looking after the building and its finances.

During his eight years as Dean he has, among other things, been responsible for the York Minster Revealed project – an ongoing £19 million Lottery-supported scheme to restore the Great East Window, improve visitor facilities and provide a piazza outside the South Transept.

That is a big enough job in itself. But then there is the day-to-day business of managing the Minster, its staff and its many services; ensuring the finances remain healthy; and hosting important events and visitors – such as the visit this week of The Queen to distribute Maundy money.

“It never stops!” he groans, half-jokingly. Fortunately, he says, in a job like his you don’t have to be particularly good at anything yourself. “You pass the work on to others. There are so many people who know exactly what they’re doing.”

Joking aside, he admits that his years as Dean of York have been a remarkable privilege. “It’s a marvellous thing to find yourself running York Minster. When somebody asks what did you do with your life? It doesn’t come any better.”

He is still finding new things in the building, he says. “This morning, I noticed a couple of gables on the south side which I had never noticed before.”

Nevertheless, he is approaching his 68th birthday now, and felt the time had come to move on. He and his wife, Viola, have bought a house in Ipswich, where he was once a vicar, and will retire there. “There are other things I want to do.”

He glances around in the Deanery library. “There are so many books in this room that I haven’t had time to experience in the way I would like to experience them. And my wife and I are looking forward to going to the theatre and to concerts, which I haven’t had time to do.”

Before that, of course, there is the small matter of hosting the Queen. She will come to the Minster as the guest of the Archbishop, Dr John Sentamu, to distribute Maundy money.

But it is the Dean who will escort her inside the cathedral, and who will be responsible for ensuring the Maundy service goes smoothly. “I’ll see her to her place, and then withdraw to keep a watchful eye on things.”

It will be the second time the Queen has distributed Maundy money in York – she came in 1972. It is rare for her to go to the same place twice. “But it is delightful that she will be here for the city’s 800th.”

It is especially significant because this is the year of the London Olympics, the Dean says. Attention will be focussed on the capital. “So her visit will be a great celebration of the north of England.”

The priest who has been in charge for the last eight years of one of the finest Gothic cathedrals in the world was born in Shrewsbury, on the Welsh borders in Shropshire, almost 68 years ago. His father was a policeman who rose through the ranks to become a chief superintendent.

There was never really any prospect of his son following in his footsteps, however. “He never really wanted to be a policeman himself, but there was no other work when he first started,” the Dean says.

The Jones were a churchgoing family – and as he grew up, there was never really any doubt in his mind about what he himself wanted to do.

He has always loved buildings and architecture – hence his passion for the structure of the Minster itself.

“But apart from that I have known from the age of eight that there was nothing else really on the cards than the church. I can remember sitting in the choir stalls (at the family church) thinking I ought to remember what the vicar is saying because it may be useful one day.”

He went to grammar school in Shrewsbury, then won a place to study English Literature at Cambridge. Having graduated, he spent two more years at Cambridge studying theology, then went to theological college in Oxford. On being ordained, he became curate at a small town – Limpsfield– in the Surrey stockbroker belt.

He made it his duty to visit every house in the parish – and found all of human life there. “I found rural slums, and pop singers in gold-plated luxury. There was even a whole chapter of Hells Angels I gathered around me.”

He also met Viola, who was to become his wife. “She was the church warden’s daughter.”

The pair married in 1973, by which time he had already moved to become the Dean’s Vicar at St Albans Cathedral. After several years, he moved again to become Vicar of St Michael’s in Boreham Wood, a working-class parish on the northern edge of London. He spent six years there, becoming interested in what he calls ‘urban ministry’.

Being a vicar in an urban area is very different to being in a rural parish, he says. You are not automatically part of an established hierarchy. “You have no established place at all. You’ve got to know what you’re about and what you can offer.”

From Boreham Wood, he and the family – he has three daughters – moved to Ipswich, where he was vicar of St Mary-Le-Tower. He loved Ipswich – “an actual, working, grubby town!” – and felt deeply at home there. There was a wonderful repertory theatre, he says. “We went to every production.”

He stayed in the Suffolk town throughout his 40s, the period which is “when you’re at your maximum productivity”, he says.

Then one day he received a letter from the Prime Minister, John Major. “It asked me if I would be Dean of Exeter.”

The family found themselves moving into the ancient medieval Deanery in the Devon city. He was 50, and expected to be there until he retired. But in 2004 he received another letter, this time from Prime Minister Tony Blair. It invited him to become Dean of York.

He debated with himself whether it was what he wanted. But ultimately he said yes.

“If you get a job like that, do you really want to say no?”

Eight years on, he feels it is time to be going. Lottery funding has been secured for the York Minster Revealed project, and work is well under way on the Great East Window.

Nevertheless, he will miss York and its Minster. For him, the Minster is more than just a building. It is a symbol of a certain way of living.

He gazes out at the magnificent medieval stonework. “It is beautiful, because of the sheer design. But it feels beautiful, too. There were generations of experience that went into building it.”

It is a cathedral built over generations, by people who did not live very long, but who were all part of a shared effort and tradition, he says.

Today, he believes we have lost much of that sense of shared effort. “The way we live now is oddly chaotic and discontinuous.” But the Minster is a constant, physical reminder of a sense of community and togetherness we’re in danger of losing. “It is a symbol of things working together.”

Long may it remain so.

The Dean of York is by his own admission a man of contradictions. He describes himself as ‘part hierarchical Tory’ and ‘part to the left of Gandhi’.

What does he mean by that, exactly?

“I feel strongly on the left in many things, but also a deep veneration for our institutions, and the things that come with them.” He’s happy to let these two elements co-exist inside him, he says. Not being a politician he does not have to decide between them.

He admits he was ‘enormously privileged’ to have been able to study for so long at university – and to have had the state pay for his education.

“My parents were not poor, but they were not wealthy either, they didn’t have a lot of money. In those days the kindly state removed the burden of it (paying university fees) from them.”

That sounds as though he thinks the state should still pay for university education? He chooses his words with care. Back then only a small minority of people went to university. “I think that was a marvellous thing (the state paying for university education), but I don’t see how you could afford to run that system and have really wide public access to university.”