Turnstiles, Grosvenor Road end, 24 April 2022

At the end of the previous page, after looking at the clearance work on the Duncombe Barracks site, I said we were on our way to the library next. But on the way, turning from Burton Stone Lane onto Grosvenor Road, we pass Bootham Crescent, and it’s not really possible to ignore the fact — though in many ways I’d like to — that clearance work has started here too in the last couple of weeks.

In late afternoon sunshine there’s still a certain charm to the familiar red-painted turnstiles. Some of them, and the nearby gates, have been boarded over quite a few times, attempts to keep out young intruders who kept finding ways in.

Since the sale of the ground was completed, and in preparation for the demolition, security guards have been on site. Presumably in connection with that, lights above the turnstile gates were on again in the evenings. Odd to see that again, reminding me of evening games, queues here, supporters passing and laughing, police vans parked.

I think – I hope – that we all understand the cultural significance of old traditional football grounds like this one. And also that for fans of this particular club, the end of this one has been poignant and painful.

An excellent piece by Tony Cole in the Guardian describes the importance of Bootham Crescent from a fan’s perspective.

Dear old place. It looks so humble, small, unassuming, this part of the Grosvenor Road end. Hard to imagine the tall townhouses that will in due course be built here.

Inside the ground, in recent days, machinery has been lifting the once carefully-tended turf, scooping it up. Turf and earth piled on what used to be the pitch. Green grass and yellow dandelions now in mounds of brown.

Outside, some distance above the ground, on the grey-brown wall of the Grosvenor Road end, a plant, a corydalis, green leaves and yellow flowers. Still surviving up there since arriving as a wind-blown seed some years ago. Below it, several clumps of its offspring.

For now, while the heavy plant machinery does its work inside, the little plant outside blooms on.

It may have time to set seed again before this wall comes down. So maybe some day, when this wall is gone, a crack in a pavement or a townhouse forecourt might give a new home to its cheery yellow and green.

But for now, by York City’s old home, I’m remembering the red and blue.

Goodbye Bootham Crescent, dear old neighbour.

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The Cocoa Works in all its complexity, in times past

Previously, we were at the Cocoa Works development, the former Rowntree factory buildings facing Haxby Road. These are just part of what used to be a very large site, shown on the old image above.

Behind the main factory buildings, demolition took place more than a decade ago to clear the rest of this part of the site, back to the Wigginton Road entrance. (Wigginton Road is indicated by a line of trees in the top left of the image above.) This large site was then known as Nestlé South — as Nestlé retained more modern buildings to the north.

The cleared area behind the main factory buildings is now known as Cocoa West, and a planning application for its redevelopment has recently been approved.

This is an important development — the future of a place so significant in the history of this city I call home — and I appreciated having some free time to focus on it again — so let’s continue the journey, with photos taken earlier this month.

We start where the previous page ended, by the arch of the bridge that carried Haxby Road over the railway line in times past. We were looking up from it, at the factory buildings, but now stay at its level, down in the cutting between roads.

Haxby Road bridge over the cycle track (former railway line), 12 Dec 2021

What was a railway line has for some decades been a cycle track.

There are so many of these brick-built bridges curving across former railway lines. Easier to appreciate them now, passing under them on two wheels or on foot. As is often the case, this one is graffiti-covered. It doesn’t bother me at all, personally, down here under the curve of the bridges, I like the creativity of it, the bright bursts of colour.

Graffiti, Haxby Road bridge, 12 Dec 2021

‘AND THEY KEEP ON WALKIN …’ it says.

So let’s keep on doing that. Passing under the arch of the bridge, and coming out into the late afternoon sunlight, we pass one end of the old factory buildings previously discussed, here viewed through trees.

Old factory – Cocoa Works -from the cycle track

The trees alongside this former railway line have grown a lot since the trains ran through here. This section to the south of the old factory site is a tree-shaded green tunnel for cyclists and pedestrians, and a much-appreciated and well-used link between Haxby Road and Wigginton Road.

We approach the curved brick bridge carrying Wigginton Road over what used to be a railway line.

Cycle track, approaching Wigginton Road, December 2021

Here, on the section of track near Wigginton Road, the factory had its own stop, Rowntree Halt. I was pleased to find some images, and even a film, from the days when the trains ran down here.

Passenger train approaching Rowntree Halt, late 1980s. Still from BFI film.

There was also a line in to the factory site, pictured here. (There are a couple more images of the line and platform at the bottom of this page too, and a nice photo and more information on this page.)

As we get to the bridge, on a winter afternoon, the sunlight is so low, but let’s hope there’s enough left to illuminate and illustrate ‘Cocoa West’ …

Cycle track and bridge, Wigginton Road, 12 Dec 2021

We take a right turn here just before the bridge, and it takes us on a short section of cycle path through more trees, passing one of the old factory clocks, and to the Wigginton Road entrance to what used to be the other part of the old factory site.

Cocoa West, Wigginton Road, 12 Dec 2021

It’s a very large site, the size perhaps not clear from the image above.

Most of its buildings were cleared some years back. On this side, one small gatehouse remains, to remind us of the factory with such a long history.

By the entrance to the old factory site, Wigginton Rd

In the background are the old factory buildings visited on the previous page.

In late afternoon sun back in December 2009 I took photos from this Wigginton Road entrance as the range of buildings on this side of the site were being demolished.

Demolition of former factory buildings, from Wigginton Rd, Dec 2009

Quite a collection of structures, different shapes and sizes. What a confectionery manufacturer needed back then, and doesn’t need now.

Demolition of former factory buildings, from Wigginton Rd, Dec 2009

Melangeur block before demolition, Dec 2009

This month, so many years on from the demolition pictured above, a planning application  has been approved for housing development here. The Cocoa West development was approved at a recent planning committee meeting. Not just approved, but welcomed:

Councillor Michael Pavlovic said: “It really is heartening to hear of an application that ticks quite so many boxes – it’s not something this committee is used to from developers.”

The planning application documents state:

Our vision is for Cocoa West to become an uplifting and sustainable neighbourhood, with productive, ecologically rich landscapes and crafted architecture that respects the site’s heritage and celebrates its legacy

— and include images of how it will look:

Image from plans for Cocoa West (ref 21/01371/FULM)

A new link will be made to the cycle track/former railway line (shown on the right of the image above).

This place has been a long-running thread through these York Stories pages. I don’t have close personal family connection to the factory, and probably didn’t appreciate the Rowntree approach, and its legacy, when I was younger, as much as I should have done, but have appreciated it more in more recent years. Over the years I’ve included many pages on the Rowntree factory (see all pages tagged Rowntree on this link).

Dear readers, your knowledge, insights, comments, and coffees, are welcome as always.

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Opening in 1971 – the Post House hotel

It took a while to get back to 1971 … (apologies for the long gap in communication).

Previously, we were looking at a hotel that opened this year, 2021, in a building that was formerly an office block. Fifty years ago, back in September 1971, a new Post House hotel opened on Tadcaster Road.

A full-page advert in an early 1970s guide to York previously featured on these pages promotes its opening, with a rather attention-grabbing phrase: ‘Stop short of York’.

Ad for the new Post House hotel, opening in 1971

‘Stop short of’ — decide not to do something, although you almost do. But in this case, now it’s grabbed your attention, it explains that the hotel is some way outside the city centre, on ‘the main approach road from the A1 and the South’, presumably intending to make a virtue of its convenience for motorists coming from that direction, who won’t have to negotiate driving through the city centre to get to it.

I realised I couldn’t picture this place at all, and had no idea if it’s still there. I’m not up that end of town much, and no reason to be looking at hotels when I am up there. But yes, it is still there. Cherry Lane, off the main Tadcaster Road, runs alongside it, and Google Streetview shows how it looks now from Cherry Lane, from a similar angle to the illustration above. It’s now a Holiday Inn.

Holiday Inn (formerly Post House hotel), from Cherry Lane, Tadcaster Road. Image: Google Street View

When it opened, 50 years ago, it had 104 rooms, described in the advert. ‘All are centrally heated, with private bathroom, room tv, phone and radio, and facilities for making tea and coffee.’ This doesn’t seem like the height of luxury now, but presumably seemed so back then. Though it’s not clear to me how ‘posh’ this hotel was, at the time.

As a comparison, in the same publication there’s an ad for a country guest house in Acaster Malbis. It states, that ‘all bedrooms have hot and cold water, room-controlled central heating (all the year), electric razor points, bedside lights and electric blankets’.

We always went self-catering, and I was just a young child at this time. I’m struggling to get the context of the Post House hotel experience of the early 1970s, and the level of luxury offered.

The 1971 advert also makes a point of referring to the history of the site: ‘There used to be an old manor on the site; we’ve kept all we could of its gardens, including a magnificent Cedar of Lebanon.’ I’m not sure how common it was back then for mature trees to be kept when a site was cleared for redevelopment.

But what about ‘the old manor’, I wondered. Would we now completely demolish an old manor house to build a new hotel? What kind of state was it in? Perhaps in a ruinous condition and thought not worth saving?

I’ve not been able to find any images of the ‘old manor’, or much information about it in general, but it’s shown on old maps.

OS map, 1892, showing manor house and church, Dringhouses

I tend to forget that this area of Tadcaster Road is called Dringhouses. But the old maps remind us that Dringhouses was a coherent old place, with a church and a manor house next to one another, before the Post House hotel was built on the site of the manor. Here’s the satellite view from Google for comparison, with the church and the hotel next to it.

Aerial view of church and adjacent hotel, Dringhouses (Google)

Clearly there’s a lot of tree cover and space between the two, but it’s hard to imagine a development like this in other historic settlements outside the city walls, with a similarly large modern hotel built next to a church. I wonder if there were any objections to this development at the time.

Interesting to note that there’s a planning application for a nearby development going to the planning committee tomorrow (2 Sept) (ref 20/00507/FULM). The applicant wants to build a retirement complex, just across the other side of Cherry Lane from the hotel, on the site shown towards the bottom of the aerial image above (plan here, PDF). However the committee report recommends refusal, stating that the proposed development ‘would harm the visual amenity of the streetscene, the form and character of the adjoining section of Tadcaster Road and the setting of the Tadcaster Road Conservation Area.’

It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the large 1970s hotel is also rather obvious in the streetscene. As a comment in response to an article in the Press puts it: ‘This would really spoil the view from the beautiful and historic Holiday Inn.’

The recommendation for refusal of the proposed development perhaps illustrates the difference in our approaches to planning and conservation matters, compared to 50 years ago.

Anyway, time to head back into the present, heading into town, along that historic route in from the south. From the corner of Cherry Lane, past the hotel, and the church. Glancing up, as we do, at its spire. This is apparently made of fibreglass, which surprised me.

I wondered if I have a photo of it … just this slightly blurred one, through trees.

Spire of St Edward the Confessor, Dringhouses, from the Knavesmire, Aug 2018

I wondered if it was common to replace church spires with fibreglass replicas. I found a couple of other examples, including this one.

The church, St Edward the Confessor, is a Victorian era rebuilding of an earlier church on the site. By the second half of the 20th century the church appears to have been rather dilapidated and in need of repair, and the fibreglass replacement spire was part of that, erected in 1970. As construction of the hotel would have been taking place alongside it at around the same time, there’s perhaps a connection there. Perhaps anyone who knows more will add information in the comments below.

Likewise, if you remember the Post House in its early days, or the old Manor House before it, your local insights and knowledge are welcome, as always.

Update: Dringhouses Manor

Many thanks to Edward Waterson, who after reading the above sent me photos and information on Dringhouses Manor, demolished to make way for the hotel.

Dringhouses Manor

The cedar tree, mentioned in the advert above, and apparently still on the hotel site, is on the right in the photos above.

The manor house doesn’t look like an ancient dilapidated dwelling, which is how I’d imagined it must be. Indeed it looks smart and well-maintained, and not particularly ancient. This is explained in the information Edward sent to accompany the photos.

When the owner of the Dringhouses estate, Col. Eason Wilkinson, died in 1941 the manor house was bought by F W Shepherd, who reclad it. A much older house (?17th century?) was encased in modern brick.

He added: ‘The family formed St Edwards Close to the rear of the hotel and kept some cracking good plots for them to build new houses on, referred to locally as Shepherds Bush.’

Thanks too to Andy Walker, who has sent me another photo of Dringhouses Manor, this time taken from the front.

Dringhouses Manor

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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 …

. . . . .

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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York Official Guide and Miniguide, 1971/72

Researching for a piece I’m trying to write led me back to my small collection of York-related booklets and pamphlets. I’ve included parts of a few of them before. Some years back I wrote about an advert for cigarette lighters made from York Minster fragments, from the ‘York Official Guide and Miniguide’, dating from 1971/1972. I picked up the booklet and several other similar publications in the closing down sale at the Barbican Bookshop on Fossgate.

As we’re now in another lockdown, in the middle of a particularly difficult time, I thought I’d share some more of this early 1970s publication with you, dear readers, in case anyone’s in need of some gentle nostalgia, and fancies escaping back to the early 1970s for a while.

The first page of the guide is an advert for Mulberry Hall  which was previously included on this page from 2016. Mulberry Hall appears to have been a regular advertiser in the various updated editions of the York Official Guide, as was this company:

Early 1970s ad for Yorkshire General, Rougier Street

Nice illustration. The smiley couple are in Rougier Street, with the company’s head office in the background, and a groovy old bus. The same illustration, cropped in a slightly different way, has been included previously, on this page about the building. (The building is still there but has recently been converted to a hotel (not a residential development, as had been planned when I wrote that page back in 2016).

Another full page ad, with a suprisingly large amount of white space, advertises “One of England’s lovelier shops”, Hunter and Smallpage, on Goodramgate.

Hunter and Smallpage, Goodramgate, early 1970s ad

It was a furniture shop, right in the town centre, with its own car park. Imagine that.

More on the shops:

From the official York Guide, 1971/2

Back then, Marks and Spencer’s was a “must” for the overseas visitor.  And if you were after “exciting and colourful clothes” you might be interested in Vivien Smith Simply Clothes, on Micklegate, which also advertised in the guide book:

Early 1970s ad for Vivien Smith, Simply Clothes

What a groovy advert, very 70s. Big heavy curvy typeface and an expressive illustration of a woman with long hair and dreamy eyes looking a bit bored, and perhaps dreaming of a better future. It promises “Something new in Old York.”

The “E.C. Wednesday” must refer to early closing.

This visitor’s guide includes a brief description of various city centre streets the tourist might want to visit. Of Fossgate it says:

Early 1970s description of Fossgate

“Little to see” on Fossgate, back then, apart from a few notable buildings.

In recent years Fossgate has clearly become quite a happening kind of place, far busier than it was then, quite a high profile kind of street. Its buildings are much the same as they were then, but used for different purposes, with many popular places to eat and drink.

Many visitors to the city are perhaps now not so focused on what they see, in terms of touring round the famous historic buildings, but equally interested in the vast choice York offers in terms of dining, and drinking.

Quite different back in the early 1970s, as previously highlighted on an earlier page featuring another publication from that time.

The local restaurants and culinary traditions also get a bit of a write-up in this early 1970s York Official Guide – “few provide dishes from the range of great Northern and Yorkshire specialities: black pudding, tripe and onions …”

‘Yorkshire Cooking’ … from an early 1970s guide

I don’t recall ever hearing the phrase quoted at the end, which was perhaps from much earlier times. At this point, as a child growing up in Acomb, York, I have a vague memory of Yorkshire puddings with golden syrup.

I also have a vague memory of visiting this place, which had a half page ad in the early 1970s guide, and again looks very much of its time:

Flamingo Park advert, early 1970s

My exploration of this particular early 1970s publication continues, but I’ve got distracted by a bit of historical research prompted by its adverts. More on that story later perhaps.

. . . . .

(Apologies that some of some of the above images are a bit wonky. I thought that they then more authentically conveyed that they’re scans of an actual booklet with pages, which had to be carefully placed on the scanner, as of course one has to be careful with these ancient historical documents …)

More …

If you’d like to look at more from the 1970s, try this link for a selection. Some adverts from an early 1980s York Official Guide can be found on this link. A 1961 York Guide is covered at some length on this page. If you’d like to go back even further, how about When Bettys was Betty’s, and other 1930s ads.

. . . . .

I hope that this has been of interest and offered a brief break from the current times. Thank you to the kind readers who continue to help out with the website hosting fees, and power these pages, with virtual coffees. More about the background to all this is on this page.

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