The pond in the park: how it used to be, spring 1983

The small triangular park area on Leeman Road, across from the Memorial Gardens, was mentioned on the previous page. It’s pictured above in spring 1983.

A comparison view, how it looks now, in spring 2021.

How it is now, spring 2021

In the 1983 photo, a profusion of flowers around a pond, which appears to have a fountain in the centre of it. Benches and bins and fancy lampposts are symmetrically arranged around it.

Over the years various flowerbeds have been removed and turfed over, there’s now only a couple of the lampposts, the bins have gone and so have the benches. There are still flowers, but far fewer, and confined to the narrow beds by the paving. The paving is no longer ‘crazy paving’, but tarmac.

These changes have taken place in stages, over the years, and were presumably intended to keep maintenance costs down. I’ve written about it before, some years back.

Despite all the changes , the pond is still there. Recent research led me to thinking more about it: why it’s there, whether anyone notices it much. It has been difficult to find information online about this small triangular park, which is why I included the earlier page, and why I wanted to revisit.

Before the park and the pond

Previously this triangular area appears to have been covered with trees and shrubs, as shown in this old postcard of the area.

Postcard showing the triangular park covered in trees, with railings around, 1907 (thecardindex.com)

The pond in particular

When looking at the old maps of the area for the previous piece, I noticed that a fish pond was marked on the 1931 map.

1931 map (from old-maps.co.uk)

Judging by its rather distinctive shape, it’s the same pond.

So the trees and shrubs were cleared to make way for a formal pond, a fish pond, which evidence suggests has been there for more than 90 years.

Quite a ‘historic feature’ then. Perhaps it was constructed when the Memorial Gardens across the road were laid out.

I thought I’d revisit the area, to focus on the fish pond, and possibly peer into it.

Pond in triangular park, 10 May 2021

One person walked through the park while I was there, but otherwise it was empty. Perhaps because there are no benches to sit on, and the grass was too damp to sit on. A few geese were wandering about in the evening sunshine.

I wondered why the pond was still here. I thought I’d heard that it was going to be filled in. I doubted very much that it had fish in it.

I peered into it.

Pond, being peered into.

It looked better than I was expecting. Water lily leaves, other aquatic plants. A bit of movement of the leaves, in the breeze … but wait, a fish! There’s a fish!

Not your haddock kind of fish, obviously, but one of those small ‘ornamental’ ones, a little fishy, dark coloured, gliding about in there. (Apologies that there’s no photo, I can’t do underwater photography.)

There appeared to be several fish. I wandered around the edge and peered in from various angles, and was quite enchanted by it briefly.

It just shows that it’s important to fact check, and do a site visit if possible. When I first started to draft the text for this page I’d been convinced that there couldn’t possibly be any fish in the so-called fish pond. Mainly because I remember a big fiery beacon being lit on the plinth in the middle of the pond, back in 2015, to mark the 70th anniversary of VE Day.

Beacon in centre of pond, 8 May 2015

It seemed at the time a strange site to choose.

There weren’t many of us there that evening, partly perhaps because the publicity about it referred to this place ‘Triangular Gardens’, and no one knew where that was.

But a comment added to a Press article the next day suggests that at least one member of the public was aware of the fish in the fish pond:

‘there was no consideration for the pond over which the beacon was built. This morning what was once a pleasant small pond full of fish was left as a blackened stagnant pool of water full of burnt bits of wood.’

Notes and queries

I know very little about fish, and their needs and preferences, beyond the obvious need to be in water. I wonder how they’ve survived in there all this time, and are presumably breeding, as it’s hard to imagine new fish have been added to a pond in a park that has clearly been modified to make it ‘low maintenance’.

When I wrote about the park six years ago I thought the pond should be removed, partly because it’s not very wildlife-friendly, with those curved concrete edges. Partly because it seemed to be just a thing in the way, in the middle of the path going straight across. If you can’t sit on a bench by it and look at it, what’s the point of it?

But now, having realised that it’s quite a historic structure, and that it does have life in it, I wonder why more hasn’t been made of it, and the area around it. Why everything has been simplified down to very little left. It may not be the most pleasant place to sit during the day when the traffic’s heavy, but there was very little traffic around in the evening when I was there, and it might have been nice perhaps to sit on a bench by the pond, like people used to, back in the old days of the 1980s.

By the pond, 1983

And a fountain?

The 1983 photos show that it appears to have had a fountain in the middle of it. The figure is possibly a flying Mercury? Similar to the one in Rowntree Park? I wonder what happened to it.

I can’t help thinking about the fountain in Parliament Street, and how many people were upset when it was removed, even though it was a relatively recent addition, and not particularly attractive. Meanwhile, completely under the radar, apparently generally unnoticed and unappreciated, this rather more historic structure, designed as a centrepiece, and appreciated in the past.

The park and its pond were clearly appreciated by my Dad, who took those photos of it one day in 1983, presumably after leaving work at the nearby railway offices.

Time to leave the park and its histories, noticing on the way that its low boundary wall still has the small stumps of the railings that once surrounded it.

Remnants of railings

If you have any information to add, comments are welcome below.

. . . . .

One walk in early May, with the purpose of looking at one building, has led to several pages, many connections, as so often happens. It’s all connected. Particularly perhaps here in the railway part of town.

We’re about to go through one of the arches in the walls to look at the building I was aiming for before all these diversions. More on that story later. In the meantime, thanks for your virtual coffees in support of these local ramblings.

The post Park life: forgotten fish pond appeared first on York Stories.

Leeman statue and surrounding roads, from the city walls, 7 May 2021

On the way to look at 2 Rougier Street, and Rougier Street in general, I got distracted by Hudson Quarter, just inside the walls, and then stopped to briefly admire the springtime loveliness pictured above, just outside the walls. The trees here are splendid in the springtime, and perhaps best appreciated from up on the city walls.

Beneath the trees, a lot of road. Several different roads, which I’m never quite sure of the names of. Down there we have a Station Road, a Station Rise, and apparently a bit of road called Station Avenue. Right at the back there is the start of Leeman Road, before it heads off out of town past the Railway Museum.

George Leeman looks out over it all. His statue used to be in the middle of the road, but was moved to one side of it, presumably to better improve the traffic flow, here in this area where the busy roads meet.

In the old days, before all the traffic, he had quite an open space to gaze out upon. An old postcard, showing the view back the other way towards the Station Hotel, calls it ‘Leeman Square’.

From thecardindex.com

Changed quite a bit, hasn’t it. In the area where the Leeman statue stood we now have a triangular traffic island for pedestrians.

And across the road junction, in the centre of this collection of roads is a small park area, apparently called ‘Triangular Gardens’. I’ve written about it before, at some length, inspired by some old photos I have of it from 1983.

I wondered if this area was mentioned in the Hutchinson and Palliser guide to York, published in 1980, and often good for a personal opinion. It was:

‘The open space between Station Hotel, walls, and Yorkshire Museum across the river could be one of the great urban landscapes of England. Instead it is parcelled off into little parks-development plots, spiced with road signs.’

Still parcelled off, and still with a lot of road signs.

I had to descend into this area as the short section of the city walls approaching Lendal Bridge is closed for repairs. That meant coming down the steps by the archway in the walls where those cars on the right have come through. It’s not a pedestrian-friendly place, with all these bits of busy road, particularly if you come off the walls walk there and want to get to the Leeman Road bit and over Lendal Bridge. Behind the Leeman statue, the pavement turns into cobbles and then narrows down to nothing much by the time you reach the archway near Lendal Bridge. So the pedestrian stuck behind the Leeman statue, as I was, tries to cross there, with traffic coming from various directions.

I’ve just read, in C B Knight’s book about York, a detailed description of how the roads in this area developed from the Thief Lane that was here before. It was a bit confusing, so I end up looking at old maps.

Firstly, this area as it’s shown on the 1852 map, that handsome thing we’ve looked at bits of quite a few times before, available to view online at yorkmaps.net.

Extract from 1852 map of York

The green and pink line going diagonally across is the city walls. So I reckon my photo at the top of the page was taken roughly where that line ends at the bottom of this section of the map.

Back then, a railway coal depot occupied this area of land. Back then, the station was inside the walls (the area we’ve just walked past on the previous page). When the station we now use was built outside the walls, this area changed dramatically. By the time of the 1891 OS map, the road layout in this area was basically as it is now, various sections of road meeting, and going through arches in the city walls, with that triangular area left in the middle.

1891 map of Station Road and Leeman Road area, just outside the city walls (from old-maps.co.uk)

‘Leeman’s monument’ pictured above is also shown.

The modern Google map aerial view may also be of interest, for comparison.

A photo taken from the walls in this section a little further along, some years back, with the Triangular Gardens in the centre:

From the city walls, towards ‘Triangular Gardens’, 24 April 2016

I’m not sure if the recently approved plans to improve the area around the front of the station include this part a little further towards town.

Looking at the old maps leads to another page …

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Ko-fi coffees are currently powering these pages. It seems to be working quite well, and supporting the thing I’m not officially calling a ‘May daily’ even though it is, at present. Thanks for your continued support, and kind comments.

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Parliament Street paving, Dec 2019

Sorry, it’s paving again. It was going to be more about Coney Street, but after some research earlier today for today’s December Daily that subject is too complicated to consider and condense at this point.

So I’m going for pondering upon the state of the paving in Parliament Street – pictured above, a few days ago.

I have mentioned it before, and though it might seem like I’ve got a strange interest in paving, I really haven’t (though all pages tagged paving are on this link, if you’re interested). I’ve been forced to focus on it again after reading about the extremely expensive plans to repave/’reconstruct’ Stonegate, which I wrote about earlier this month.

Here is Stonegate, with its signs already in place saying that the work is going to start in January.

Stonegate, with signs about imminent repaving, 25 Dec 2019

And here’s Parliament Street:

Parliament Street paving, 25 Dec 2019

— with no sign that any work is ever going to happen to do anything with its paved surfaces which in large areas are completely rubbish, and have been for years.

What’s hard to convey on flat photos on flat screens is how the ground level undulates, how uneven it is.

Probably a lot to do with the pollarded plane trees, and their roots. It would appear that the trees and the paving slabs don’t fit well together. But how do other cities with large trees manage this?

This bit is the pavement to the left of the central area pictured above, looking towards M&S:

Parliament St pavement, Dec 2019

In the middle bit we’ve got large stone slabs, cracked slabs, small setts, etc, and on this bit we’ve got concrete slabs, small setts, and tarmac (blacktop).

Why has the rubbishy state of Parliament Street been ignored for so long, while so much money is being invested in repaving Stonegate?

If there was any kind of consultation on the spending on Stonegate then I missed it. As with the repaving of King’s Square, I don’t think there’s a magic money tree, so presumably council tax payers are funding the repaving of Stonegate. How many of us walk along Stonegate regularly? How many of us walk along Parliament Street?

Increasingly perhaps many of us aren’t bothering with the city centre much at all … ?

. . .

I noticed recently that I appeared to be approaching a total of a thousand published pages/posts here on York Stories. (There were around a hundred more, before that, back in 2004, but they’re out adrift on their own, in an archive of ancient work unfriendly to smartphones and tablets etc.)

I think this page, when published, is where I hit the 1,000 mark. Bit of a shame really that it’s about something as boring as paving …

But anyway, nice to be still recording York, its grubby corners and its glories and its wonky paving. Thanks for your virtual coffees in support of it all.

The post Pondering upon some very poor paving in Parliament Street appeared first on York Stories.

‘Happy to chat’ bench, Museum Gardens, December 2019

Many good things in York, despite many changes.

I’m still noticing small things, details.

Recently I appreciated this bench in the Museum Gardens, when dashing past. The ‘happy to chat bench’.

The post Bench for chats, Museum Gardens appeared first on York Stories.

Stonegate, 1940s/50s (Photo: Explore York Libraries and Archives)

Stonegate is to be repaved, with work starting in the New Year, as announced in a council press release this week: Paving the way for a new Stonegate. It’s going to cost ‘around £500,000′ (but as is standard, this is phrased as ‘investing’ around £500,000).

When that kind of money was spent on controversial repaving work in King’s Square there was at least a consultation — has there been one on this, I wonder, beyond the businesses on the street? I’ve not been able to invest as much time on York things recently, so may have missed something.

Anyway, as is standard, it’s all presented in a very positive light, in the press release, for local media to use and quote.

For the first time in a generation, City of York Council is completely repaving Stonegate.

The scheme will enhance the street’s appearance and character, creating a more pedestrian-friendly environment, attracting more people into the area and improving access for pedestrians.
— CYC press release

Whether paving is seen as an interesting thing is perhaps to do with age, agility, or perhaps to do with being a council tax payer.

I was interested in the detail of the proposals. Looking at the available information, and the further detail provided, including an FAQ section (below main press release), I’m seeing some information which appears to contradict the media-targeted statements.

This statement in particular stood out:

‘For the first time in a generation, we are completely reconstructing Stonegate’

Reconstructing? Completely? All the shops and everything?
But seriously, that’s quite a striking statement, and it doesn’t appear to fit with the detail in the supporting information/FAQs, which states

The works only include the highway, not the footway.

and also that

all of the cobbled sections of the highway, running adjacent to the footways and the middle of the highway, will be retained on Stonegate.

So is it a ‘complete reconstruction’, or not?

Over on Twitter I’ve seen quite a lot of discussion, and interesting points made, on the proposed repaving and particularly on whether there should be kerbs (or curbs, alternative spelling), or not, because of accessibility issues.

The council does have a series of documents, prepared some years back, to guide how changes/improvements to the streetscape should be designed and implemented, a streetscape strategy. All available on this link I think.

They include reports on accessibility, from a range of different perspectives — see the Access and Mobility documents in the list on this page. I assume these streetscape strategy documents have been used to inform the plans for the changes on Stonegate. (Well, I hope so, otherwise time and money wasted getting the reports compiled and published.)

I hope we don’t get into the whole ‘historically authentic’ thing again, regarding the paving. Regular readers might remember that a few years back I wrote a piece about the paving in Stonegate, after there had been quite a lot of local concern at paving slabs being removed and the paving being patched up with inferior materials. Looking through archive photos showed that the street’s surface had changed a few times, and that the paving seen as historic wasn’t as historic as it appeared to be, in that particular setting.

For more on paving (I’ve written about it a lot, including the groovy old paving in the back alleys in the Victorian terraced streets of the suburbs) see all pages tagged ‘paving’.

. . .

This page is tagged ‘December Daily‘, and is number 19 of those. I hope you’ve found it of interest. Virtual coffees keep it going and sustain many hundreds of other pages on here (not all about paving).

The post Stories in the stones … Stonegate paving plans appeared first on York Stories.

York Minster, south front, with ‘fiddler’s turret’. Photo: William Pumphrey, 1853 (city archives: photo information)

We returned to the front of the cathedral on our way homeward, and an old man stopped us, to inquire if we had ever seen the Fiddler of York. We answered in the negative, and said that we had not time to see him now; but the old gentleman pointed up to the highest pinnacle of the southern front, where stood the Fiddler of York, one of those Gothic quaintnesses which blotch the grandeur and solemnity of this and other cathedrals.

— wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne, during a visit to York in 1857. He’d just been to St William’s College, nearby (as discussed on yesterday’s December Daily).

On originally reading this, I assumed that the fiddler was some detail that is still there, on the exterior of York Minster. But apparently not.

Something I wouldn’t have thought much about if I hadn’t been looking for photographs from the 1850s in the online collection from the city archives. I found the photo above, and its accompanying information, which includes mention of the fact that ‘the pinnacle above the Rose Window (which was adorned with a statue of a man playing the fiddle) has been removed.’

I was rather curious about this. Clearly, back in 1857, the fiddler was seen as interesting enough to be pointed out by a friendly local to a visitor who was passing by, and he’s not just any old fiddler, he’s referred to as the ‘Fiddler of York’.

I thought I should try to find out more.

An often relied-upon source, Drake’s Eboracum (1736), says that

‘A little spiral turret, called the fidler’s turret, from an image of a fidler on the top of it, was taken some few years ago from another part of the building, and placed on the summit of this end, which has added much to its decoration.’ 
– (source here, and quoted in Notes and Queries, 1858)

A guidebook to York, published in 1857, refers to the fiddler figure in passing, in a description of the south transept:

the apex is surmounted by a small spire, commonly called the Fiddler’s turret, from a small effigy of a fiddler which crowns it. This effigy was removed from some other part of the building, and placed here.
– (source)

An earlier guidebook, by William Hargrove, published in 1818, also mentions this detail on the roof of the south transept:

The summit is crowned with neat and elegant turrets; on the centre one of which is the figure of a fiddler—that, however, is a singular accompaniment for a place of worship, and does not tend to increase the dignified appearance of the sacred edifice.
– (source)

Like Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Hargrove seems to have viewed the fiddler as rather offensive/inappropriate.

Also in agreement with that view is the author of ‘Browne’s New and enlarged guide for strangers and visitors to York Minster’ (?1870?):

the pinnacle, with the figure of a grotesque fiddler (instead of a cross) upon the top of it, placed there in the last century, is unsuitable to the solemnity of the style which prevails on the lower parts of the front.
– (source)

There’s some information available on the earlier history of the figure, why it was carved and why it was there in the first place, in connection with a former Archbishop of York, Lancelot Blackburne, apparently. But I’m more interested in when and why it was removed.

And here perhaps is the answer, in an extract from The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 26 (1874):

YORK MINSTER.— The restoration of the south transept of York Minster has been progressing slowly, but satisfactorily, for two years, and is now approaching completion, so far as the roof, the east and west clerestory walls, and the interior generally is concerned, little having as yet been done with the exterior. […] The erection of the parapet walls above the clerestories has been completed, and the cement gutters are being laid at the base of the roof on each side, preparatory to being covered over with lead. The pinnacle surmounting the south transept gable, and terminating with a fiddler, will shortly undergo restoration, in the execution of which the musician will be removed and replaced by a cross in harmony with the character of the architecture.
– (source)

The fiddler figure is still around somewhere inside the Minster, apparently, ‘on the wall of the South Quire Aisle of the Minster, and apparently has been there since 1946′, according to a mention in the archives of the York Press (18 October 2005). This was in answer to a query from a reader in Australia who was trying to find out the history of the York Minster Fiddler, as ‘she has an old door knocker with a fiddler on the front from the great cathedral’.

A search in Google Images provides many images of the York Minster fiddler, some in stone (presumably the original). It has also been represented in china, and indeed on a door knocker. Perhaps a few decades ago. Perhaps around the time that you could also buy cigarette lighters made from bits of Minster stone.

So Drake, writing in the eighteenth century, thought the fiddler on the south transept ‘added much to its decoration’. Several later observers clearly disagreed. But after the removal, there was enough interest left in the figure of the fiddler for it to be reproduced in items for sale, a memento of the Minster.

As always, there’s a whole other layer or several that I could go into, but this daily posting thing means sticking to deadlines and word limits, particularly now it’s so late it’s nearly into the next day. But it’s like that, York, isn’t it.  So many stories, so many layers.

. . . . .

This is December Daily number 15. If you appreciate this month’s mix of new things, old things, York things large and small, then virtual coffees are welcome, thank you.

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