Yorkshire (Day 5, part 1): Romans, Cafes and Belt Merchants

I knew the smell. Burning plastic.

My Nikon's battery has a freakishly long field life, so I left the spare in its plugged-in charging cradle at the hotel when we headed out in the morning. It was probably overkill to leave the thing charging all day, as it zaps up in two hours or less, but anyway I did. By the morning of our last full day in York, my charger was in meltdown. We couldn't figure out why - we had the requisite 220v converters on everything. But it was frying.

And Sharon had lost her spare battery somewhere Out There (a cemetery, we think, as if it matters), presumably leaping unnoticed like a startled rodent from the bottom of her camera bag, so our stay-in-York day was to kick off with a trip to a camera store. A tourist town like this, there has to be scads of camera stores.

Well, there are two, at least in the town center, and one was a Curry's, which is sort of a British Radio Shack, primary difference being native voltage and the fact that Curry's actually seems to have customers. We chatted up a nice older chap named Julian (he told us he was Catholic, although I don't recall that we asked), who apologized that he had neither a spare battery for Sharon, nor a Brit-version charger for my Nikon battery. (Conveniently enough, our batteries require different chargers.)

He sent us over to York Camera Mart, offering to at least charge my extra battery up with the store's universal charge in the meantime, to be sure that the overheated charger hadn't ruined it.

York Camera Mart

Unsurprisingly, the eager chap at the camera shop, which is smaller on the inside than it looks, also had neither item, but he did have an odd universal lithium battery charger that was fully Euro-voltage compliant (why wouldn't it be?) and should be suitable substitute for my heat-prostrated Nikon charger. It looked like an Empire Cruiser, from Star Wars. Sold. Sharon would just have to recharge each night - a modest inconvenience.

After a stop back the hotel, we ambled off church-crawling. First stop was St Martin-cum-Gregory, a dour Grade 1 structure outside the city walls, a block or two from the Lady Anne.

St Martin cum Gregory - York

St Martin cum Gregory - York

Like a number of York's medieval churches, the place had been re-purposed many years ago; it was the Stained Glass Centre now, an educational resource of some sort. Locked tight, we shot the cemetery through the fence, and left wondering what the inside was like.

St Martin cum Gregory - churchyard

St Martin cum Gregory - churchyard

St John sits quietly on the busy Mickelgate, not far from the Lady Anne, largely unchanged from its 14th and 15th century origins, but it closed as a church in 1934 and the interior is now a toney cafe. It was called The Parish when we were there, but appears now to be called Tiger 10. Someone on the internet was complaining about the bouncers there. It's a beautiful building, but it's not a church anymore, and never will be again.

Tiger 10 (formally The Parish, originally St John Mickelgate) - York

St Mary's Abbey was once the most important religious site in Yorkshire - Henry VIII's guys tore it down in 1539, or as much of it as they felt inclined to.

St Mary's Abbey - York

It's probably the heart of the city center now, at least as much as the Minster; the grounds are a gardened-lined park sloping down to the River Ouse, and the stately Yorkshire Museum sits on the site as well.

We had wanted to see the place in 2012, but they were in the process of setting up scaffolding and seating for some kind of theater presentation and most of the Abbey site was gated off.

The grounds are partially bordered by the seventeen hundred year old Roman walls, and huge Roman sarcophagi are scattered here and there. I guess I wondered why these immense tombs (yes, all empty, at least as far as we know) were just sitting outside, rather than being in a museum someplace. Turns out that these artifacts are being exhibited by the York Museums Trust, and they have some info on them here.

Roman sarcophagi  - York

Roman sarcophagi  - York

We debated briefly about going into the museum, but figured we'd be in there for much of the day, essentially foreclosing on the rest of the church tour. Too bad, since Richard III's recreated head was in there.

Picnickers and kids chasing dogs gave the place a relaxed, everyday kind of feel to it. And why not, it's a park.

Fancy a crisp? St Mary's Abbey - York

I suppose you get used to munching crisps in the shadow of Roman fortifications and an ancient Benedictine abbey.

At the back of the Abbey grounds we found St Olave, which we understand was founded pre-Conquest (meaning, prior to 1066). Cavernous and somewhat overbearing, a distant testimony of devotion to an ancient Viking Saint, I felt a little uncomfortable in there.

St Olave - York

St Olave - York

St Olave - York

We walked over to the side door leading to the churchyard. Aha! Here was something new - an open church, with a locked cemetery. What? We shot as much as we could from the gated doorway, which wasn't much, left the church and walked around the block, which was way around the block. On the way, we had to find a rest room, so we went into the University of York Archaeology college  - there was nobody there, but at least it was open - and then found our way to the Abbey grounds' north entrance, figuring we'd find a way into the cemetery.

Not really. Sharon and I took turns climbing up on the stone wall and shooting headstones from a one-handhold perch.

Things we do for dead guys - Sharon shooting St Olave churchyard

St Olave churchyard - York

St Olave churchyard - York

St Olave churchyard - York

Must have looked funny to the picnickers. Maybe it's a common site - tourists craning their necks over the Roman wall to shoot 18th century headstones in St Olave's churchyard - but I doubt it.

On the way back, we went through the oddly hidden side of the Abbey park - the Multiangular Tower (Roman and medieval)

Multiangular Tower - York

Multiangular Tower - York

and the remains of the 11th century St Leonard's Hospital, with its arched undercroft. It was the largest medieval hospital in the north of England, although little except these semi-roofed ruins remains of it. Reminded me a little of the cellarium at Fountains.

St Leonard's Hospital - York

St Leonard's Hospital - York

No picnickers here, and it wasn't locked.



We went back into town. Sharon had misplaced (actually, had left at home) her belt, so we found a little open air market and a vendor with about 3000 belts, headed back to Curry's for my battery, and went off looking for more medievalia.

And no, that's not a word.

York Pt 2 - The City

We descended the stairs from the Minster Tower, which was frankly only a little easier than going up, re-entered the Minster itself for a longer look around. 

There’s a visceral sense of the place’s history, though for me it lingered just over our heads, out of reach and buoyantly unsullied by the mass of tourists around us. One cannot escape imagining being in the place alone, at night, the dense stone walls shutting off the sounds of the modern city humming around it. An experience, I suspect, very few people get to have.

The exit takes you through the tourist shop, we clutched our wallets tightly, and made out way back into the city. At the suggestion of the gentleman we met at the top of the Minster, we headed off next to The Shambles, the ancient market street in York.

Essentially a walking thoroughfare, the place dates to pre-Norman times, although the street now is mainly lined with buildings from the 14^th through 18^th century, and typical of York, it’s a weird blending of the ancient, the trying-to-look-ancient and the modern. Cell phone stores next to rustic old pubs, next to trendy fashion nooks, next to cautiously signed fast food stops. It was loaded up with tourists – they were the ones walking at a leisurely pace – and Sharon popped in York Glass to pick out a lucky glass cat. The cat is an ancient totem for York; it is thought that cat statues were commonly placed around the city as a means to ward off plague-carrying rats, as well as evil spirits. We saw a number of cat statues during our walk around the town, as well as plenty of real ones, most looking well-fed and thoroughly incapable of catching a rat. 

We also saw a poster bill for an upcoming concert...

Rock on, Dave.

We stopped to rest after the Shambles on the wall outside the ancient St Crux parish church, 

across the street from the Golden Fleece public house. The Fleece is reputedly one the most haunted locations in all of England, let alone York, and we considered spending our hotel time in York at the place. But there was no parking (that again…) and while the Tudor-era building looked awesomely creepy (and structurally dubious), we made the right choice. We’ll stop in for a pint next time we’re in town, but staying there looks like a serious and noisy PITA. 

We headed down Pavement St for a few blocks, figured out that we were lost, and eventually after rotating our city map a dozen or so times and looking generally clueless at an intersection (I was just happy to see a traffic light), we re-found the city wall and following it southwest to York City Cemetery. I was in some discomfort that day: a pulled and irritated abdominal muscle on my left side, and of course I’d get this on our longest walking day. It was mostly just an inconvenience for me, having to sit and take some load off at regular intervals, but I will say it bothered me enough to make the second half of the York explore-day a bit of a trial.  

York Cemetery immediately recalled Brompton, urban Amazonia run wild. 

The place was founded in the late 1830’s; like most English cities at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the city churches could no longer accommodate the growing numbers of dead, and DIY burials were making a gruesome mess of the city centers, especially during floods (get the picture?). It was originally set up as a investment deal for a number of the area’s wealthy, but the problem, of course, is that when you run out of room (and that sort of thing happens in England, on a lot of different levels), you can’t bury anyone in the place anymore, revenues and ROI fall, and the place turns into a neglected money-loser. Which is exactly what happened to the York Cemetery by the 1960’s – the place had become so derelict and vandalized, it was taken over by the Crown, and is now maintained by a public trust. It is still used for burials, although  lightly from what we could tell. The heart of the place – narrow and overgrown passages bounded by large sections of mature trees, deep weeds and grasses - was ferociously atmospheric and evocative, one of the best cemeteries we found in England.

Back into the city center, we visited Clifford’s Tower, one of York’s main tourist attractions and another Heritage Site. 

The tower as it exists today was built by Henry III in the middle of the 13^th century, surrounded by a moat and was considered one of northern England’s most important fortifications. The thing stands on a small but very steep hill – called a “motte” – which was first constructed by William the Conqueror in 1068. The stairs up were packed with school kids, goofing around and waiting for instruction from their harried field trip leader – I was worried we’d have to share our visit with all 50 of them, but they took off as we ascended the stairs to get inside.

There isn’t much left of the keep itself, just a large, vaguely circular area with a few chained-off staircases and some windows. The tourist shop, oddly, is placed right in the middle of the structure, but there were some stairs to climb and a second level above the floor, offering a nice view of the city. The place was small but a cool experience and undoubtedly a must for York visitors.

Late afternoon by this time, and we wandered over to St Mary’s Abbey, the skeletal remains of a Benedictine mission founded in the 11^th century and dedicated to St Olaf II of Norway. A good deal less of the historic structure remains than most of the other abbeys we saw. Like virtually all of the Norman-era abbeys, St Mary’s was closed and substantially demolished by Henry VIII in the 1530’s as part of the Dissolution Of The Monasteries – it doesn't take long exploring historic religious sites in England to appreciate the magnitude and viciousness of Henry’s rage against the Roman Catholic establishment – but surrounded by immaculate gardens, peaceful walking paths and museums, the site is one of York’s true treasures. A large stage was being set up for something or other within the loose embrace of the abbey’s nave, scaffolding and lights and generators, but whatever it was we weren’t going to be around long enough to see it.

We followed the wall along the north for a while longer, as it ran behind shops and B&B’s, the Minster’s Tower never out of sight, and we ambled back into town, satisfied we had walked more or less the whole thing. The tourist book said it takes only an hour and a half to walk the entire length of the wall, but even having done it in segments, I’m skeptical.

We headed over to Thomas’s for dinner and libations. 

Mary, the thirty-something proprietor of only six months or so, came over to our table and chatted us up casually, asking about our day and what was on the itinerary for us. We mentioned Shrewsbury, and after poking some fun at my pronunciation (I guess it sounded like ‘Shroos Berry’ to her; proper English would be more like ‘Shrews Bree’ ), she told us it was actually her home town (“why would you want to go there”, she asked, to which we replied…well, it’s a long story). She spent her college years in Wales (another recommendation to go to Wales), and she complained with some faux-bitterness that her sister still lived in Wales and had adopted something of a Welsh accent, which Mary found irritating and entirely unacceptable. She tried to illustrate the difference between an English and a Welsh accent, but I really couldn't hear it, and certainly didn't apprehend the cause of her distress over it. There’s a thing between the English and the Welsh which undoubtedly extends back many centuries, and I suspect that sheep have something to do with it. We’ll leave it at that.

A club sandwich for me (with deviled ham?), and bangers and mash for Sharon, 

a few rounds of drinks at the bar (Mary proving herself a skilled and somewhat dangerous barkeep), and promising we’d return, we headed out into the night, the city now quiet except for a few groups of swoozled and boisterous college kids out barhopping.

Over the river and back on Skeldergate, we popped in at a tiny pub, the Cock and Bottle, a couple of blocks up from the hotel. No tourists here, just a handful of locals drinking at the bar and pitching a game of darts. A girl with spiky blue hair and matching darts-tournament shirt seemed to be winning. We were hopelessly out of place, but no one paid a second glance at us, we finished up and went back to the Lady Anne.

Helluva day.  

As a side note, York endured some pretty bad flooding a mere three weeks after we were there, and the good folks at the Cock and Bottle persevered in true British fashion (i.e., keep drinking !)