York's Hidden History

13/02/2025

Gone! The York railway station long-stay car park gremlin (see December 10) has vanished!

Perhaps it was a short-stay parking gremlin after all? Or perhaps its disappearance is connected to the imminent closure of the car park?

12/02/2025

"The graves ended abruptly and it was originally thought that this might have been where the Victorians carried out work on the site, but it soon became clear that it was in fact a bomb crater."

A Roman cemetery with more than 200 graves and a bomb crater have been found at York Central.

11/02/2025

Why is the Queen French? Because Tadcaster was too thin.

York Minster’s 2022 statue of Queen Elizabeth II stands out from the rest of the building stone. This is because she’s sculpted from French Lepine limestone, rather than the traditional dolostone (dolomitic limestone) from Tadcaster.

The statue is 6 foot 7 inches (2m) tall and Tadcaster Stone isn’t currently available in layers thick enough to sculpt a full-size royal personage from. A tiny queen, or a queen-of-many-pieces, would have been sub-optimal, so Lepine limestone was used instead.

This kind of information may or may not feature in our , coming to the city streets this summer.

10/02/2025

Together with others interested in increasing understanding and awareness of York's waterscapes, we've created a new working group as part of the York Climate Commission.

Find out more, and get involved:
https://www.yorkclimate.org.uk/working-groups

05/02/2025

Tho’Ouse is Frozen
May the Citty Flourish

Thanks so much to Izzy Williamson and all at Thin Ice Press for letting our ice walkers make this amazing print. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed being able to print their own unique souvenir of .

Do pop into Thin Ice Press HQ in St Anthony’s Gardens, Peasholme Green, to find out more about all the amazing heritage printing and workshops at the York Centre for Print.

02/02/2025

York Ice Trail: extinct creatures only.
1) Glyptodon, Micklegate
2) dodo, Goodramgate
3) Woolly rhinoceros (melted), Tower Street
4) Woolly mammoth, Fossgate
5) Megatherium, Tanners Moat (not recorded)

29/01/2025

Enjoyable and informative day at the Creative Centre for the Tourism Conference 2025. Lots of exciting events to look forward to over the coming year!

29/01/2025

Hot off the press! The ‘Origins’ 2025 Ice Trail map! Will you be able to find all 32 ice sculptures this weekend?

25/01/2025

Visit York - York Residents' Festival

A couple of cancellations means there are a handful of spaces now available on tomorrow afternoon's Prehistoric Tour of York:

Go back billions of years without leaving the cobbled streets of York city centre!

25/01/2025

UPDATE! Hear us on air at 6.30pm!

Listen out for BBC Upload from 6pm tonight - we'll be chatting with Hannah Sackville-Bryant about our Ice Age Tour of York!

Original comedy, podcasts, poetry, fiction and more on BBC Upload with Hannah.

18/01/2025

A Photographic Tour of Victorian York - fully booked for next Saturday, as part of the York Residents Festival 2025. For those of you swift enough to grab a ticket, Simon will show this fascinating photo, with a key question: why do York’s late medieval buildings often look different now to how they did in the 19th Century?

14/01/2025

Acomb: The Place of the Oaks. Friday February 7th, 11am-12pm, Acomb Explore. Book your free ticket here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/exploreyorklibrariesandarchives/1533553?

Join Gordon Campbell-Thomas for a short talk on the history of Acomb, covering 2000 years of the history of the ward. The talk ...

14/01/2025

The Graves of Poet Laureates’ Siblings in the York Suburbs: Part 1 in a Series of 1 - Edward Tennyson.

The churchyard of St Stephen’s, Acomb, is the resting place of Alfred Tennyson’s younger brother. Edward spent most of his life in private asylums in York. He died in Acomb in 1890, aged 77.

As you’ll see from photos 2 and 3, it’s now quite hard to make out the inscription on the tomb.

09/01/2025

Plans to improve the aquatic habitats of Tang Hall Beck have been submitted to the City of York Council:

A stretch of York’s Tang Hall Beck could be restored to help boost habitats for wildlife under new plans.

09/01/2025

Fascinating day at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall for the York Climate Commission annual celebration. We were asked to take a lead role in setting up a York Waterscapes working group. From rivers and flooding to wetlands and wildlife, there are countless watery aspects to York’s environment. All are being impacted by climate change, but there’s lots of uncertainty about exactly how (and how this might change in the coming decades).

We’d love to hear your ideas and priorities, so please do get in touch if you’re interested in being involved.

26/12/2024

How was your festive feasting? Enjoy any roast peacock, wild boar, or conger pie? No? Well you clearly weren’t at a medieval royal wedding banquet then!

King Henry III and the royal family spent Christmas 1251 in York. Christmas Day saw him knight Alexander III of Scotland at York Minster. Henry’s daughter Margaret was then married to the new Scottish king very early the next morning. (Apparently this was to avoid a repeat of the previous evening’s scenes, when members of the Scottish and English parties started drinking, fighting and killing each other.)

Once the matrimony was complete, it was time for the wedding feast. Not sure how many guests they were catering for but hopefully they were hungry, as the father of the bride had apparently ordered:

“one thousand mullets, ten thousand haddocks, two hundred and fifty salmon, five hundred conger eels, thirty pikes, and sixty jacks; and the King’s “Piscator” was directed to catch all the fish he could in the royal fish-ponds, and to keep them alive in some safe stew until they were required.”

And that was just the fish course!

Feeling full yet? Make sure you save space for York’s Hidden Christmas! Our last two walks of 2024 are at 11am on Sat 28th and Mon 30th of December.

25/12/2024

Wishing all a very merry Christmas! Don’t eat too many chocolate apples!