Old stone: ‘ST CRUX PARISH’

I’ve been busy with other things this week, but as it’s Sunday, and the previous ‘Sunday signage selection‘ proved quite popular, let’s look at a couple of interesting examples noticed in recent wanderings. These aren’t ‘signage’ in the modern sense, but old stones. Still, they signify something, as signs are intended to do. Only one of them makes sense to me at present, while the other is a bit of a mystery.

The photo above, worn and indistinct, reads ‘ST CRUX PARISH’. It could have formed one of those quiz type things I used to do. But I wonder if anyone would have known the location of this. I’d never noticed this stone before, despite being interested in the piece of land it’s on.

The piece of land is between Stonebow House, St Saviour’s Church, Lady Hewley’s almshouses, and what used to be a garage fronting on to Stonebow, but is now a modern office block.

Behind Stonebow, on the stubby remnant of Hungate, St Crux burial ground

The area has been fenced off, overgrown and inaccessible for as long as I can remember. I’ve often peered in and wondered whether anything would be built here. I’ve also looked at it from above, from the car park area on Stonebow House, but hadn’t seen this worn stone marker. It suddenly became apparent on a recent wander on a particularly bright late afternoon, when the light hit the old worn lettering at a particular angle.

As I’m sure many of us know, the church of St Crux no longer exists, having been demolished in the late 19th century. All that remains of it is the small church hall of the same name, near the bottom of the Shambles, on Pavement. Between there and this marker for St Crux parish there’s the massive great bulk of Stonebow House. And also between them is what now looks like an access road to the service area at the back of that building, but is actually a remnant of the street of Hungate, before the street called Stonebow cut it in half and obscured the older street pattern.

And here on Hungate, as some research revealed, the parishioners of St Crux purchased an area of land to use as a burial ground. It’s marked on the 1852 map. Apparently it still contains headstones, though those weren’t visible through the metal fencing on the boundary and the walls and foliage.

I’m glad I noticed this now barely readable sign before it erodes even more, but I’ve found no other information on this interesting and rather forgotten piece of land stuck behind Stonebow. Could it be built on? What are the plans for it? Could it be turned into a small park area?

Leaving the stubby stump of this end of Hungate, turning right into St Saviourgate, then left into Spen Lane, leads us to the back of St Andrew’s Church, and the short but handsome alley alongside it, where I noticed another old stone …

‘1905’, mysteriously appears on alleyway wall

This ‘1905’ stone has appeared in the boundary wall of the alley by the church. The wall seems to have been rebuilt at some point quite recently.

Alleyway off St Andrewgate, June 2016

Previously it looked like this:

Alleyway off St Andrewgate, March 2004

As far as I’m aware, and as far as I can tell from that photo and others, that ‘1905’ sign wasn’t part of the wall before. Or was it? Is it just something else I didn’t notice, because it was grubby and indistinct and the light didn’t hit it at the right angle? I’m doubting my own powers of observation, but I’m almost sure it wasn’t there before.

That photo above was taken many years ago, for a page on the original ‘York Walks’ pages version of this website. But I’ve walked down here many times since. This rebuilt wall must have been rebuilt recently.

On that early page I said how much I loved this little alley. Not so sure now.

Perhaps the older wall was seen to be unsafe, and had to be rebuilt. But why, I wonder, does it now have a stone set into it bearing the date ‘1905’. It’s a little mysterious.

Still, a little mystery adds to the interest in the winding streets we wander in this multi-layered place.

Comments welcome, as always.

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‘Ghost sign’ on the corner of Ordnance Lane and Fulford Rd

We’ve just been looking at buildings in Ordnance Lane, and before we leave there I should mention this ‘ghost sign’ — an old faded painted sign on the brickwork on the corner where Ordnance Lane meets Fulford Road. I thought we’d covered most of the ghost signs in previous pages, but I missed this one. It’s a rather handsome green, and still visible is the name ‘A H Davies’ and ‘Wills’s’. Wills’s made cigarettes. Perhaps behind the more modern billboard added since more of the old advert is preserved, brighter green. It was a huge painted ad, and a closer look suggests it was repainted more than once, as there’s a shadow of a former ‘W’ rather obvious.

It’s now just one of four signs on this prominent end wall, at the end of Ordnance Lane.

‘Ghost sign’, with other signs, on the corner of Ordnance Lane and Fulford Rd

The old signs fade, or erode, and don’t seem prominent enough, so new ones are added, sometimes repeating, rather than replacing, what was there before:

Escrick Terrace, street signs old and new

Escrick Terrace: so good they named it twice.

Also in the same area of York, moving closer to the city centre, I noticed this handsome old hand-painted sign in the doorway of a post-war block of flats on Fishergate:

Sign on Festival Flats, Fishergate

Some of its carefully created lettering has since been obscured by a patch of paint and a note added in marker pen, but perhaps this casual addition makes us appreciate the earlier elegant lettering even more.

Those examples were all from the Fishergate/Fulford Road area. On the same side of town, but off Lawrence Street, heading out towards Hull Road, a relatively modern sign. But it’s old enough to make me feel a bit nostalgic:

Lyons Maid sign, Milton Street

On Milton Street, one of the streets of terraced houses, this plastic sign still sticking out from the wall of what looks like an ordinary house the same as all the others, with a bay window rather than a shop window, but it clearly was a shop at one time and it sold Lyons Maid ice cream.

That image/logo was so successful, a brilliant piece of work. It still evokes carefree childhood times and happy summer days, so many decades after it was designed to represent this brand. According to Wikipedia it is ‘sometimes known as the “Good Time Sign” but more generally referred to in house as the “Dancing Children”.’

The sign is double-sided, and still bright on one side. On its sunny side, the other side, its colours are pale and bleached out by all those years of sunny summer days when we rushed down to the local shop or the ice cream van for ice lollies.

Lyons Maid sign, Milton Street (2: sunny/faded side)

Whether or not it’s hot enough for ice lollies, I hope everyone’s enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend.

‘Signage Sunday’ may become a regular addition to the site, or not. Comments welcome, as always, below.

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Of course, if you want to make your mark on a wall in a public place there are more environmentally friendly ways of doing it, though they’re less colourful, and more brown. On the side of some outbuildings under trees behind King’s Manor I noticed these interesting patches, messages imprinted and scratched into what appears to be mud.

I mentioned them to a friend, who looked more closely than I did and suggested that this might be wattle and daub rather than mere mud. Or rather, this would be just the ‘daub’ part, as the ‘wattle’ refers to the sticks forming the structure the mixture is applied to, and this daub/mud has been applied to the brick walls of an existing building.

The markings in the mud include years, names, and handprints.

If anyone has any further info, please feel free to add a comment. If it remains a mystery, that’s fine too. Just one of the many charming details I’ve noticed while wandering about.

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For some time I’ve been meaning to mention Yearsley Baths, which looked to be under threat of closure. That is no longer the case, and I know many people are very happy about this.

I’ve never been inside, but I have admired it as part of the Rowntree story here in this part of York, near the factory, with the Joseph Rowntree Theatre and the Joseph Rowntree Library, a cluster of buildings providing a range of facilities clearly recognised as parts of a well-rounded, active, educated life, encouraging self-expression, self-improvement, and exercise.

Yearsley Baths doesn’t look particularly stunning from the roundabout side, as pictured above. But I particularly want to mention this lettering down its Haxby Road side, above the original entrance.

Handsome, isn’t it. Confidently carved, large lettering proclaims ‘THE CITY OF YORK YEARSLEY BATH’.

There’s real civic pride in this. It’s not just ‘City of York’, but THE City of York. A century before plastic signage and before places being called ‘Energise’ and Explore, baths were called baths and libraries were called libraries, and they often proclaimed it loudly, carved in stone.

This particular facility was another Rowntree gift to the City of York.

Sadly the lettering isn’t easily visible, and is hard to photograph clearly, because of large trees between it and the road.

Though I am a bit of a tree-hugger, and would always prefer trees to be left alone, I wonder if the view of this fine lettering could be opened up a bit? But anyway, I just wanted to point out that it’s there, and note its handsomeness.

More information

I was going to link to a very interesting and informative page on the City of York Council website which I’d discovered recently … but CYC have just redesigned their website again and the link seems to send me to a page about school admissions. Thank goodness for the Google cache. Here from the Google cache is the page ‘The History of Yearsley Pool’, which I thought I’d best include here in full, in the circumstances.

100 years of Swimming

For decades the people of York used the same area of the River Foss for swimming and cooling down during the hot summer months. Simon Luck, Manager of Yearsley Swimming Pool, tells the history of the pool…

The very first swimming facility in York , called Yearsley Bath, was opened on 19th September 1859 and was actually situated in the River Foss, downstream from Yearsley Bridge and the Fever Hospital .

It was about 100 yards long and had a brick bottom, with wire netting stretching across the river at either end. Stone steps led down into the water from the riverbank, complete with an iron handrail.

Two wooden huts were used as changing rooms. The current Yearsley Swimming Pool was built in 1908 by Rowntree and Company Ltd and gifted by deed to the citizens of the city of York on 4th May 1909.

The cost of building the new pool was close to £3,000 and it held 226,890 gallons of water. The inside measurements were 144 feet long by 51 feet wide, 3 feet deep at the shallow end and 6 feet 9 inches at the deep end.

Since its original opening, and to this day, Yearsley Pool has maintained a close relationship with The Rowntree factory, now Nestlé UK Ltd. The Pool still relies on the goodwill of Nestlé to provide car parking facilities at the side of the building.

Over its long history many pool improvements have been made, however some of the existing Edwardian features still remain giving the pool character even to this day. In 1949 a water filtration plant was added at the rear of the building.

Between 1964 and 1965 the pool tank was enclosed for the first time when a roof was added.

In 2007 over £1.1million was spent on improving the facility, the pool closed for four months for a major repair and refurbishment programme. The improvements maintain the character and features of the old Edwardian Pool whilst giving the pool a new lease of life for the future. The improvements replaced the roof, plant room and modernised the showering and toilet facilities whilst also making the building more accessible.

In 2012 the pool closed for 3 weeks over Christmas in this time a new gas boiler plant was added to provide heat to the pool, pool hall and showers this replaced an old steam supply which had previously been used to heat the pool.

Over the years the pool has maintained an enduring appeal and has always been held in great affection by the generations that have been privileged to swim at the pool. The pool is currently used by around 12,000 visitors per month and continues to be used by people young and old and people learning to swim through to competition swimmers, many of whom have reached world and Olympic standard.

Yearsley Pool is part of York’s proud heritage and remains the only Edwardian 50 yard pool in the north of England.

– from the City of York council website: http://www.york.gov.uk/info/200791/yearsley_pool/726/history_of_yearsley_pool

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The signs around the site while the work was taking place on Scarborough Bridge deserve a special mention. A lot of thought went into these signs. If only all large projects in the city were so well explained to us.

A lego model of the bridge work got a lot of attention as an impressive explanatory aid as well as a bit of fun, but more important to those of us who regularly use the bridge and riverside walkways was having clear information on exactly what would be closed and when.

One of the signs also offered interesting facts and figures:

Some of the signs were rather beautifully worded, almost poetic. I noticed too the repeated use of the word ‘our’, and the emphasis on connections, in the way these signs were phrased. Very nicely done.

‘Considerate structural reconstruction': what a lovely use of language. And ‘our 140 year old coastal connection’.

Excellent work, and let’s hope the signs are as interesting and helpful when City of York Council get around to replacing the pedestrian section of this, our Scarborough Bridge.

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I took this photo of a chiselled mark in stonework ten years ago, on a wander through the Aldwark area. I’d first noticed a similar one on the bridge over the railway line on Crichton Avenue. These are bench marks, I discovered later.

‘Bench marks are the visible manifestation of Ordnance Datum Newlyn (ODN), which is the national height system for mainland Great Britain and forms the reference frame for heights above mean sea level.’

(from the Ordnance Survey website)

Like the iron signs on the previous page, these aren’t just a York thing, they’re a countrywide thing. They’re also, I suspect, a generally unappreciated and overlooked thing, so I thought I’d big them up a bit.

A few years ago a website was set up to record the York bench marks but appears to have been abandoned, perhaps when the scale of the task became clear. A quick search of the database at www.bench-marks.org.uk shows how many of them remain. Here’s the results for just one part of York.

These chiseled bench marks are just one type of the various markers associated with surveying. I discovered this description:

Cut Bench Mark — By far the most common type. Used and made from the 1800s to around 20 years ago. You won’t have to walk (or drive) very far in any village, town or city in Britain before you spot one of these. Chiseled into stone, brick or wood on all sorts of vertical structures. A familiar horizontal levelling line with a three line arrow pointing towards it (usually upwards). Each one is unique depending on the mason who cut it, some are plain, some decorated. Some roughly cut, some exquisitely cut with high accuracy. Some small, some huge.

maps.jochta.com/types.htm

‘Each one is unique depending on the mason who cut it’. It’s the enthusiasts/experts who can see the uniqueness the rest of us probably wouldn’t notice at all.

Inspired to further interest in this initially not very promising subject by the enthusiasm in those words I’ve just looked through my photos on the computer to see if I’d tagged any other photos as being related to surveying and bench marks. I hoped I could find at least one other image to use on this page. And I found this one, taken four years ago, at Wighill church, not far from York:

Wighill church, bench mark

Apparently it’s one of these, ‘highly prized':

Cut Bench Mark with Bolt — Old and rare these have a metal bolt screwed either alongside the horizontal cut of a cut bench mark or at the point of the cut arrowhead. Usually has what appears as a screwhead horizontal in the head of the bolt. These are highly prized by benchmarkers.

maps.jochta.com/types.htm

The information on the Ordnance Survey website states:

‘Although the main network is no longer being updated, the record is still in existence and the markers will remain until they are eventually destroyed by redevelopment or erosion.’

Obliteration by erosion looks unlikely to happen for some time yet on the deeply chiseled examples shown above. But my quick search on the database mentioned above brought up one street name where I knew the bench mark would be gone: Dundas Street. Part of the Hungate redevelopment site, and cleared some years back.

If you notice others on your local wanders, whether in York or anywhere else, might be nice to take a quick photo of the mark and the building it’s on. Really so quick and easy to take a photo, isn’t it. Anyone can do it. Could most of us chisel a bench mark? No.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmark_(surveying)

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