A couple of weeks ago, on a sunny spring afternoon, I had a walk over to Lawrence Street, as there were two specific things of interest I wanted to have a look at. From the Navigation Road area I thought I’d go via this section of the walls, looking so handsome in the spring sunlight.

And approaching Walmgate Bar:

The bar has undergone restoration and improvement works in recent years, but we haven’t time to explore that further just now, as we’re dashing over the road to Lawrence Street.

Actually, it’s impossible to dash over the road here. I seemed to wait an age to cross, by Walmgate Bar, at that junction always so busy with traffic.

Not too far along Lawrence Street, the first place I’d been aiming for: the former St Lawrence WMC (in recent memory), or ‘the Tuke house‘ as I tend to call it now.

I’ve popped by a few times over the last year or so, to see how work was progressing, but this was the first time the frontage showed clear signs of repair and restoration. Quite a dramatic difference, those clean lines of the new roof and the windows. No buddleia growing out of the top floor windows. And, as you may have noticed in the photo above, its connection to the Tuke family is recognised in the naming of this new student accommodation: the Samuel Tuke apartments.

Quite a change then, from buddleia bushes back and front and its rather sad and saggy look before:

There’s a new block under construction at the back of it:

The new block isn’t visible from Lawrence Street in any dramatic way and doesn’t seem to spoil the look of the original historic house. But from the back of the site and the side its size becomes more obvious:

The original house is under the scaffolding to the right, the new block on the left.

From the Tuke house, let’s cross over the road to the churchyard of St Lawrence’s, opposite. Changes here too, more restoration, but on a smaller scale.

The Rigg monument:

I’ve written about it before, a couple of times, on the first occasion because it seemed forgotten, and then when it was clear that it wasn’t forgotten, and that there was a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to restore it, led by York Civic Trust.

A reminder of how it looked before:

And from a similar angle, how it looks now:

The inscription has been carefully recreated:

Particularly touching were the daffodils, faded by the time I visited but presumably from the recent ceremony of re-dedication.

Sometimes, when I take photos for these pages, and particularly in the colder months of the year, I dash over to the particular location focused on just getting the necessary pictures. On this occasion, such a beautiful spring day, I sat awhile in the churchyard at St Lawrence’s, on a bench near the Rigg memorial and close to the tower of the old church, and ate a sandwich, and enjoyed the sunshine, and had a think.

A couple of men walked by and we all smiled at one another as people often do on sunny days, particularly perhaps on Fridays at the end of the working week. They both went to get their cars from the car park and I carried on sitting in the sun, thinking about the restoration that had been completed on the monument behind me, and the restoration taking place on the old house opposite, and how both had been sitting there for so long crumbling away, and how much around them had changed, is changing.

From the bench the Tuke house was visible, behind its hoardings advertising the student accommodation. I thought about my first walk down here with my camera, in October 2004, how I’d taken a photo of both the monument and the Tuke house, just one photo of each, then carried on down the road, taken a few more including a few of the gateway to the Poor Clares convent. That too is being converted to student accommodation. From where I was sitting I could also see the side of Foss Studios, also student accommodation.

In the middle of it all, the charming tower of the old St Lawrence’s, a pale stone background to the newly-painted Rigg monument railings.

Which reminds me, I need to get on with the new printed pamphlet version of When the Suburbs Burned. Enough of this sitting about lazily in the sunshine, thinking.

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Rigg family monument, June 2011

Back in June 2011 I wrote about a very special monument in the churchyard of St Lawrence’s: A forgotten tragedy: Rigg family monument.

The Press yesterday carried a story about plans by York Civic Trust to restore the monument. At the time I compiled the original page I wondered if this might happen, at some point.

The monument was by then dilapidated. But in its gracefully dilapidated state perhaps more moving. In 2004, when I’d first taken a photograph of it, real ivy covered its carved depictions of ivy. Natural processes at work, nature reclaiming, reminding us in a more visible way of what the Victorian verses told us about the transient nature of our lives. But also how the natural world takes it all in, grows around it, carries on.

Some gentle intervention perhaps stopped the monument being completely overwhelmed by vegetation, in the intervening years since.

Sometimes benign neglect is better than aggressive restoration. Sometimes the silent and slow collapse and reclaiming by nature is more appropriate and fitting. It’s more than 180 years since the devastating family tragedy commemorated by the Rigg monument.

Now, in 2015, York Civic Trust proposes renovation and a reinstatement of the monument, to also stand as a memorial to all those who have lost their lives in the river, more recently.

Clearly well-meant, as all the Civic Trust ideas are. But a good idea?

The comments under the article in the Press suggest that this proposal doesn’t have much support in the wider York community, or at least among readers of The Press who comment on the website. Some of the comments demonstrate an insensitive and judgmental attitude to the more recent tragedies endured by the many families who have recently lost loved ones in the city’s rivers. But the issue has been raised, and one of the comments sums up more thoughtfully the discomfort at ‘co-opting an existing monument’.

It’s clear that the Civic Trust have for decades done good work, paying for enhancements to the civic realm, without most of us noticing or knowing that they did it. Adding things into the civic realm is one thing. Renovating or changing things that are already there is a different thing, and far more sensitive and open to question. Not everyone was delighted at the restoration of the Bile Beans sign – another project led by York Civic Trust. I wrote about it at the time, and remember also the mixed reaction on social media.

It’s clear that the Civic Trust has influence and can get things done. It’s also clear that many local businesses and individuals are happy to donate the funds to get these things done. But the Civic Trust doesn’t own these things, does it. It doesn’t, as far as I know, own the Bile Beans sign or the Rigg family monument. Is the membership of the Civic Trust representative of the citizens of York? The comments on the Press article suggest not, perhaps.

A couple of years back I wrote something about the changes in King’s Square, about who had the power and influence to make these changes, whether it was right that they did, whether more of us should have/could have been involved in the remodeling of ‘our’ square. And here, again, there are similar issues, ideas about civic ‘improvements’ we might not all view as such. Not just restoring a monument, which in itself is open to question, but imposing upon it a new meaning and significance.

Thought-provoking, isn’t it.

Here’s a photo of the monument back in 2004. And there’s information on its history in my earlier and recently much-visited page: A forgotten tragedy: Rigg family monument.

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On the previous page I left us by the toilets at Bootham Bar, and promised something more uplifting. That same walk, a few minutes earlier, I’d noticed this bench, and have since been back to take a photo of it on a brighter day, wanting to do justice to its lovely inspiring inscription. It’s a memorial plaque to Tom Mason (1953-2006), in Miller’s Yard, off Gillygate, and it reads:

“I have taught myself to take note of and pleasure in those works with which the creator has crowded and adorned the paths I daily walk and cycle”

I think I try to do the same, and I know many readers of these pages will also appreciate these words.

I wondered whether this might be a quote. As so often, Google produced an immediate answer, and as so often, I ended up reading several interesting things and found myself some distance from where I started.

These words are taken from the introduction to a book by the naturalist George Johnston (1797–1855). They’ve been slightly altered in punctuation and capitalisation and have a small addition to the original text:

“… I have taught myself to take note of, and pleasure in, those works with which the Creator has crowded and adorned the paths I daily walk; and sure I am that now I can see and appreciate a beauty and excellence, where, otherwise, they would not have impressed me …”
(The Botany of the Eastern Borders, archive.org)

The plaque has ‘and cycle’ added to Johnston’s ‘daily walk’. Nice, isn’t it.

Taking notice of this bench also drew me into taking more notice of Miller’s Yard in general, and so we’re staying here for the next page. Have a seat on this sunny bench.

More information

The same words (without the addition) are inscribed in a place with a strong connection to George Johnston:

Inscription on the Hume Castle indicator, and another view of the same

More information on George Johnston, from the DNB

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Dead land, carriageworks site, 27 July 2004

Ten years ago, on 27 July 2004, I walked down Holgate Road and along Poppleton Road, through the beginnings of ‘Holgate Park’. What we knew as the carriageworks site. I hated it all. The older page from back then explains why.

A week ago, on 27 July 2014, I cycled over Clifton Bridge and took a left down Poppleton Road, to the now well-established Holgate Park. One of the ‘ten years on’ visits I’ve been trying to do. A particularly important one so I made a point of revisiting on the same day, ten years on. Also, I’d heard about the Poppy Road Project, and wanted to see that, but only got half the story, and was imagining an area of red poppies, somewhere near the Fox pub. What I found was a great bright meadow of wildflowers all around the sculpture commemorating the carriageworks, part of which is shown in that image above.

Not just poppies. Multicoloured loveliness in the evening sun. It was stunning. I stopped here for much longer than I intended to.

Wildflower meadow, and rail, 27 July 2014

The wildflower meadow here was planted to commemorate the First World War, but like all good things it seems to have more meanings than just the one and will be appreciated by many people for many different reasons.

Like I said, Holgate Park and its sculpture, ten years ago, seemed like a mean little substitute for what we had, and I’ve not wanted to walk past since. It was like it had all shrunk, was soulless, compared to how vigorous and busy and industrially beautiful it was before. I feel bad saying that as I know people worked hard to regenerate the place.

It needed these flowers to regenerate it. This small part of it is transformed, inspiring, and heartening.

Here’s a 2004 view (under construction):

Holgate Arch, under construction, 27 July 2004

Here’s Google’s Street View of how it looked in 2012:

Google Street View of Holgate Arch, 2012

And here it is a week ago, in 2014:

Wildflower meadow and Holgate Arch, 27 July 2014

I know it looks so sentimental and soppy, but — the wildflower meadow around it was like a big hug for the thing, and what this place meant. I realise that the impetus for it was a First World War commemoration, but in a broader and bigger way too it’s like a part of this piece of land so changed and reduced got its heart back.

While I was up here admiring the flowers I had a wander through its sunlit arch and noticed the details that weren’t here in 2004, when it was under construction. The pathway to the arch has metal plates set into it, recording/commemorating railway companies. And then there’s a map.

Map on metal plate, Holgate Arch, 27 July 2014

I was very struck by the caption (try to ignore the weird mistake in the inverted comma):

‘The Heart of York’. It did look like a heart, this railway land, as I noticed a while back in this aerial image of the area in the Britain from Above collection (York Racecourse, the Railway Station and Railway Works, York, 1947):

A Google search turns up no written references to this area being commonly known as the ‘Heart of York’, but the metal plaque records it, and I remember it being described this way, in our recent history. More on that soon.

The way I see the area now is affected by how I remember it. A bit like that image above, but from the perspective of the top deck of a bus, going to school. My memories are no doubt a bit skewed and distorted with the years, as it’s thirty years ago, more, that I’m thinking of, remembering a long wall alongside Poppleton Road from the end of the Victorian terraces, and behind that wall the massive open area of railway land, and in particular a 1950s/60s pre-fab type building, where the apprentices trained.

One of the old Fairbank archive photos I have seems to show that very wall, though in my memory it’s a taller wall. Here on the left in an image taken about a hundred years ago. Probably just before the start of the First World War, before the streets of housing on the right were built:

Poppleton Road, circa 1913. (Fairbank archive, (c) Arup)

After I left the beautiful meadow I wended my way past CPP towards the place I was heading to originally before wildflowers distracted me. I took more photos, and had too many thoughts, and too many photos, to include on this already long page. While I was taking some of them a man I’ve never met before gave me a flower. I stuck it on my bike as I cycled away from those railway lands.

Thank you, Poppy Road Project, and the man on the gate, for putting some heart back in to the place.

. . . . .

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‘By the tree’ used to be ‘a great place to meet mates’, as this plaque records. It’s in memory of someone called Paul Woosey, whose nickname was Wooz. He was born in 1976 and died in 2007. I didn’t know him. I just know from this plaque that he used to meet his mates by the tree.

I assume his friends and family had this plaque put here.

I went into town earlier and sat for a while on his bench to have a think before coming home to write this page.

You may be wondering where this plaque is, might not have noticed it. It’s in the square we all love so much, King’s Square — on the bench by the tree nearest to the junction with Newgate and the Shambles.

The plaque’s not that easy to spot, as like the rest of the square it’s really dirty. I didn’t see it until relatively recently. So I wouldn’t blame anyone for not noticing.

Unless, that is, they were going round, as part of the ‘Reinvigorate York’ team, doing an audit of the existing features and a carefully considered redesign of the area, which was supposed to be retaining things of value, and was supposed to be for residents as well as visitors. Then I would expect them not only to have noticed it, but to have gone out of their way to contact the family or friends of the deceased, if they were planning to remove and replace the benches, which they are.

The repaving work is just part of the ‘Reinvigorate York’ scheme. The rest of it involves removing ‘clutter’ and turning King’s Square into a ‘world class space’. It also involves replacing benches with benches of a standard type. It also apparently involves chucking plaques placed in memory of former York residents into a skip? Or perhaps recycling the metal? Or perhaps removing them and losing them? What were they planning to do exactly? I was curious.

So, some months after first thinking about this, and in response to the current concerns over the ‘reinvigoration’ of this place, I emailed today to ask. The relevant council team/department is apparently unaware of this plaque.

Which tells me all I need to know about Reinvigorate York, if I didn’t know already. For residents? No it isn’t. Respecting this ‘special and unique place’? No it isn’t.

Like I said, I didn’t know Paul Woosey, I know nothing about this plaque apart from what it tells me. What it tells me is part of what makes this ‘special and unique place’ special and unique.

So under ‘Reinvigorate York’, residents’ money is to be used to erase the traces/markers of recent residents and their special and unique connections?

Not my idea of respecting and valuing a sense of place.

It’s just small and indistinct, this plaque, it’s a marker of the life of one ordinary resident, whose life I could find no other record of in online records (apart from the official birth and death records) because he wasn’t famous. So he doesn’t have a statue, or a memorial in the Minster, or any of the other markers of greatness. He was I guess just an ordinary person like me and like most York residents.

He has a plaque on a bench in King’s Square. Which no one involved in ‘Reinvigorate York’ cares about.

Who was Paul Woosey? As the ‘reinvigoration’ is about to remove the marker of his life his friends might remember him by in that particular place, I hope that someone who knew him or who knows more about that plaque will claim a seat here, in the virtual sense, via the comments box below, and tell us about Paul Woosey.

You can of course also use the comments box to make more general comments (as long as we all shift along the bench if Paul’s friends come along … But it’s an imaginary bench here in the virtual world, so it can extend for as long as we want it to).

. . . . .

I can also be contacted via email.

Elsewhere on this site

First mentioned in June 2013: Benches in King’s Square. The quote about the square being a ‘special and unique place’ is part of the council’s response to a query regarding the Sound Effect bench, also marked with a plaque.

Update

We saved the bench, for now at least. It’s still in the square after the ‘Phase 1′ work. I’m hoping ‘Phase 2′, if it really is about acknowledging the special and unique aspects of place, will involve not only keeping the plaque but perhaps popping in to the Barnitts shop across the square to buy a tin of Brasso to clean it up a bit.

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This gravestone, in the Quaker burial ground in Bishophill, stands out from the others around it in the amount of information it carries, though it’s the same small, rather humble, curved-top stone.

NEAR THIS STONE
REST THE REMAINS OF
JOHN WOOLMAN
OF MOUNT HOLLY
NEW JERSEY, NORTH AMERICA,
WHO DIED AT YORK
7TH OF 10TH MONTH 1772
AGED 51 YEARS

This city has many famous graves. One of the favourites is the grave of Dick Turpin. I’ve never understood why. Around his legend there’s a load of old guff about riding from London to York in about 10 minutes, on some poor old horse. Or it might be someone else’s legend. I don’t care. Anyone can drive a horse till it’s nearly dead. Many did, famous or not. More respect to John Woolman. He walked here.

John Woolman died of smallpox, at the home of Thomas Priestman, a Quaker tanner. The house, Almery Garth, on the corner of Marygate and Marygate Lane, is marked with a plaque.

He wanted to visit Quakers in the north of England, particularly in Yorkshire, and had set sail on a Quaker-owned ship on 1 May 1772. One American Quaker wrote ahead to a Friend in England, of Woolman: ‘He is a Friend in good Esteem among us, of blameless Life, a good understanding, and deep in spiritual Experience, tho’ singular in his Dress & deportment.’ (Eccentric, I think he means.)

I’m not an expert on 18th century norms and values, but it seems that John Woolman was ahead of the prevailing ‘wisdom’ of his time – as eccentric/‘singular’ people often are. He is celebrated for his opposition to the slave trade. Less often mentioned is his awareness of the suffering of animals. His journey from London to York was undertaken on foot because he was distressed by the way horses were driven too hard.

Reading accounts of his life I was struck by how ‘modern’ and relevant many of his beliefs were. I guess we’d say now that he lived by his principles, in living a simple life and rejecting certain goods (such as dyed clothes) because of associations with the slave trade. This kind of principled existence is difficult to accomplish now, in an age more accepting of variation and the ‘unconventional’ singular soul. Must have been even more difficult then. Respect to John Woolman, who in his adult years tried to live his life without doing harm to man or beast.

Elsewhere on the web

The quote at the top of the page is from Amelia Mott Gummere’s preface to an edition of Woolman’s works, published in America in 1922.

It includes a nice local detail. The owner of Almery Garth – Malcolm Spence, great-great grandson of Thomas Priestman – still had in the house documents written by John Woolman, kept there since 1772. In the early 20th century Malcolm Spence took photographs of them for the editor of the book, and later shipped all the documents over, just before he died.

The title of this page is from the same book, p138, a comment attributed to John Woolman as he headed towards York. It may be that he didn’t actually say it, but I’m overlooking that. It is home to his mortal remains, as he didn’t make it back home to America.

See also:
More information on John Woolman – from quakersintheworld.org
Wikipedia: John Woolman

Note

If you use material from this page, credit www.yorkstories.co.uk and link to this page. I’m sad that I have to say this, but I do. This carefully compiled research is offered on the web for free because I want people who don’t know about John Woolman to know about him, and his connection to York. Please respect other people’s work online, credit it and link to it. That’s how the web used to be, and how it should be. Thank you.

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