54 Gillygate on Google Street View, 2018 …
It’s 54 Gillygate now, but it used to be a pub. For a long time. With many changes of name. When its years as a pub came to an end, and planning applications were submitted, there were concerns that the plans were a bit too Las Vegas:
Comment on a planning application for 54 Gillygate, some years ago
What we’ve actually got, as pictured as I dashed past earlier this month, is a kitchen showroom:
54 Gillygate in 2019: no Las Vegas here
Seven years ago, December 2012, it was the Pink Pony:
Pink Pony, 54 Gillygate, Dec 2012
… and before that, the Bay Horse, Gillys … Stereo, Cert 18 … (have I missed any?) and towards the end of it being a drinking establishment, the Fleeting Arms and then Monroes?
But whatever name it had when it was a pub, it’s clearly now, in 2019, a shop. Which we could see as a sign of confidence in the future of Gillygate as a thriving retail environment, perhaps.
And those of us who have memories of 54 Gillygate under its many different names when it was a pub and meeting place … just remember the good times. Everything changes …
I can remember the Bay Horse at 54 Gillygate in the early 1980’s. It was a Stone’s pub (Sheffield brewery part of Bass) and a new couple (the Allis’s I recall, they had come from the Light Horseman pub on Fulford Rd., set out with the intention to make it a leading live music pub with real ale in York – it had a large-ish function room at the back with a small serving bar. It really took off – the draught Bass was excellent, his serving staff came from the Ripon & St. John College, and Wednesday nights (I’m sure it was Wednesday) was jazz funk night with a local 5-piece band called ‘American Express’ who played ‘jazz/funk/fusion’ They were so good that in 1982 they released a 12 inch single and an LP, both of which I’ve still got (but no turntable to play them on for many years). I think there was an independent record shop further down Gillygate who stocked their record (Pinnacle Records). But such was the success of the pub that the landlord couldn’t keep up with the demand for hand pulled beer so they were replaced with electric pumps for keg beer and I’m afraid my loyalty went elsewhere, and I think the band went off to London to try and get a recording contract. 40 years on always wondered what happened to the pub (and what happened to the band?)
My grandfather James, Percival Lancaster ran this pub in the early, to mid 1930s.
They had 5 daughters, Mildred, Dorothy, Joan, Kitty Margaret and Marjory, sadly all deceased
From York, they moved to Stockton on Tees, where they ran the Conservative club in Portrack, before moving to Whitby in 1940.
And his father Frederick Lancaster (husband of my grand aunt) was running it earlier according to the 1911 UK census,