The recent approval of plans to adapt the former canteen and Alliance House at the Carriageworks on Holgate Road is, in many ways, a quiet success story.

Dating from the 1880s and once part of York’s vast railway manufacturing complex, these buildings remind us that York’s railway heritage was not only about engines and engineering, but about people, skills, and community.

That Network Rail is now set to bring them back into use is welcome. It follows, however, a near miss. The partial collapse of the canteen roof in April 2023, after a period of neglect, and subsequent proposals for demolition, showed how easily heritage can slip from “valued” to “vulnerable.”

Buildings are rarely lost overnight; more often through inattention or delay than by criminal damage (such as the demolition of the “Crooked House” pub in Staffordshire in 2023).

It was in direct response to this threat that York Civic Trust established the city’s Heritage at Risk Register, inviting nominations from the public. While national surveys suggested York had little heritage at risk, local experience told a different story. These registers tend to focus on designated assets. York, with its high number of listed buildings, can appear well protected on paper, yet that picture is incomplete.

The York Heritage at Risk Register takes a broader view. It is understood to be unique in the UK in being both initiated and maintained by a local amenity society, and in inviting entries directly from the public. It allows “heritage” to be shaped not only by formal designation, but by lived experience – what communities recognise as part of their story.

This approach sits alongside the York Local Heritage List, established in 2007. That list includes around 170 buildings and spaces which contribute to the city’s character but fall short of national designation. They range from bowling greens, air-raid shelters to former post offices and oddities such as the Bile Beans sign.

Picture: Colin McLean

Yet the record since 2007 is sobering. Over 20 locally listed assets have been lost through demolition or drastic alteration. In the city centre, half of those once identified have disappeared. Names like Reynard’s Garage have been erased. In places such as Piccadilly, the cumulative effect of change is hard to ignore. Only the listed Red Lion pub and the facade of the Banana Warehouse remain, raising questions about whether the conservation area still reflects a coherent historic entity.

This is why a local Heritage at Risk Register is not simply a list for its own sake. York hardly needs more lists to prove its historic importance; with more than 1,300 nationally designated assets, its significance is beyond doubt. Rather, the register can act as an early warning system and a catalyst for action. It highlights buildings before they reach irreversible decline and gives communities a way to articulate what they value.

There are already signs of how this might evolve.

The “Our Place” project in Acomb and Westfield is expected to bring forward new candidates – sites that may never feature in a national survey but are central to local identity. In this way, the register becomes a tool for discovering, not only saving, heritage.

All of this takes on added significance in the context of the Government’s current planning consultation. The drive to streamline decision-making is understandable, particularly in the face of housing and infrastructure needs.

But there is a risk that, in simplifying processes, the quieter mechanisms of local understanding are diminished. Heritage, especially at the local level, does not always fit neatly into national frameworks or expedited timelines.

Long gone – The former Reynards garage/ aircraft factory on Piccadilly, York – now the site of Spark York. Picture David Harrison

A locally grounded register offers a counterbalance. While not a formal planning tool, it helps ensure decisions are informed not only by policy, but by knowledge within the community. It creates a space where concerns can be raised early, patterns of neglect identified, and intervention considered before options narrow. It can range from major sites like Bootham Park Hospital, empty since 2015, to less visible but vulnerable assets such as York’s archaeological deposits, threatened by climate change and changes to the water table.

The story of the Carriageworks buildings shows what is possible when heritage is recognised in time. The lesson of sites already lost is what happens when it is not.

Between those outcomes lies the quiet often unglamorous work of paying attention – of looking up and spotting buddleia growing, slipped tiles, evidence of trespass, and then speaking up.

Check out York Citizen’s Heritage at Risk Register:

The post York Heritage at Risk Register highlights vulnerable sites first appeared on York Civic Trust.

In the 1850s, at the request of the City Authorities, two captured naval guns from the Crimean War with Tsarist Russia were presented to York and mounted near the Blue Bridge in St George’s Field. Pointed down the Ouse, the guns offered no real strategic defence, but they performed a theatrical assertion of readiness, an echo of imperial naval confidence in the heart of an inland city. They stood for decades as civic trophies until the Second World War, when they were removed and scrapped during the national drive for metal.

York is filled with physical reminders of conflict. Our very foundations are military: Eboracum, legionary fortress of Rome; medieval walls built and rebuilt for centuries; Clifford’s Tower dominating the skyline; and numerous memorials to citizens and soldiers lost in war. Yet amid these stone and bronze landmarks, far less known – and far less celebrated – are York’s symbols dedicated not to war, but to peace.

These monuments are smaller, quieter and often startlingly vulnerable. They do not dominate the landscape, but ask instead for reflection, compassion and remembrance of our shared humanity. In a city renowned for its Quaker heritage – with its conversations about justice, non-violence and social reform – these peace symbols deserve far greater awareness.

Take Tower Gardens, where a single rose tree was planted in 2012 in memory of the 1190 massacre of York’s Jews. The ‘Souvenir d’Anne Frank’ rose travelled from Japan, having been grafted from a flower sent there by Anne Frank’s father in the 1970s.

From that one rose, others were distributed across Japan as symbols of peace. This living memorial links the city to a global story of resistance to hatred and the hope of reconciliation.

In the Memorial Gardens on Leeman Road is a bed of peace roses. Planted in 1986 as part of the UN’s ‘Year of International Peace’ and an act of civic optimism during the later years of the Cold War – a time when nuclear anxieties were real – they offered a tangible symbol of a more hopeful future.

The roses remain, blooming quietly beside more dominant memorials to twentieth-century conflicts.

Then there are Rowntree Park’s peace doves – perhaps the most delicate of York’s peace symbols, and possibly the most emblematic of their fragility. Installed in 1921 as part of the Rowntree family’s wider commitment to community wellbeing, the dovecote with its white doves formed part of the memorial to Rowntree staff who served in the First World War.

The current flock are descendants of the originals: a rare example of a peace symbol that is literally alive. Their survival, however, has often depended on public campaigns and volunteer care – a reminder of how easily such symbols can fade.

Less well known still is the Norway Maple in St Helen’s Churchyard near St Sampson’s Square. Planted in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Association, it was intended as a living celebration of international cooperation. Since then, it has faced repeated threats from redevelopment and simple neglect. Its story mirrors a broader pattern: peace, it seems, is not only harder to achieve, but harder to keep alive in the public realm. Other cities have formal Peace Gardens. Why not York?

What connects all these monuments is their precariousness. None are grand. They do not stand atop mounds or battlements. Instead, they are tucked beside footpaths, planted in borders, or hidden in dovecotes. Their modesty is intentional, but it also leaves them exposed – to indifference, weather, redevelopment, or the quiet erosion of time.

Yet there’s a lesson in this. Peace, when first achieved, can feel monumental, but as the years pass it is often taken for granted. York’s peace symbols are small precisely because peace itself is something to be nurtured. Their fragility reflects our own responsibility to protect it.

At a moment when global tensions feel alarmingly close again, York’s lesser-known peace monuments invite us to consider not only our city’s long military past, but the quieter values that underpin its civic life.

By Duncan Marks
Planning and Heritage Manager at York Civic Trust

The post York’s Quiet Monuments to Peace first appeared on York Civic Trust.

York holds one of the country’s richest concentrations of historic almshouses and shows how centuries of philanthropy and design can still guide us today.

Almshouses – charitable housing for people in need, often older or widowed – have deep roots in York. From small widow’s cottages to grand Georgian façades, they chart the city’s evolving balance between charity, architecture and social welfare.

York can even claim England’s first almshouse, founded around 936AD in the time of King Athelstan, later becoming St Leonard’s Hospital. While this oldest example may no longer survive, York has one of the earliest still in its original form – Ingram House – and an unusually dense variety of later types.

Ingram House on Bootham dates from the 1630s. It was built by Sir Arthur Ingram for “ten poor York widows” in red brick with a distinctive tower and reused Norman doorway from the old Priory off Micklegate. Residents once received stipends and gowns – a rare example of organised social housing centuries before the welfare state. It embodies early modern charity in architectural form and remains a powerful symbol of civic generosity.

Women were central to York’s almshouse story. Lady Sarah Hewley’s almshouses on St Saviourgate were founded in 1700 and endowed for “poor Protestant women,” mostly non-conformists, and the trust continues today.

Dorothy Wilson’s 1719 foundation supported ten women and educated 20 boys, with a handsome Georgian building by Foss Bridge.

Lady Ann Middleton, widow of a York sheriff, left provision for 20 widows of freemen. Her almshouse on Skeldergate was rebuilt in 1829 to include a garden courtyard and survives as Middletons Hotel. These benefactors worked in an age when few women could act publicly – philanthropy, even in death, offered a rare path to civic influence.

Mary Wandesford’s bequest provided homes for unmarried women over fifty. Wandesford House (1739–43), set back from Bootham, is a fine seven-bay classical façade, complete with a statue of its benefactor. Its architectural dignity showed that social care was built to last – and to be seen. Similarly, Ingram House, built in durable brick when most of York was still timber, demonstrated quality and permanence as moral virtues.

The Stirling Prize-winning Appleby Blue Almshouse also received this year’s Neave Brown Award for social inclusion, highlighting a truth York has long known – good housing is about connection as much as construction. Almshouses combine independence with shared space and dignity with community – a humane middle ground between isolation and institutional care.

The prize also shows that such pastoral buildings, especially those designed to combat loneliness, are far from relics – they remain a model for modern living. The Heslington Almshouses Charity still offers accommodation for older women in need or hardship, recently adding a small bungalow to its village cluster. The Jane Wright Almshouses in Ogleforth, founded in 1675, now provides 11 self-contained flats around a communal courtyard – a modern interpretation of a 17th-century idea. Both show how centuries-old trusts evolve to meet contemporary need: modest, independent dwellings bound by community.

Twentieth century examples of York almshouses include John Burrill Almshouses on Clifton Green, and the John Hunt Memorial Homes on Fulford Road. They offer formally set living around generous communal green spaces. Such almshouses help form a continuous thread through the city’s story: medieval bedes-houses, Georgian terraces, Victorian rebuilds and modern adaptations. This charitable trust model – endowment, trustees and oversight – has endured longer than many institutions of the state.

These schemes show that almshouses are not heritage curiosities but active parts of York’s housing ecology. In an age of ageing populations and stretched welfare budgets, their model of small-scale philanthropy offers lessons for new development and civic planning alike.

For some, such private generosity might feel uncomfortably close to an American model of philanthropy, risking dilution of the welfare state’s aims. Yet high standards of design and care from this charitable tradition can serve as a benchmark for all forms of provision. Planners and designers could take cues from their enduring features – courtyards, gardens, modest scale and neighbourliness – when shaping later-life housing.

York’s almshouses reveal an unbroken lineage of compassion in brick and mortar. They remind us that community can be designed, endowed and sustained – and that some of the most humane ideas in housing are, in truth, the oldest.

Duncan Marks is the planning and heritage manager of York Civic Trust

The post How historic York almshouses set example for today first appeared on York Civic Trust.

What are the ings?

The term “ings” comes from Old Norse, meaning “meadow” or “water meadow”. These low-lying grasslands flood naturally when the Ouse or Foss overtop their banks. For centuries, their flooding prevented them being built on or ploughed up, so they became communal hay meadows and grazing grounds, managed by the rhythms of the year: hay cut in summer, aftermath grazing in autumn, and left to rest in winter when the waters returned.
This ancient system of management has left a remarkable ecological and cultural legacy. No other English city has such large tracts of flood meadow woven into its fabric, and York has a greater network of ings than anywhere else in the UK.

A rare habitat

Traditional floodplain meadows are now scarce: more than 95% of Britain’s species-rich grasslands have been lost since the mid-20th century. York’s ings are therefore exceptional. Clifton and Rawcliffe Ings alone cover around 100 hectares and are designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Fulford and Middlethorpe Ings add another 50 hectares, and Poppleton extends the total to nearly 200 hectares of nationally important habitat.
These meadows host a diversity of wildflowers and grasses, supporting invertebrates and ground-nesting birds. They also form part of the Lower Derwent Valley Special Protection Area, internationally recognised for its birdlife. In flood, they attract lapwing, snipe and redshank; in summer, they blaze with buttercups and meadow foxtail.

Flood defence with heritage

The ings do double duty: ecologically vital and crucial for flood management. By allowing the Ouse and Foss to spill naturally into them, pressure is eased on downstream communities and the city centre. Natural England and the Environment Agency highlight them as a textbook example of traditional landscapes providing modern climate resilience.

These are not just scenic edges to York. They are working fields, still delivering the same functions they have for centuries.

A living heritage

The names themselves — “Clifton Ings”, “Fulford Ings” — are medieval survivals. Rights of haymaking and grazing were jealously guarded by York’s freemen and parishes, preventing enclosure or privatisation. That stubborn defence is why they remain today, unlike in most cities.

They also carry stories. Clifton Ings hosted York’s first official race meetings until 1730, when repeated flooding forced a move to the Knavesmire. Nun Ings took its name from land once endowed to a Benedictine nunnery close by in Clementhorpe.

Few other cities can boast anything similar. Oxford’s Port Meadow, at 180 hectares, is perhaps the best-known, its uninterrupted grazing rights dating back to Domesday. Cambridge has commons along the Cam, smaller but significant. Exeter and Hereford retain fragments, but nothing on York’s scale. What makes York distinctive is its multiple large meadows across both sides of the city, still managed in ways recognisable to a medieval farmer.

Threats and opportunities

The ings face pressures: flood defence works, farming changes, urban growth and climate change. They can also be taken for granted. Waterlogged and quiet in winter, they lack the visibility of the Minster or walls.

That makes it vital to value them. Projects by City of York Council, Natural England and volunteers are restoring habitats and monitoring wildlife. More could be done to promote them — from clearer walking routes to school projects — so people see them as landscapes of national importance, not just “spare fields”.

A resource for the future

As York looks to the 21st century — managing growth, adapting to climate change, improving wellbeing — the ings stand ready as a resource. They provide free flood storage, breathing space, and some of the city’s richest biodiversity. They also root York in its past, linking Viking settlers who gave them their name with today’s residents who still walk their paths.

Nationally, they stand alongside Oxford’s Port Meadow and Cambridge’s commons as unique survivals. York’s ings deserve recognition as one of the city’s greatest assets — proof that heritage is not always built of stone, but sometimes grown in grass and shaped by water.

Duncan Marks,
Heritage & Planning Manager,
York Civic Trust

The post York’s ings – a national treasure hiding in plain sight first appeared on York Civic Trust.

It adds to York’s reputation as a ‘Bookshop Town’ and softens recent closures of much-loved retailers such as Fossgate Books, Ken Spelman Books, and Borders.

But York’s history of bookshops and printing is much older, varied, and traces of it are still present.

By the sixteenth century there was a close connection between publishing and selling of books in York. The first printing press in the city was established by Frederick Freez, a Dutchman, in 1496 – only two decades after the technology was first brought to England.

Besides London, York was one of only three places in the country allowed to operate a printing press. But the newfangled machines upset the scribe’s guild in the city, as it challenged the traditional role of handwritten texts that dates to the eighth-century scholar, Alcuin of York.

Publishing and selling of books were closely connected with religious texts and the Church. It helps explain why the Stonegate and Minster Gates area of the city – literally at the gates of the Precinct of the Minster – was the centre of York’s printing and bookselling by the sixteenth century and continued to be for several centuries. Minster Gates was even known for a long time as “Bookbinders Alley”.

Above a shopfront on the corner of Minster Gates and High Petergate, there’s a figure of Minerva, the classical goddess of wisdom, propped up on a stack of books, tome in hand. It was created in 1801 as an advertisement for John Wolstenholme who had a bookshop here.

It was the English Civil War and King Charles I’s choice of York as his northern centre of power that bolstered and diversified the city’s publishing and bookselling prowess. St. William’s College began publishing and dispersing royalist propaganda in 1642. The master printer of such tracts was Stephen Bulkley, who self-stylised himself as “Printer to the King’s Majesty”. A telling title of one of his publications is The King on his throne: or A discourse maintaining the dignity of a king, the duty of a subject, and the unlawfulnesse of rebellion.

Thereafter came the heyday for publishing and bookselling in York. The bookshops were lively social spaces where literary and enlightened ideas were discussed.

Of the publications of this era were the first historical accounts of York, and in later centuries historic maps and heritage guides for York were printed here. Such publications were instrumental in establishing York as a heritage city and becoming a major tourist attraction in the modern age.

One celebrated bookseller of the era is John Hinxman. He published the first ever copies of Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy in 1759 from his bookshop at No.35 Stonegate. (This event is marked today by the world’s first stained-glass blue plaque.)

No.35 Stonegate had been a bookshop and publishing house since 1682, and in 1718 was where York’s first newspaper, The York Mercury, was published. A carved golden bible sign hangs above the entrance. It is known as the “Sign of the Bible” – the name of the first bookshop.

There’s a carved figure next door, part of the shopfront of No.33. It’s a little red devil and signifies the building’s historic use as a printer. Why a red devil? It’s suggested that because operators of printing presses always had inky black figures, they were associated with the dark arts!

More recently, the trade of rare and vintage books in the city helped establish the York National Book Fair in 1974. It’s grown into the largest rare, antiquarian & out-of-print book fair in the UK and Europe.

The history of York’s bookshops also features a terrorist attack. A bomb exploded in September 1989 at the Penguin bookshop in the city. The device was one of five sent to bookshops in the UK after Penguin’s publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in 1988, which had led to a global protest. The bomb in York shattered windows but nobody was injured nor ever charged.

On a happier note – we now have the York Centre for Print’s “Thin-Ice Press”. Housed in the beautiful St Anthony’s Garden on Peasholme Green, it ensures that the historic skill of traditional book making in York is carried forward.

By Duncan Marks
August 2025

The post Staying on the write track; York’s bookshops over the centuries first appeared on York Civic Trust.

Putting you on the spot, can you recall the details of York’s coat of arms? I bet most of us can’t, whereas you’ll easily visualise the Yorkshire flag.

If so, what does it say about the merits of the city’s official emblem as a form of logo, or, in modern phrasing, ‘brand’? Or does it matter if our city emblem is a bit dull and forgettable?

A recent moment of serendipity got me thinking about our coat of arms and why it has seemingly never changed, whereas so many logos in life are continually changing and, from it, offers far greater public interest.

Scrolling through an online news feed while stuck in traffic on the A59 at the very edge of the city’s boundary, an item popped up about a possible ‘leak’ of next season’s Leeds United’s home strip. It proved to be fake, of course, but there was a moment of excitement that the football shirt would feature the classic ‘smiley’ badge of the 1970s as its new logo (if you know, you know!) And then, looking up to spot the city’s boundary sign, complete with the coat of arms emblem…

York’s civic coat of arms is a shield of St George’s flag with five lions arranged across the red cross bit. There’s a saltire cross formed of a sword and mace behind the shield, with a ceremonial cap of crimson velvet lined with ermine resting on top.

Its history is more interesting than how it looks. York was granted its shield of arms under Edward III, who effectively made the city the capital due to making it his base to wage campaigns against the Scots. He even held numerous parliaments in the city, and, in 1328, married his Queen, Phillippa of Hainault, here. Why there are five lions is unknown, but until 2015 a former coaching house on Walmgate, now the Watergate Inn, was known as The Five Lions.

As to the sword, mace and cap, a physical sword was presented to the city by Richard II in 1389 to symbolise privileges bestowed on York. (It was lost in the late 18th century). He also presented a mace (since disappeared) and cap (disintegrated) when he returned to the city with his Court in 1392 to escape an outbreak of plague in London. But the addition of these to the shield of arms of the city as Civil Regalia seems to have come from a bit of design whimsy of 1730 to complement a fireplace in the then new Mansion House. Besides, these additions have no heraldic authority as they aren’t recorded by the controlling body, the College of Arms.

So, what’s the message found in our city’s coat of arms? The use of lions, the mace and sword are heavily associated with the monarchy, especially as a military force. Even the cross of St George is about war, being “the military saint”, and often connected with The Crusades.

This might still appeal to some traditionalists – and those who have a grudge against the Scots! – but for many it’s a message of power formed in the 14th century, a time and context remarkably different from how we live today.

Should our attitude towards the city’s emblem be more organic and change over time – just as football strips and club logos seemingly change every season? York’s rich history of chocolate, Quakers, railways, merchants, nurseries … even the tansy beetle might have been or be worthy inclusions to the emblem.

If this sounds sacrilegious towards our heritage, then here’s two thoughts. New civic emblems and flags are created and change over time. A gold border with acorns was added to the historic arms of Chester in 1974 to acknowledge the inclusion of new land from a major boundary change. The flag of Yorkshire – the House of York’s white rose on a blue background – only dates from 1960 (the flag of Lancaster, only since 2008!), even if it already feels iconic and historic.

Secondly, this is not a rally cry to ‘replace’ the emblem through some act of iconoclastic destruction. It’s wonderful that our city emblem is literally ‘trapped in stone’ in York: on the façade of the Bars of City Walls, the drinking fountain of the Museum Gardens, and Mansion House, among others. But should we design and introduce a new version to reflect our modern city?

By Duncan Marks, July 2025

The post York’s historic coat of arms: time for a modern redesign? first appeared on York Civic Trust.

The Government is set to launch a public appeal this summer for us to nominate our crafts, customs and celebrations.

They have in mind things like the Notting Hill Carnival, Hogmanay, Highland dancing, and artisanal crafts such as roof thatching and basket-weaving. It will form a UK-wide inventory that champions our rich tapestry of customs and traditions, helping to make us more aware of them and protect them for future generations.

York has a wealth of artisanal crafts; many connected with the evolution of the city. The Minster’s brand-new Centre of Excellence for Heritage Craft Skills builds on centuries of masterful stonemasonry in the city that dates to at least the foundations of The Minster in 1230.

York has a wealth of artisanal crafts; many connected with the evolution of the city. The Minster’s brand-new Centre of Excellence for Heritage Craft Skills builds on centuries of masterful stonemasonry in the city that dates to at least the foundations of The Minster in 1230.

York’s stained-glass craftsmanship also dates to the medieval era, and lives on today through the work of several studios in the city.

This artisan craftmanship is supported by The York Glaziers Trust, as the oldest and largest specialist stained glass conservation studio in the UK, and one of the largest in Europe. The generous bursaries of the York Consortium for Conservation and Craftsmanship support the conservation of built and artistic heritage, and the craft skills necessary for its preservation.

But what about York’s customs and traditions that offer a more diverse public involvement? Two come to mind – although you may know of others?

York’s Mystery Plays have the oldest and largest cycle of plays, 48 in total and dating from the mid-14th century. Suppressed in 1569, they were relaunched in 1951 as part of the national Festival of Britain celebrations. The plays cover biblical events, and in the medieval era were funded by and directly involved the city’s numerous Craft Guilds. The plays were presented on carts and wagons dressed for the occasion and stopping to perform at 12 ‘stations’ across the city.

Less well-known, at least beyond the city’s boundaries, is the custom of primary school children in Poppleton dancing around a maypole on the village green. They’ve done this annually since at least 1945, although as a maypole is first recorded on the green in 1830 the tradition is possibly nearly 200 years old. This pales in comparison to the historic roots of the tradition which can be traced back to Ancient Roma and German pagan rituals connected with celebrating spring and fertility. Similar to the Mystery Plays, this custom was repressed when Protestantism became the state religion in the 16th century and took centuries to recover.

What do these traditions tell us about York and its relationship to the past?

Firstly, that the city is proud of its rich and longstanding history. Both the York Mystery Plays and Poppleton maypole dancing were consciously resurrected in the 20th century. Their relaunch was part of wider, national events – the Festival of Britain and the end of the Second World War – and so could be read as the city looking at its historic customs as a way of celebrating the national here and now.

Both rely on people getting involved. The Mystery Plays, past and present, has thousands of volunteers on stage and behind the scenes in the preparation and logistics of running the plays. Only a tiny fraction of those involved are paid “professionals”. For Year 6 pupils at Poppleton Ousebank School, it’s something of a rite of passage to dance around a maypole, ribbon in hand, hoping you don’t mess up the forming latticework by going the wrong way; weighty expectations on young shoulders!

But none of these traditions are unique. There are a small number of stonemason and stained-glass centres elsewhere in the UK. Chester, Coventry and Wakefield also host mystery plays. Maypoles and dancing celebrations can be found across the UK and overseas.

Does it matter if York has no unique traditions of its own?

Should we be more interested in making our future than resurrecting forgotten customs?

Indeed, perhaps we should be looking more at what we’re enjoying doing today that might become a tradition of tomorrow. It’s of course difficult to look around and spot what might still be happening in say a hundred years’ time. In our globalised, commercial world, it will also be challenging to establish a custom or tradition that is or remains unique to York.

By Duncan Marks
May 2025

The post A look back at York’s ancient customs and traditions first appeared on York Civic Trust.

Who, for example, knew that we’ve the oldest railway water tank in the world, or that there’s a Second World War public air-raid shelter in a shop’s basement on Spurriergate?

These two unusual items of heritage came to light in recent planning applications. But their potential fate – one to be repaired, the other demolished – prompts us to think why some of our more peculiar types of heritage are at risk.

But first, that water tank… It’s to the rear of the Railway Institute buildings, just off Queen Street. The tank was built in 1839 by the Walker Foundry of Walmgate for the York & North Midland Railway Company. It served the city’s earliest, temporary railway station while a more permanent, grander station was erected where the council’s West Offices now stands.

It’s amazing that the water tank has survived to this day; although Grade II listed in 1997, it has served no practical railway function for nearly half a century.

The air-raid shelter on Spurriergate is also in a Grade II listed building, although not mentioned in the listed description.

While York had many public air-raid shelters in city-centre commercial basements, these have been cleared since the Second World War and returned to business use.

For some, the Spurriergate air-raid shelter is an as important piece of heritage as, say, the fancy 1840s building above it. It’s a rare and evocative historic structure that gives us a tangible feeling – admittedly a terrifying one – of what the York ‘Blitz’ experience was like. Imagine sitting cramped alongside strangers in the near dark as menacing men in their bomber planes in the sky above aim to destroy you and your city.

God forbid we ever must hide once more from dangers in the sky. If we did, however, we’d no doubt want to use something a bit more robust, considerably more modern, and accessible than a Second World War basement air-raid shelter!

And in many ways, this may be why the Spurriergate shelter comes to be demolished. What practical, alternative purpose does it hold? Is it significant enough to outweigh the property owner’s understandable desire to use their basement for retail?

The future of the water tank building looks far rosier. The Station Gateway scheme is set to provide a loop road around the Railway Institute buildings and the proposals are for the water tank to be converted as York Railway Institute Band’s practice room. While no longer used for filling steam locomotives with water, the building will at least still have a railway connection in housing the band. (Besides, how charming it’ll be to pass the world’s oldest water tank and hear a booming brass band in rehearsal!).

The message seems to be that there’s a real risk to heritage if there’s little scope for adapting it for new use. We might like to think our heritage is protected because of lofty ideals of it being culturally important to us. And yet, there’s an economic viability side of heritage protection too, and this can sit awkwardly with such principles.

A historic building can readily be converted as, say, a hotel (The Grand), residential (the former Terry’s factory), or commercial space (The Guildhall). But quirkier heritage such as bomb shelters or the historic former-Theatre Royal arches on Fulford Road offer little practical conversion opportunity. It’s a great shame, as our quirkier heritage is often what captures the public imagination the most, offering the most interesting and memorable stories.

Indeed, some of what we now cherish as the city’s key historic assets have themselves been at risk of loss in the past due to difficulty in adapting for new purposes. The City Walls were at serious risk of demolition in the 19th century when the physical defence of the city was no longer required. Similarly, Clifford’s Tower fell out of use as a fortification by the 17th century, and in the next century was essentially a giant crumbling garden folly.

This isn’t to say that an air-raid shelter is as important an object of heritage as Clifford’s Tower. But it does prompt us to recognise that the heritage we see as important today might not be so tomorrow, and vice versa, and that it’s especially at risk if it has no practical, adaptable – and dare we say it – commercial use.

Duncan Marks, Planning & Heritage Manager at the York Civic Trust

The post York’s quirky past: can we save it all? first appeared on York Civic Trust.

And yet, York is criss-crossed with trails, footpaths, and alleys that connect us to those who walked in the city centuries before us. Their choice of routes has directly shaped some of our modern road, path and cycling networks.

York’s unofficial paths came to mind recently during the council consultation for a new path between the Salisbury Road area and Scarborough Bridge. There’s clear indication of where people like to walk here (but it wasn’t one of the options). It’s close by the willow trees along the riverbank – illustrated by the well-worn track caused by people and a fair few dogs walking on the grass.

These types of tracks are called ‘desire lines’ or ‘desire paths’. They’re often the most-direct route between two places. But they can also come from other reasons – the most scenic, the safest feeling, the most quiet.

The oldest human footprints found outside Africa are at Happisburgh in Norfolk. They’re c.900,000 years old, include footprints of children, and were made in wet mud that became fossilised. It shows the simple act of walking as the earliest way humanity engaged with and left its trace upon nature; desire lines are part of this ongoing story.

In York, desire lines are most evident in grasslands, seen across common lands such as the Strays, Hob Moor and Clifton Backies. They are shown as simple earthen footways on the earliest Ordnance Survey maps of York, or etched in vegetation in early aerial photographs taken over the city. No doubt these types of tracks were shortcuts in centuries prior to this.

Much of York’s urban centre is a legacy of desire lines formed in the centuries after the Romans. The Romans were rigid and predictable in how they planned fortified camps and towns; Eboracum was effectively a grid system to garrison 5,000 legionnaires. After the Romans left, and the city fell into ruin, it was the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings who weaved new routes between the Roman ruins: Blake Street, Finkle Street and Goodramgate are testament to this.

In the case of New Walk along the River Ouse, a panoramic esplanade created in the 1730s, and one of the earliest in the country, ironically even this is not spared. Parallel tracks on the bank of the river run alongside the Georgian elm tree-lined walkway. They may have been made by those who simply prefer the sunshine along the river than the dappled shade of ancient elms, but likely, too, by children, in particular, who prefer the variation of a track in grass, where tree roots and level changes add variation, much more fun than the boring predictability of the tarmaced New Walk path.

But what can desire lines tell us about York’s past?

Tangibly, they show us how parts of the city were once separate and even remote, requiring tracks to be trodden to connect them. They tell us where people were permitted to roam, or at least considered the risk of trespass worth it. Children, too, who are often excluded from the annals of history, are particularly apt at making new routes, in play or, historically, the consequence of work tasks given to them.

Desire lines also help identify historic sites that were important to people. These are diverse, ranging from a river landing where the RSPCA centre is today, the Terry’s chocolate factory when a major employer, the Knavesmire for the races (some things don’t change), and the Tyburn on Tadcaster Road, where people were executed (some thing’s fortunately do change!).

They also indicate that our forefathers weren’t too dissimilar from us: leading perceivably busy lives, or simply lazy enough to opt for the shortest route possible.

Some of the historic York desire lines went on to be formalised as official, constructed paths and roads. A simple pathway that cut across Micklegate Stray on the earliest OS Map of 1852 is today’s Scarcroft Road. Where better to build a road or speculative housing than where people are evidently coming and going?

As man-made routes showing where we want to go, and not told to go, for some, desire lines are seen even as mini acts of defiance; two fingers raised against the social control aspect of modern urban planning. Should we observe more where us ‘masses’ talk with our feet, to help how we do urban design in York? Should we welcome children, especially, to show us where and how fun can feature as part of our grand designs?

The post York’s ancient ‘desire lines’ – the city paths of tomorrow? first appeared on York Civic Trust.

A new York Civic Trust blue plaque dedicated to mark the location of York’s 13thC Synagogue and the house of Aaron of York was revealed on Monday 9th September. It is on the facade of the ‘Next’ building on coney Street, and where the Synagogue stood.

The Synagogue was at the heart of Jewish medieval life in the city and at a time when York was amongst the most important Jewish centres in the country.

Dating from c.1205 to 1290, the Synagogue provides fresh perspective on the history of York’s Jewish community. After the tragic events of 1190 at Clifford’s Tower where the city’s Jewish community died as a result of antisemitic sentiments following the coronation of Richard the Lionheart, a group of Jewish individuals returned to live and work in York at the King’s behest. During the first half of the 13th century, this second Jewish community experienced growth and prosperity, making for a story of resilience, co-operation and success that had previously been overlooked in the face of the massacre of 1190.

This new insight has come out of ‘The Jewish Neighbourhoods’ research, part of the ‘StreetLife: York’ project that explored the history of Coney Street and run by the University of York. The project has discovered just how important York’s medieval Jewish community was in local and national life, and how central Coney Street was to it. 

Three important historic Jewish figures in the city, who each lived on Coney St, were Aaron and his wife, Henna, and his nephew, Josce Le Jovene. 

In 1236, Aaron assumed the position of arch-presbyter, or ‘Justiciar’, of the English Jews, a role appointed by the Crown to oversee the financial administration of the Jewry in England particularly in matters of taxation. Aaron lived in a stone house on Coney Street and the synagogue was just behind it. Following Aaron’s death in the 1260s, his widow, Henna, continued to make grants and manage her late husband’s business, striving to shield it from the increasingly harsh taxation and regulations imposed by the Crown. 

Josce lived in a prestigious stone house where Waterstones is on Coney Street. As a wealthy moneylender, his services extended to local monasteries, including Fountains Abbey.

Dr Louise Hampson of the University of York and StreetLife project, said, “The choice of Coney Street for York started us on a process of discovery and rediscovery of the significance of the Jewish community to York’s history in the 12th and 13th centuries, some aspects of which were known but the significance of which has not been fully appreciated. We are continuing to uncover just how central the cooperation between the Jewish community and the other powerbrokers in York was to the development of the medieval city.”

The uncovering of the plaque was performed by Rabbi Dr Elisheva Salamo and attended by several dozen people, including representatives of local and national Jewish communities, which have been involved in the plaque process including its phrasing and funding.  

Appointed in 2023, Rabbi Elisheva Salamo is York’s first resident Rabbi in eight hundred years. Rabbi Salamo said, “We stand at the locus of an old hope after terrible times for Jews in York and throughout England. This second synagogue must have housed many scholarly debates, Shabbat prayers, and holiday celebrations. I hope it served only as a spiritual refuge and teaching center for all who dwelt in the city of York. It was erected in counterpoint to the rebuilt Clifford’s Tower, which was burned during the 1190 massacre. So do we hope to establish the building of our modern Jewish community, rising again in the face of antisemitism, as a strong, welcoming and holy place, a sign that Jews remain part of our wonderful city.”

This is the first blue plaque celebrating Jewish heritage in York. Whilst shopping and commercialism is sometimes said to be our ‘new religion’, the plaque shows that over the centuries our shopping streets were used by a wide range of fascinating people and uses.

The post Blue plaque celebrates 13thC York Synagogue first appeared on York Civic Trust.