Ad for the Stonegate Arcade (York Official Guide, early 1980s)

The adverts in an early 1980s guide to York featured on these pages a while back included an ad for the Stonegate Arcade. I couldn’t remember much about it, or where its entrances were, but recently had a wander down Stonegate and peered through the now gated openings, which I must have passed many times over the years and never given much thought to.

The ironwork gates at the entrance show that it’s called ‘Stonegate Walk’, though you can’t walk down there now, as the gates are always closed.

One has a nameplate still — Hornby’s Passage — and looking down it gives a glimpse of the back of the large New Look clothes store, the entrance of which is round the corner on Davygate, perhaps across what used to be the other entrance to the arcade, shown on that ad from the 1980s, above.

Though the entrances are gated now and the arcade is long gone, the paving detail on Stonegate still points to it, with lines of narrow setts breaking up the otherwise stone-flagged surface, subtly denoting the entrances. Something I’d never noticed before, a detail used in other places on Stonegate to mark the entrances to other narrow alleys off the main street.

Looking through the other gate, a wider entrance:

A forgotten post box, in a weedy corner. A reminder that this was once a thoroughfare thought important enough to have a post box. Its posting slot is sealed and the information on the times of the next collection is long gone. I wonder when its last collection was, and if anyone noticed. There’s something a bit poignant about its sealed-up state. I wonder why it has been left there, faded and forgotten.

On the wall of the passage there’s still an iron fitting which presumably once held the gate back, in the days when we could walk along here to go shopping in Stonegate Arcade.

I did a bit of online research on the arcade and its successor, this ‘Stonegate Walk’, neither of which I particularly remember. There’s a lengthy list of links below, in ‘further information’.

But I was pleased to find a proper description of the place, a lengthy and evocative one, in the now famous ‘snickelways’ book. Or rather, in the edition I happen to have, which dates from the late 1980s. The book has been updated many times, and recent editions will have had to remove these particular snickelways, Hornby’s Passage and Pinder’s Court, formerly the Stonegate entrances to the Stonegate Arcade. My 1989 edition has a handsome drawing of part of the arcade complex, showing the back entrance of the Pennyfarthing shop. This is the accompanying text, as we cross Stonegate on the snickelways walk in the late 1980s …

“… to the entrance to Pinder’s Court.

Not that you would see that name here: the sign says Stonegate Arcade. But this is only the collective name for a new collection of Snickelways, a creation that excitingly and satisfyingly blends old and new. Walk up the passage into a little courtyard, and you unexpectedly see the Minster, framed by a spacious glazed canopy. Look back, and you are greeted by a back-door view of Stonegate and its roofs – the deliciously random yet harmonious pattern of medieval buildings, with which we’ve become familiar in our nearly-completed wanderings. For Pinder’s Court, and its parallel companion Hornby’s Passage, which are at the heart of the Stonegate Arcade, form a happy and fitting penultimate to our list of fifty Snickelways. In their case, the surprise is that not so many years ago, this attractive area was the dank, dark, oily and echoing City Garage. How many more ancient Snickelways lie behind York’s shop-fronts and warehouses, awaiting re-discovery and re-birth?

In commercial terms, the best formula for the Stonegate Arcade has yet (early 1989) to be achieved; but visually it is wholly satisfying.”

— Mark W Jones, A Walk around the Snickelways of York (4th edn, 1989, p77)

That last paragraph tactfully hints at some problems with the arcade’s commercial viability. Around the same time, the Architects’ Journal put it more bluntly: ‘York’s Stonegate Arcade has been branded as a commercial failure and is unpopular with shoppers’ (source: Google Books), and mentioned plans to boost its fortunes with a new development scheme.

A piece in the Press in 2002, referring to the redevelopment of the site, also acknowledged its problems:

The project finally brings to an end the “white elephant” tag for a mall where much of its 20-year history has been plagued by empty shops because shoppers in Stonegate and Blake Street tended to pass by its connecting alleyways.

(source)

If you have memories of the Stonegate Arcade, please add a comment.

More information

Links to photos of the arcade as it was, and to articles in the Press online archives:

http://yorkwithinthewalls.com/html/hornbyspassage2.html

http://shimmer.shu.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/SHU~3~3~613769~172068:Stonegate-Arcade

http://pastsearch-archaeo-history.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Newsletter-9-Sept-2013.pdf (photo: p3)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtTGq9DCQAI_5bS.jpg:large

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7969684.Seven_out_of_23_shops_left__open_in__ghost_arcade_/
(April 1998)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7960801.__5_million_to_save_York_arcade/
(Nov 1999)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7960813.New_hope_for__secret_arcade_/
(Nov 1999)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7936072.Stonegate_scheme_all_set_to_start/
(Oct 2001)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7931539.Rooms_with_a_view/
(Jan 2002)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7930089.City_development_under_way/
(March 2002)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7926801.Well_found_as_Stonegate_Walk_is_cleared/
(May 2002)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7925309.Stonegate_space/
(June 2002, reader’s letter)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/4789660.The_Lion__The_Witch_and_Santa___s_grotto_at_York_s_Rock_plex_Centre/ 
(see comments: mention of a Santa’s grotto)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/1292949.explans_chief_dies/
(see reference to Stonegate paving and adjoining streets)

Links to photos etc from comments on http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/are-these-brontes.html?view=flipcard

York Computer Centre was at 7 Stonegate Arcade, as mentioned in this 1984 computer and video games magazine (PDF) (worth a look, as an object of ‘historical interest’ in its own right)

The post In search of the Stonegate Arcade 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.)

The post Where we shopped and dined: early 1980s ads appeared first on York Stories.