The Trench Fell Inn
Fieldtrip to York
Saturday 23rd October 2004
Tour Route
Route devised by © Phil.B
1) Our first stop was the Museum Gardens. St. Leonard's Hospital, which sits just to the right of the entrance to the Gardens, was founded soon after the Norman Conquest and was once the largest such establishment in the North of England. The buildings have suffered considerably over the centuries and today there is only a vaulted undercroft with a ruinous chapel above to be seen.
The so called Multangular Tower in the Museum Gardens is the best remaining section of the Roman walls of old York and was a polygonal bastion added to the western corner around AD 300.
The small stone blocks making up the lower section, along with the red tile course known as Saxa Quadrata, are typically Roman. Originally there would have been three floors on the inside and a roof on top. Only six metres of this surviving masonry is Roman.
The 'Anglian' Tower at York is one of only two non-ecclesiastical Anglo-Saxon structures remaining in the country. Its date, however, is not without controversy, it could be late Roman or Dark Age British.
The great Abbey of St. Mary in York was founded by King William Rufus in 1088 and, for four hundred and fifty years, it was the wealthiest and most powerful abbey in the North of England. Its monks, who transferred here from the old monastic centre of Lastingham, lived and worked under the Benedictine rule. Religious arguments and desire for reform led to the Prior and a number of monks leaving to found the famous Cistercian Fountains Abbey in 1132. However, St. Mary's continued to thrive until it finally succumbed to the might of the crown in 1539.
St. Mary's Hospitium, in the Museum Gardens, was the guest hall for pilgrims and other visitors to St. Mary's Abbey. The stone built ground floor dates from 1310, while the timber-framing above was added a hundred years later. The building has been heavily restored and a new roof was erected in 1930. This was Time Team's finds Room when they came to York.
2) Walls and Bars.
When the Romans arrived they quickly set about building a sound set of defences: a ditch, an embankment made of turf and clay, a large timber fence, and timber towers and gates. By the early third century it was a town and fortress surrounded by strong stone walls. The walls were symbols of York and Rome's importance as well as defences. The line of the defences established during the period from 71 to around 400 had a lasting effect on how York developed down to the present day.
It all goes a little hazy from 400 and what happened to the defences between this time and the arrival of William I in York in 1068 is shrouded in mystery. Upon William's arrival he built two castles, York Castle and Baille Hill. He also started remodelling the defences into broadly the form we see today.
We came onto the wall via what is known as Bootham bar. There are four bars in York - Bootham, Monk, Walmgate and Micklegate.
Bootham Bar stands on the site of one of the four gateways into the Roman legionary fortress. There has been a gateway on this site for the last 1900 years and contains some of the earliest medieval stonework on the walls. The earliest parts of the present gatehouse date from the eleventh century whilst most of the building that you can see today dates from the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Monk Bar consists of a four-storey gatehouse. It is the most elaborate and ornate of the surviving gates. The Bar dates from the early fourteenth century. The elaborate design of the gatehouse meant that it could function as a self-contained fortress with each floor capable of being defended. Monk Bar still has its portcullis and winding mechanism.
The Treasurer's House near St Williams College was originally home to the treasurers of York Minster and built over a Roman road, however the Treasurer's House is not all that it seems. Nestled behind the Minster, its size, splendour and contents are a constant surprise to visitors . The house was carefully restored and presented with 16th- and 20th-century decoration by wealthy local Victorian industrialist Frank Green.
A recent addition to the York landscape which reminds us of its most ancient piece of history. The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great sits, immortalised in Bronze, on his Imperial throne.
3) The Mansion House, in St. Helen's Square, has been the official residence of the Mayor of York since it was first built in 1725. This colourful Georgian town-house has an evocative and striking facade of pilasters surmounted by the city's arms and stands next to the site of the old Roman Praetorian Gateway.
The interior is richly furnished and houses the city's important collection of Silver and Plate, including York's great sword of state, dated 1416, which once belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund.
The York Guildhall was the heart of the medieval city. This magnificent mid-15th century building was where the trade guilds of York met to regulate the work of the city merchants. It was here that Cromwell paid the Scots £200,000 for helping him in the Civil War, that Margaret Clitherow was tried for harboring Catholic priests in 1586 and sentenced to death by crushing and also here that Richard II was entertained in a lavish banquet in 1483.
4) The Roman Baths, York Beneath the, now appropriately named Roman Baths Inn, in St. Sampson's Square, were discovered the remains of the Roman military bath house. After a hard day defending the city, the Roman soldiers would have met here to relax and socialise as well cleanse themselves in the complex's hot steam rooms and cool plunge pools.
The Pub is decorated in traditional 'Classical Roman' style and, for an extremely small fee (just ask at the bar), you can descend to the purpose built chamber below to view the remains of this ancient building. The apsidal walls and underfloor 'hypocaust' heating system is easily identified, while information boards explain how the latter worked, as well as the structure's history.
The Shambles. This most idyllic of York streets stands in the city's main shopping area, away from the Minster to the north. A narrow, pedestrianized shopping street stretching from Pavement to Newgate, it is crowded with tiny shops that sell all manner of gifts and souvenirs from the ancient city it epitomises. Its timber-framed medieval overhangs seem to almost touch as they cut the light from the sky above.
Here, you can imagine yourself back in the York of the Middle Ages. Yet, while the hustle and bustle remains, the name betrays what the shops should really be selling. For shambles or, more properly, 'fleshammels' are the wide slab benches (still to be seen) where butchers spread out their prize joints for customer inspection.
5) Merchant Adventurer's Hall - details here!
6) The castle was built by William I in 1068. It consists of a motte - a large mound of layers of rammed earth and clay and bailey - a large flat open area surrounded by an embankment, strong timber fence and ditch.
The second castle - the Old Baille - also had a motte and bailey. It was smaller than York Castle and on the opposite bank of the River Ouse. It was built at the same time as York Castle.
On top of the mound today are the remains of Clifford’s Tower which was built when York Castle was rebuilt in stone by Henry III. Clifford’s Tower, the bailey walls, towers, gates, bridges, two halls, a chapel, a kitchen and a prison were all built at this time. It stands just over 33ft high and the walls are 9.5ft thick.
Fairfax House is perhaps the finest 18th century house in the North of England. It was designed by John Carr of York, and typifies the best of mid-18th-century rococo decoration. Sadly, successive owners had allowed the house to decay to a state of near collapse by the early 1980s, when it was acquired by York Civic Trust with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Further grants enabled the Trust to restore the house to its former glory, and in October 1984 it was opened by the Duchess of Kent. The house is furnished with the late Noel Terry’s superb collection of Georgian furniture. Fairfax House continues to be supported by a variety of organisations, including the Friends of Fairfax House.
