Secrets of York above and below ground
York is so full of history and interesting places to visit. Unfortunately many visitors wander around and never get to grips with some of the real gems.
If one arrives by train, scenes like this are so immediate – the city walls, the river and the minster. Scenes like this wow the unsuspecting in to exploring the big picture.. It’s so easy to miss curiosities like this.
Dame Judi Dench, the actress, was brought up near York and was educated at The Mount School in the city.
Cross the river and the familiar full frontal view of the Minster may look like this- but wander off to the left and a snicket way will lead you to the splendid treasurers house and a much more unusual approach to the west front of the cathedral.
Sooner or later most holiday makers arrive in the Shambles, where, it is said that the butchers of York carried out their trade. Today there are few butchers shops there only crowds exploring novelty shops– and the former take some getting rid of.
Even better though, just over the road from Whip Ma Whop Ma Gate
is Lady Pecket’s Yard. I think this is one of the most attractive of the old walkways through the city and undoubtedly the most difficult to photograph -scaffolding, motorbikes left outside the houses and television aerials muck up the shot, but I am always drawn there in the hope that some preservation society has taken the location in hand.
Don’t miss Dick Turpin’s burial place in a remote graveyard outside the city walls.
Then, if one has any energy left, a trip underground at the Yorvik Exhibition to see reconstructions alongside the archaeological remains of Viking York with moving figures, sounds and smells of the place, as it undoubtedly was.
Not underground but certainly under covers, there is a a museum which has reconstructed a number of streets of old York, as it might have been at the beginning of the 20th century.
That’s it for this time- perhaps on a later blog I will take up the tale in and around York Minster itself. But that’s quite a study. Enjoy what’s left of the summer.