A day out in York

After a hearty breakfast at our hotel we walked to Shipley station, just 5 minutes from our hotel. It was cold as we bought return tickets to York and joined the people waiting on the station. The trains are fairly frequent with one running through Shipley bound for Leeds every 15 minutes, so we didn’t have long to wait. There were no stops between Shipley and Leeds and we were soon there and looking for the platform for our connecting train to York.

The countryside whizzed by, we sat facing each other with a table between us, a bit of a novelty for us Aussies, but appreciated when the bloke came through with the refreshments trolley and we bought a cup of tea to chase away the cold! I had expected the trip to York to take a little longer but about 30 minutes or so and we were standing on the station at York. York is an interesting station, the platform area is long and curved. There are cast iron columns holding up a long curved roof, quite an architectural feat for its time.

York station

York station

The Medieval City Wall, opposite the station

 As soon as you leave the station and walk out onto Queen Street you are faced with evidence of York’s medieval past, as there across the road is part of the old city wall that once surrounded the city of York. Just by the station Queen Street becomes Station Street and the city wall crosses this and runs on to the river. The wall is preserved as much as possible and you are still able to follow its path around the city.

Michael, part of the City Wall behind him

We could see York Minster in the near distance

 We could also see the twin towers of York Minster on the skyline, it looked quite close and we headed towards it. York is like Oxford and Paris in that there is something to stop and look at every few steps and we marvelled at what was before us. We were walking parallel to the remnants of the city wall and soon found our way to the River Ouse where Station Street becomes Museum Street at Lendal Bridge. There are old buildings at each end of the bridge that now serve as sandwich shops, but may have been toll houses for the bridge. The bridge is relatively new having been built in 1863 it is cast iron and decorated with crests depicting the royal three lions and the white rose of York.

We approached the bridge and had our first veiw of Barker Tower

Looking Back along the city wall

Veiw along the River Ouse

The bridge with the white rose of York and the Royal crest

a sandwich shop at one end of the bridge

its partner at the other end of the bridge

Below the bridge there are towers on each side of the river dating back to the 14^th century. The first we passed was the Barker Tower which was linked, in earlier times to The Lendal Tower across the river, by a great iron chain to prevent boats passing into the city without paying a toll and as a defence in times of war. 

sign showing the City wall walk

Barker tower

Across the river to Lendal tower

 Barker tower

Lendal tower

We walked on with the city wall on our left until we came to the entrance to the Museum Gardens, where you can find the Yorkshire Museum and behind that The King’s Manor, The University of York, Archaeology Department. Time permitting we would like to visit the Museum but there was still a lot to explore first.  There was the ruins of an old church beside the gardens and the wall continued along behind the Library.

the city wall

the City wall

Gates to the Botanic Gardens

The Minster was at the end of the street

Church ruin next to the library

beside the church ruin

York Library

 We came to St Leonard’s Street where the Theatre Royal is situated in an old building that I thought was a church! On the opposite corner in Blake Street a columned building we saw is the Assembly Rooms built in 1730-1736. We stayed on Museum Street (which changed names to Duncombe Place as it crossed St Leonard’s Street) as we were almost at York Minster. There are churches everywhere in York and before we reached the Minster I stopped to take photos of St Wilfred’s Catholic Church, which is only about 40 metres from York Minster. It looks like it has been there forever! There was an impressive war memorial in a garden to our right as we approached the Minster, worth a photo but by now I really only had eyes for the very impressive York Minster which lay directly ahead of us.

Theatre Royal

The Assembly Rooms

4 veiws of  St Wilfred's

St Wilfred's

It is a huge structure larger than Notre Dame in Paris, it is listed as the largest Gothic cathedral north of the Alps, it houses the largest Medieval collection of stained glass windows in Britain. There have been several cathedrals on the site since the first minster, a wooden chapel used to baptize King Edwin of Northumbria in 627. As it stands today York Minster was begun in 1220 and completed 250 years later. There is scaffolding around parts of it as restoration work is ongoing. Carved and sculpted decoration is impressive but there is not as much as at Notre Dame, which does not take away the impact of either building.

 Veiws of York Minster

We walked along the side and followed a path that took us by Purey Cust Nuffield Hospital and into York Minster Dean’s Park. In the park beyond the Hospice is the ruin of an ancient wall, part of the Medieval palace of Archbishops, which is now a very peaceful and beautiful memorial to men of the 2^nd Division who have fought in battles from 1809 to 1945. The wall was restored as a memorial by the 2^nd Division and was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1987. At its centre set back in a sheltered garden area behind a barred fence is a stone monument with a plaque that reads “When you go home, Tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, We gave our today. It had the same impact on me that The Ode To the Fallen always does. This was a place of quiet and contemplation and we both spoke in hushed tones here.

on the left, entrance to Purey Cust Nuffield Hospital, in the centre the gates to Dean's Gardens

2nd Divsions Memorial wall

Dedication Plaque

"When you go home.......

 The path took us on to a chapel type building that is also part of Archbishop’s Palace and part of it houses the Minster Library and Archives. A plaque on the wall tells us that King Richard III invested his son the Prince of Wales here in1483. I am completely blown away at the thought that these very walls stood so long ago and have seen so much history being made as life passes through and around them.

Minster Library and Archives

We left Dean’s Park by a street called Minster Yard walking along cobbled streets by some lovely old homes and gardens that had a distinctly medieval feel, some were just old and occupied, some historically significant and occupied. Along the street, on our right the Minster loomed large with a lot of it covered here in scaffolding.

the gardens had an ancient feel to them

scafonfolding on the Minster

A wild looking overseer

On our left, Treasurer’s House, now a historic house tea rooms and gardens. The house was closed but the tea rooms and garden were open we walked along Chapter House Street and through Gray’s Court under a building to have a look at the tearooms and garden. The houses down Chapter House Street had doors that were not even as tall as Michael, they must have been short in those days!

Front of The Treasurer's House

Treasurer's House

Sign on the wall in Chapter House Street

cobbled Chapter Street

Michael in Chapter Street this door could be a headache for anyone over about 5 foot 8 inches

Gray's Court

The Tea Rooms

Through to the gardens

across the gardens to the back of the tea rooms

Leaving the gardens, the Minster was visible over the Treasurer's House

We walked back to Minster Yard and away from the Minster, around a bend we were confronted with an square surrounded by shops that were white and black timbered Tudor style on top of stone shop fronts. In the centre of the square was a fenced off stone column surrounded by a flat disc supported by 4 lions, no signs explained its significance but York hides layers and layers of human habitation going back to roman times and beyond and only a very small percentage has been excavated.

around a bend into College street we found.....

Tudor shops and the entrance to St Williams College

Entrance to St Williams College

The old column supportd by lions

From here we basically just wandered each new street held little treasures of architecture and history, our tummies told us it was time for lunch so of course we looked for a pub and found one that professes to be the “smallest beer house in the world” Called The Snickleway Inn, it certainly was tiny, I reckon the kitchen was little more than a glorified cupboard and Michel reckons the men’s loo was so small he had to lift the lid to close the door!! Regardless of the cramped conditions the food was good, although limited in choice which was understandable considering the space restrictions. We both had the Ploughman’s Lunch and a pint of shandy.

The pub where we  had lunch

reading the menu

A ploughman's lunch

Back on the street we kept walking in the general direction of the bridge and rail station just absorbing the atmosphere, a sign above an alleyway between buildings announced XIIIth Century Holy Trinity Church open for viewing. Our curiosity got the better of us and we wandered down the alley to find a delightful little church in its own yard with just a few unobtrusive gravestones, it was surrounded by buildings with another entry from the yard through a gate between the other buildings that led onto the street. This was truly a treasure, the church is still consecrated but does not have regular services. It does however hold 4 services a year, it is part of the Churches Conservation Trust. There was a lady in the church that welcomed us in and told me I could take photos and yes I could use a flash. As we wandered around a couple of blokes, who were also guides there, and they were really enthusiastic about this beautiful little church. They were a wealth of knowledge not just about the church but also the history about the area. There were only a few pews that belonged to the Victorian era the other seating was in family ‘stalls’ little boxed in areas from two different times some were 14^th century and some a little later. One of the blokes asked if I would like to sit in one? Oh yes please! He showed me where the floor level was about 2 or 3 ft below the current floor level and explained that it was the original floor level of the whole church, but as bodies were buried under the floor, sometimes several bodies deep, the floor level had risen! That explained the lack of headstones in the churchyard! I asked him about York’s application to have parts of the city declared as World heritage Sites because of what is under the city. He said that he had done some work in one of the historic gardens and in that particular area if you dig down more than 9 inches you have to have an archaeologist on site because of what you might unearth.  He also explained the 13^th and 14^th century stained glass windows in the church. Before the war, when it was imminent, he said all the stained glass windows in the churches in York were removed and stored for safe keeping and reinstalled when the war was over. He told me that York had the largest collection of Medieval stained glass windows in the world, as most of the churches dating from medieval times have stained glass windows the largest single collection of course being York Minsters. We probably spent upwards of half an hour in Holly Trinity chatting to these three very generous people and I came away with some information on the work that the Trust carries out.

down the passage

we found Holy Trinity

not many graves

inside Holy Trinity

the pulpit and one of the stalls

across the stalls to the stained glass windows

the main windows

one of the stalls, where I was invited to sit!

looking up from the original floor level to the current floor level

our final veiw of Holy Trinity

 It was around 3 o’clock by the time we left them and wandered through the streets roughly heading back in the direction where we thought we would find Lendal Bridge to take us back to the station. There were other churches from medieval times that we passed on our way back to the station, I think I love York every bit as much as I love Oxford. It had been a huge day we relaxed on the train on the way home where we shared a table with a young man who was very British what-ho and we discovered was a Cambridge graduate in physics and now doing his Doctorate at Durham University. Getting off at Leeds was a bit of a shock as the crowds waiting to board created a very narrow passage of people about 10 deep on either side that we had to push through to get off the train! Luckily the short trip to Shipley was nowhere near as crowded, though we did have to stand. Dinner at the hotel tonight and  earlyish to bed as we were both quite sleepy.