The act of walking is something many of us take for granted once mastered as a toddler.
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?
Credit: Adam Hilton, 2022