Godfrey Walker Home, Acomb Road, Nov 1948 (Photo: York Press)

A recent story in the Press announced plans for the closure and demolition of the Carlton Tavern, on Acomb Road. Many large out of town pubs have closed in recent years, several have been demolished. But this isn’t just another pub closure story. The building has a long and interesting history, part of which is captured in this photo above, from 1948. Calling it the Carlton Tavern doesn’t do it justice. Let’s call it by one of its older names: West Garth perhaps, or the Godfrey Walker Home.

As one of the comments on the Press article mentions, before it was a pub this Victorian villa was for some decades the Godfrey Walker Home. The photo at the top of the page was taken during that time, and shows nursery nurses and children on the lawns and steps in front of the building.

This building was the reason my mum came to York, from Hull, just after the war. It was her first home here, for a year or so, 1947-8. A description of this time, written in the early 1990s as a contribution to a life story project run by the British Library, includes a page or two about the home and her time there. I thought I’d share a few extracts. Imagine, if you will, leaving the bombed-out streets of Hull, just after the war, and arriving in York, in the merry month of May, 1947:

I applied for a job as a nursery nurse with the Church of England Children’s Society. I received a letter telling me that there was a place in Shropshire, but they would try to find me one nearer home. I wrote back and told them that I had no desire to be near Hull, on the contrary the farther away the better.

In York at this time a large detached house in its own grounds had been bequeathed to the society. This was to be opened in May ’47 as a nursery for babies and toddlers up to five years. It was named after the benefactor, and known as the Godfrey Walker Home. I was offered a place here although I was only fifteen and a half. When I was sixteen, in August, I could start a two year nursery nurse course which would include two three month periods at a college in Hornsey, North London.

I arrived in York on a glorious day in May and asked a policeman the way to Acomb. As I walked out of the station I thought I had come to paradise. Brilliant blue sky, white stone walls, green grass and trees. I’d left behind rubble and debris, sandbags and all the reminders of war. I boarded a bus and the journey took me past lilac and laburnum all in their full glory. Past the park with trees of many varieties until I finally walked up the path towards my new home.

There were about six of us altogether. Girls like myself, leaving home for the first time; also one sister and a Matron. Soon the children began to arrive; babies and toddlers from all over the country.

Our wages were £2 a month. Out of this we paid a stamp of 7/6 so we had 32/6d left. Thankfully we were provided with a uniform; a green and white striped dress with a white hat and apron. I wore mine constantly. My underwear had to be washed out and dried ready to put back on the next day. Trying to buy clothing was difficult because I had to buy soap and toothpaste and so on. When the girls asked me to go out with them, maybe rowing on the river or something, I would refuse, then they would insist, and I’d have to say I had nothing to wear. One would then lend me a blouse and another a skirt.

We gave the children their tea in the playroom. Here I had my first taste of honey. We had large jars of it which was spread on brown bread and relished by all. We worked hard but it was enjoyable. Just to live in such a lovely house surrounded by a garden and in such a beautiful city was a constant pleasure.

Mum had left this employment before the photo above was taken, but she stayed in Acomb.

These photos of the building I think date from the 1990s:

Former Godfrey Walker Home, 1990s

Former Godfrey Walker Home, 1990s

I haven’t any recent photos of it available, but Google Street view has an image of it, from 2016:

Google Street View image, June 2016 (view on Google maps)

It’s a rather attractive Victorian villa, dating from the late 1880s, according to a brief mention in the Pevsner guide. (It refers to it together with Shelley House, another tile-hung Victorian villa next door. That has been demolished and replaced with a modern block of flats.) It was originally called West Garth, and available records show that it was the home of the Russell family for some years, towards the end of the 19th century.

How it then changed ownership and came to be the Godfrey Walker Home is something perhaps someone else can investigate further. For now it seems sufficient to observe that it looks not much altered, externally, even apparently keeping its original windows (though hard to be sure without a closer look). Unusual perhaps for a building that has had so many changes of use, and isn’t a listed building.

The article in the Press this week revealed that there are plans to demolish the building and replace it with a new purpose-built care home. Plans which apparently received a largely positive response at a recent consultation/exhibition to which some local residents were invited. (But then people exhibiting plans for redevelopment always say that the reaction is positive.)

Seems a shame to destroy this building. In fact I’d go so far as to use a phrase I’m not in the habit of using except when I really need to: it seems like an act of vandalism to destroy it.

I’m not thinking particularly of my own family connection to the place, and this interesting aspect of its history, but more that it makes no sense to me to destroy a solid-looking handsome building that has been adapted for several different uses over the last 130 years or so and yet still retains so much of its original character.

Why could it not be kept, with a modern development around it? If it has outlived its usefulness as a pub that doesn’t seem sufficient justification for its complete destruction.

I’m not naive, and realise that for companies owning ‘assets’ like this it’s all about how much profit they can make.

Maybe they could make just a bit less, by adapting what’s already there, and leave the entrance to Acomb with at least one characterful handsome old building. ‘The next few hundred yards and the blasted village entrance have little aesthetic appeal’, wrote John Hutchinson in 1980.

Technically I think the building is in Holgate, as the boundary between Acomb and Holgate is at Acomb Regent, just along the road, so I’ve been told many times.

Whether we think of it as in Acomb or in Holgate, whether we call it the Carlton Tavern or West Garth or the former Godfrey Walker Home — should it go the same way as the 19th century Burnholme WMC building, and Burton Croft, and North Lodge at Clifton, and the lodge at the old fire station, and so many other Victorian buildings demolished in the last decade or so?

A planning application and planning permission will of course be needed. I can’t see any sign as yet of a planning application on the online system, but I’ll look out for it and link to it when it does.

There’s more information on the Godfrey Walker Home in the online catalogue of the records of the Children’s Society, on this link.

Update: planning application

Now open for comment:

17/00476/FULM | Erection of three-four storey 79no. bedroom care home with associated parking, cycle racks and landscaping following demolition of existing public house | The Carlton Tavern 140 Acomb Road York YO24 4HA

. . . . .

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The post Memories of the Godfrey Walker Home, and plans for its demolition appeared first on York Stories.

All that engagement with changes and happenings in present-day York can get a bit tiring can’t it. Let’s have a break with some gentle nostalgia from ancient times … the early 1980s … via a selection of adverts.

As mentioned some time back, I’ve a small collection of York-related pamphlets and guides bought in the closing down sale of the Barbican Bookshop. Following on from the selection of adverts from an early 1970s guide I thought readers might enjoy this selection from around ten years later. (References in the text suggest the guide dates from 1982 or 1983.)

Above, ads for the fondly-remembered Blake Head Bookshop, since closed, and the Judges Lodgings, still there but looking rather different out front. Back then it appears to have had a curved lawn with a neat flowerbed around. Now it’s all paved and covered with tables and chairs.

York had some interesting independent shops, several of which I remember, but not clearly.

And The Willow, on Coney Street, where customers were still dining and dancing in the early 1980s, and indeed still are, but not for long apparently. The Willow is to close this month.

Having featured in an ad in the early 1970s guide, where we were encouraged to ‘wallow in the world of the Willow for a while’, it was by the 1980s ‘revered by press and public’. I’ve never been to the Willow. Perhaps I should, before it closes on 26 July.

Your memories and comments are welcome, dear readers. And if this page has left you with a nice warm glow of happy nostalgia please consider supporting this site. Thank you.

More information

Ads are from the York Official Guide and Miniguide, 6th edition, edited by A L Laishley and John Brown, designed by Jack Griffiths and Peter Turpin and printed by Ben Johnson & Co Ltd.

(If you were involved in the production of the guide or the artwork for the advertisements featured and haven’t been credited in the list above please add a comment or email me.)

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It was a particularly exciting one. Quite excited today also to find that there’s this short clip on YouTube, including the celebratory scenes after the game. ‘Wish I’d taken my camera’ I wrote in the diary. (Then I could have got a load of blurry photos of the backs of people’s heads, like I usually do …) This video is much better. It’s fab.

My ancient yellowing handwritten account covers a page and more of A4, and barely records the match itself as I found the crowd more interesting, particularly when at full time most of us invaded the pitch: ‘an amazing sight’.

Later we went to Exhibition Square for the open-top bus. The diary records a scene which (as the video also shows) was in many respects just like other victory parades by York City FC, like the one a couple of years ago. Though there’s a little period detail in there, recording and reminding me what 1984 felt like …

‘Everyone was lining the pavements, climbing on the walls, sitting on bus shelters, singing and abusing the police. Good atmosphere though – it wasn’t malicious abuse, just songs about “Maggie Thatcher’s black and white army”.’

The post 30 years ago today, at Bootham Crescent appeared first on York Stories.

Also on this website

Stephen’s memories and Audrey’s memories of living in York during World War 2.

Memorial at Tholthorpe, one of many memorials to WW2 aircrews in Yorkshire

And see ‘Related pages’, below

Elsewhere on the web

More on the history of the area, including RAF Linton-on-Ouse, on Guy’s website www.newton-on-ouse-history.com

More about Guy in his own words

RAF owes a great deal to inventor Guy Jefferson, from The Press

The post Airfields and airmen appeared first on York Stories.

Every ‘bookish’ child remembers the library of their childhood. My mum’s was a Carnegie library in Hull. Mine was Acomb library. I remember us driving there, would be the early to mid 1970s, parking in the car park behind. Remember concrete columns on the way in, a fish tank just inside the door, and the smell of the pages of Beatrix Potter books. Can also remember where the teenage section was, exactly where it was, in the 1980s.

I love this image because of that yellow card, mainly. As I recall, these were the way books were checked in and out. Can’t remember exactly how it worked, but I think they were kept in long wooden drawers.

Please feel free to share your memories of your own ‘first’ library in the comments section.

Many people I know don’t have a library card now, though they may have done when younger. So a question, too: if you don’t use local libraries now, why is that?

The post Remembering libraries appeared first on York Stories.

Links

The Yorkshire Film Archive has some charming film clips depicting childhood in decades past, available to view online.
Free to Grow Up (1956) shows children at New Earswick Primary School, near York, in their PE lessons.

The post She’s a girl of York city appeared first on York Stories.