2000 YEARS on from its origins York stands uniquely shaped by its history – two centuries doesn’t seem like enough time for it all to have happened. Romans and Vikings have come and gone, grizzly ghost stories are tied to every street corner, our cultural history was forever changed due its most famous son, Guy Fawkes, while our national collective sweet tooth developed from its celebrated chocolate empires. Not to mention the achingly beautiful medieval cobbled streets and period buildings everywhere you look.
The walls surrounding this city once served to protect it from attack, now they stand as a circumferential marker of Britain’s prettiest, most haunted and historically rich city. Spending two nights just outside the centre was enough to infiltrate the walls to sample a selection of York’s many tourist enchantments.
Diving eagerly into York’s truffle-rich centre can be a disorientating experience at first as swarms of people dart in and out across your path from the dozens of seemingly hidden ‘Snickleways of York’
The base for this non-violent assault on 21st Century York was Middlethorpe Hall, a beautiful country house built in 1699. Architecturally influenced by Christopher Wren, the hotel comprises the main house and courtyard suites plus spa facilities in an adjacent cottage. Inside the hotel is an unchanged picture of traditional English country life with oak-panelled rooms, carved staircases, open fires and traditional English heritage style furniture. Alas, none of it is original as in the Seventies the hotel was a psychedelically painted nightclub, not that you can tell.
Diving eagerly into York’s truffle-rich centre can be a disorientating experience at first as swarms of people dart in and out across your path from the dozens of seemingly hidden ‘Snickleways of York’ (an amalgamation of alleyway, snicket and ginnel depending on how Northern you are). Most of these passages centre on the wonderfully vibrant Shambles, recently crowned Britain’s prettiest street in the Google Street View awards.
The ShamblesIt’s a more than worthy winner with its medieval 15th Century buildings housing a variety of strikingly traditional sweet shops, and cafes and so on. Stumbling unawares upon The Shambles must be like the best Goodnight Sweetheart style time warp ever.
An evening visit The Blue Bicycle restaurant on Fossgate serves to demonstrate how everything in York has a back story, often a sordid one at that. Now a celebrated modern-British eatery, in a previous life the building was a 19th Century brothel. The Madam of which was said to cycle to work on a blue bicycle and when her bike was chained outside it was a sign that they were open for business, a tradition that the restaurant continues today. The beef tasting plate is a particular menu highlight with the Yorkshire blue pasty a excellent discovery, if a little on the small side.
York plays up to its ‘Most Haunted City in Europe’ tag well - it has approximately three million ghost tours competing for your screams and/or scepticism. A shivering band of 20 or so assembled outside The Kings Arms pub for the ‘original’ tour rather than the ‘oldest’ tour, the ‘award-winning’ tour or the tour with a guy from Come Dine With Me.
On this particular November night any shivers were due to the temperature rather than chilling tales. The guide held attention well with his theatrical story-telling style but the stories themselves ended more often than not with an anti-climatic whimper rather than spectral screams. The scariest point came at the end of the walk with the guide encouraging people to make a wish and rub the end of his ‘lucky cane’.
The unexpected gem in a trip to York this winter is housed inside a giant M&M-like dome in the depths of the astounding York Minster. The Orb glazier works project is part of a £20m renovation of the huge stained glass East window. Yes, £20m – one window, plus it’s expected to take eight years. This painstaking work is to restore the individual panels of the window which had previously been mended by adding more led strips to strengthen the glass which after hundreds of repairs left the majority of the glass covered up.
Festive York
Each panel takes between 500 and 650 hours of painstaking work to restore. Bearing in mind that there are 117 panels in the main body of this one window, it’s not your average window cleaning gig.
The up side to this work is the opportunity to see the restored panels up close as they are put on display before they are returned into the high set stone frames. This is probably the only chance in a lifetime to study these fascinating story-telling panels so near to and these old shards of glass look incredible. Each one is part of a rich narrative telling the story of the new testament in a literal representation of the words in the bible. Seeing the panels properly adds to the Minster’s general question raising magnificence – How did they do all this?
Glazier at workThis cash-intensive project has been part funded by the Lottery Heritage Council who insisted that the public should be able to see the work being undertaken. True to their word a nearby chapel has been transformed into a glazier’s workshop where the public can look upon the glaziers as they restore each fragment and learn the story behind each panel. It's a bonus in a city that offers more to see than any other in the UK, outside London. Luckily Visit York are offering a fantastic inclusive deal when booking a short York break with their ‘York Wrapped Up’ deal including two nights’ accommodation including breakfast and dinner and an exclusive price on the York Pass which allows entry and discounts to all York’s main attractions.
For full details of the busy winter programme and to book your York break:
www.visityork.org/wrappedup.
