August 2004, from Stonebow House, looking along Stonebow towards Peasholme Green. Across the remnants of Russell’s Used Car Centre, towards Wynsors World of Shoes. A shabby-looking street by this time, but when it cut through the medieval street pattern and made a new way through from Pavement to Peasholme Green in the 1950s I imagine it was an exciting local happening, particularly for the small number of people who had a car.

I wish I’d taken more photos back then, that morning in August ten years ago. But then I couldn’t see ahead to how much it would change, and I didn’t know I’d still be doing this.

But I am, so here’s the same view today:

View from Stonebow House, 25 Oct 2014

Well, the nearest I could get. There’s now a massive office block on what used to be Russell’s, and like everything built recently in the city centre it’s much taller than the low 20th century buildings. The new developments across the road are reflected in its windows, but it hides the happenings at the Hiscox site, which are moving on apace. More on that later perhaps.

And another from ten years ago, turning 90 degrees and facing the street of Stonebow, looking down Garden Place:

The telephone exchange on the right, and on the left another building demolished since as part of the redevelopment of the Hungate area. It sold furniture and oak flooring. Things now more usually sold from big boring sheds out on the outskirts of the city.

Changes here too:

The old street name of ‘Garden Place’ looked a bit daft in 2004, as any gardens here were long gone, but for the last few years it has had one, as part of the marketing suite for the Hungate development. The lawn and flowers thing does look a bit incongruous opposite Stonebow House, in the middle of the city, but the planting is regularly refreshed and does its best to distract our attention from the grey concrete of Stonebow House, opposite.

Behind the marketing suite, the massive new block of student accommodation for St John’s. I have a lot of photos of this from different angles, as I was startled by the size of it, as it grew and grew. Just one of many blocks of student accommodation in the city. The student population used to be less visible, out at Heslington on the campus. That this building, St John Central, is so massive and so — well, central — illustrates one of the most dramatic changes in the city over the last ten years, the huge increase in the student population. Of which much more could be said. Later perhaps.

Google Street View can’t capture the same angles as the photos above as they were taken from Stonebow House, but if you’d like to have a virtual wander down the street, here’s the area as captured by Google. (Mainly for the benefit of my many readers overseas and elsewhere who can’t visit in person.)

View Larger Map

I hope that displays for everyone as the Street View, which is currently showing the view in 2008. There’s a nice illustration of the changes in its transitions between images. If you move forward via the arrows you’ll see St John Central suddenly appear, as the next set of images recorded is from very recently, last month. If you keep moving forward down Stonebow to Peasholme Green you can see how work has begun on the Hiscox site, next to the Black Swan.

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A stone’s throw from the Moss Street depot featured on a recent page, here’s St Clement’s church hall, as it was in late July 2004. A charming building, even with its boarded-up windows.

Now fully restored and with its windows letting in light again:

Now known as Clements Hall, it has all kinds of things going on. The Clements Hall website has more information on the building and its history.

When I walked this way in 2004, randomly wandering wherever the fancy took me, I took a couple of left turns a little further on and discovered this equally charming ‘church house’ on Cygnet Street, behind the church hall.

In the intervening years, like the former church hall above, the church house has been restored. Here it is in August 2014.

It was the old hand-painted sign, back in 2004, which made this house stand out, gave it a story. This was the ST CLEMENT’S CHURCH HOUSE as its elegant sign informed me, in faded and peeling paint.

Restored since, and handsome it is.

Though perhaps this building isn’t actually a ‘church house’ anymore. What was a ‘church house’ anyway? What happened in it? So many questions, so little time to research them these days. Perhaps someone else knows. Please leave a comment if you do.

The above is a reminder that the city’s visible changes aren’t always about buildings being demolished with new ones put in their place. ‘Past and present’ comparisons often focus on that, but what we perhaps don’t appreciate enough is how much work goes into keeping all these historic buildings in our care, and how much time and effort it takes to find suitable reuses for empty buildings, and the funding to support their renovation.

I’ve been wanting to feature this building for some time, and it’s nice to be able to do so. Made possible by a kind sponsor, a reader and supporter of this site. Thank you.

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The way we were: York Walks, summer 2004, at www.yorkstories.co.uk

Back in 2004, in the ‘York Walks’ which formed the original version of this website, I put together a page with the title ‘Watch this space‘. It included several buildings widely condemned as ‘eyesores’ in the intervening years.

If you were indeed watching those places and spaces you’ll be aware that it took a long time, but that four of the six buildings featured are either back in use or on their way to being occupied.

Firstly, Shipton Street School, its main frontage on Shipton Street. Many years ago I also took a lot of photos of the other side of it, from the playground area. I have an update on those too, but for now, this was the face it presented to the street for a decade or so.

And now, in 2014:

Another wider view, also from Shipton Street, in 2004:

And in 2014:

The most obvious difference between the 2004 and 2014 views is the number of parked cars. There are several possible reasons for this, not necessarily to do with the Shipton St School development, though it may be. Perhaps someone who lives on or near Shipton St can add a resident’s perspective in the comments.

Less obvious, not obvious at all unless you happened to walk by when the windows weren’t boarded up, but the conversion to residential did change and perhaps spoil the windows. Inevitable. I might have some photos somewhere but they were that lovely old wobbly glass with interesting reflections, and no doubt on the inside the teacher had to use some kind of long pole with a hook on the end to open and close them. Or perhaps I’m having a memory resurface there from Mill Mount School. Anyway, the old school windows are gone, which is a shame. On the other hand, these windows are letting in light for the first time for a decade or more and the building is back in use.

Shipton St School is out in the suburbs so didn’t get that much attention. The Bonding Warehouse, on the other hand, is well-known. I’ve covered it in depth already on many pages over the last ten years, but I haven’t yet featured its completed bridge on the street side. Thanks to Gwen Swinburn for alerting me to this change.

Bonding Warehouse, Skeldergate side, in August 2004:

And from more or less the same vantage point now, 2014:

With very prominent and very ugly signs. The signs are apparently necessary to indicate the height of the bridge. The bridge was constructed to allow the residents of the upper floors to access their accommodation. I’d got the impression that they were to have some kind of temporary emergency bridge in case of floods, like the other residents of Skeldergate do, but clearly not.

The bridge itself is okay, its associated signs are … well, an eyesore. A word I avoid using as it tends to be indiscriminately and thoughtlessly applied to any empty boarded-up building. But here it seems appropriate.

Not that it really matters. They’re just really intrusive signs, and the city is full of them. At least those ridiculous Lendal Bridge ones have been removed.

Moving on to the city’s most famous eyesore … in 2004:

Like the Bonding Warehouse, this building has been the subject of several pages. Like the Bonding it was reoccupied eventually, or is in the process of being. Work continues on its conversion to residential and retail. The scaffolding was removed recently and here’s how it looked:

… not much different from before. Which was exactly what we the public wanted, when consulted. So that’s good, isn’t it.

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So, three substantial buildings sitting there boarded-up 10 years ago are now back in use or on their way to being so. Two are listed buildings so we had to keep them. The White Swan isn’t but it’s a pretty mock Tudor thing where it meets the street, and we wouldn’t make anything better than that now probably, so it’s sensible choosing to keep it.

There are still boarded-up buildings surviving, but only a couple of substantial ones I can think of. More on them and other things later, if someone wants to sponsor more hours of writing and compiling.

The other buildings featured on ‘Watch this space’ ten years ago were 1) Burton Croft, included on a recent page; 2) the Clifton hospital laundry (demolished) and 3) the St Clement’s church hall and associated house. They’re the subject of the next page.

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Peeling paint on the sign for Burton Croft, on Burton Stone Lane, in summer 2004.

Burton Croft was the former home of J B Morrell, and in its later years a nursing home. After this closed the house was under threat of demolition, with plans to redevelop the site. A campaign followed, and the site was also occupied for a time by a collective highlighting the number of empty buildings in the city.

Campaigns failed and the building was demolished. Its replacement is pictured above, this year. I noticed that a section of green railing from the original Burton Croft has been retained on its front boundary. The site keeps its name, now carved in stone rather than shaped in metal. The boundary for a time also displayed a plaque commemorating the life and work of J B Morrell, but this has been removed/stolen in the intervening years.

Over on the other side of town, another of these aesthetically pleasing signage and railing combinations. Well, I found it aesthetically pleasing, lit by summer sunshine.

Actually it’s gates rather than railing. The gates to the old Moss St depot, near Scarcroft School, in July 2004. I’m not sure what used to happen here, but in recognition of its former role as a City of York Council property its gates incorporated the city arms, as many buildings and structures in the city still do. (See Hugh Murray’s book on heraldry in the city of York.) Perhaps they were painted in colour at one time and looked smart. Clearly by the time I took this photo they hadn’t been painted for some years.

By early September demolition had begun on the site.

Ten years on, 31 August 2014, showing the housing built on the site of the Moss St depot.

Back to 2004, and another old sign. A bit blurred, but a reminder of the old garage buildings here on Bootham Row. It denoted the entrance to the ‘tyre depot’.

The tyre depot was part of this collection of buildings, pleasing old red brick, one with a nicely rounded corner. Here pictured from Bootham Row, which is now a car park but used to be a street of terraced houses. At its corner, where it meets Bootham, you can see part of a more modern building, once a smart garage forecourt (pictured on this earlier page) where you could buy petrol. By 2004 all rather redundant, and ripe for redevelopment.

Here’s its replacement, pictured from the same car park vantage point, ten years later. The ground floor frontage onto Bootham where the garage forecourt used to be is now a Sainsbury’s Local, with service areas and garaging behind it, and apartments and offices above.

Good or bad?

Only one of these three developments was seen as controversial, as far as I’m aware. The buildings on Bootham Row and Moss St weren’t celebrated or mourned, but J B Morrell’s former home clearly was.

In itself, as it looked in 2004, I didn’t find Burton Croft particularly notable, architecturally. It seemed, from the outside anyway, far less attractive than the Burnholme club building, another substantial Victorian house which apparently wasn’t worth saving either. The housing built on the site to replace it is far more attractive than many other apartment developments I’ve seen in the last decade.

Comments welcome, of course.

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It’s a while since I’ve been along this street. On an evening visit in August 2014 I noticed this pleasing corner, and an old school I was completely unaware of. And when looking at these photos later, what’s probably another ‘ghost shop’ in the line of newer brick on the corner of Railway Terrace, to the right.

Railway Terrace corner and St Paul’s School, Holgate

The school has one of those segregated entrances, marked in this case, on the entrance I noticed, ‘INFANTS’ and ‘GIRLS’. Such segregation is of course a thing of the past, but it’s nice that our buildings carry these reminders of old norms and values.

Railway Terrace becomes Watson Street at this corner, though the name change here seems a bit random, as it feels like the same street when you’re walking along it, a straight and purposeful line alongside the rail lines to Holgate Road and Holgate Bridge.

The main reason for going along here was to record a particular change. In August 2004 I took this photo of the pub here on the corner of Watson Terrace and Watson Street: The Locomotive.

The Locomotive, Aug 2004

I took just the one photo, in passing. I can’t recall why, ten years on, but I assume it was either because of the name (I was on a railway-related wander at the time) or because it was going to be demolished.

Here’s what has replaced it. Housing, of course. We need housing more than we need pubs.

Housing on the site of the Locomotive pub, 2014

And just along the road, the next photo I took in that 2004 batch was of a sign of a type very familiar at that time. Many small plots of land were being sold for housing, as I realised on my wanders. The ends of long gardens, the ends of short gardens, bits of land that had once been home to various small workshops.

Watson St, building plot, 2004

It has a house on it now:

Watson St, new build

In between the two building plots, a pub called the Volunteer Arms soldiers on despite its companion pub being demolished.

Two pubs next to one another clearly wouldn’t be sustainable now. But back then they both were. And a few decades ago they were busy and thriving, particularly on Friday lunchtimes, so I’m told. More on that story later.

Watson St, Aug 2014

At the end of the street, this striking church, another Victorian building.

St Paul’s Church, Holgate

I have a press cutting from almost 20 years ago showing the vicar, Rev Derek Wooldridge, in front of a sign put up on the church railings. They were praying for the carriageworks (ABB).

Cutting from Yorkshire Evening Press, March 1995

Across the road, in my walk of a mere two days ago, I noticed this for the first time, on Holgate Bridge:

Handyside, maker’s badge, Holgate Bridge

I guess I walked past this many times in my youth and never saw it. Or, more likely, I saw it but didn’t care. So if you don’t care you don’t register and remember. On this occasion I’ve not only registered, but photographed, admired, and Googled it, and found this very interesting information.

Underneath Holgate Bridge, behind St Paul’s church, is what used to be a cattle dock (see this comment from David Bower for more information). I didn’t know that when I wandered down there in 2004 and took this photo. Instead I was remembering a youth club in the church, circa 1983, and wandering down here in the dark with friends, looking out over the lines.

By Holgate Bridge, 2004

Another photo from the same day ten years ago. The thing I’d travelled over many times for years in my childhood and adolescence and never given a thought to suddenly looked handsome and impressive.

Holgate Bridge, August 2004

So here we are, on the bridge. Which way next?

. . . . .

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2004: sign announcing ‘New access to York station’

Back in summer 2004, on a couple of occasions, I went for a wander with my camera through the railway lands, via the alleyway from Leeman Road near the back of the railway station. I’m sure many of us are now used to having access to the station from the car park on Leeman Road, but it’s a relatively recent thing, as this photo from 2004 reminds us.

But we’re not going that way, we’re going up part of Cinder Lane. Perhaps surfaced in previous centuries with cinders from The Destructor, now a more smoothly-surfaced pedestrian/cycle route.

From Cinder Lane we can see into the massive area of railway land. It’s not particularly beautiful, but it does have its moments. If you like peeling paint and old rusty things. Which I do.

Handsome shed and rusty railing

Shed and signage, railway lands

These signs indicate what used to go on here, and possibly some of it still does. It’s not particularly clear what happens here these days, but it has clearly been cleared of some of the things I pictured back in 2004. But not this old shed, with its signs, which is apparently still in use and must be KEPT CLEAR, though the doors look like they’d drop off if you tried to open them, possibly taking the rest of the building with them.

The shed and other decrepit things from 2004 are in a small album of wonky photos I’ve stuck over on Picasaweb/Google in case anyone’s interested.

Railway lands, York, 2004

Also most of the images on this page can be enlarged, should you wish to see more detail. (Though not in this next one, as it’s artistically blurry.)

Weedy railway land, August 2014

It’s all a bit weedy, though not as full of vigorous shrubbery as it was in 2004. In this area shabby brick workshops have been replaced by grey buildings sitting in a sea of grey rubble-filled dullness.

Railway lands, from Cinder Lane, 2014

From the steps to the footbridge, peering over the wall, it looks generally more dug-up than it did back then.

The most striking change needs a ‘then and now’ comparison. From the Cinder Lane steps, in 2004:

August 2004: Cinder Lane

I liked the smooth curve of the old brick walls, the way the lane seemed to confidently carve its way through the landscape, its curve like the sweep of the railway lines around it.

And now, August 2014:

August 2014: Cinder Lane

Nothing aesthetically pleasing at all. Most of the red brick has gone, and the parts that are left have been painted a gloomy black. Is this meant to discourage graffiti, perhaps? It looks much worse than it did before.

The other reason I came down here was to look at a large new building. I took a few photos of it from further down the lane, but once I got to the steps I was concentrating on trying to line up the photo above to match the 2004 one, and also trying to get photos of the area to the Leeman Road side before the light faded completely. When I looked the other way, from this higher vantage point of the steps to the bridge, it was such a contrast. This is what’s on the station side of Cinder Lane:

Network Rail building, August 2014

I was there at just the right moment, as the evening sun appeared and lit the place and the lines leading up to it. Wow, I said, aloud, to myself.

Here’s how this land looked in 2004:

Weedy railway land, Engineers’ Triangle, 2004

And now:

Network Rail building, Engineers’ Triangle

Only recognisable because of the buildings in the background, the tops of them just visible now over this new addition to the landscape: York Engineers’ Triangle, rail operating and training centre. Regular readers might remember that before the redevelopment of the site the old roundhouse foundations here were open to the public and I went along to look at them, and some rusty old shovels.

While I was gazing on the shiny new thing on the roundhouse site, on the other side of the footbridge the sun was setting over older buildings and waiting freight.

To the left of the (enlargeable) photo, Acomb’s water tower, the new buildings of Holgate Park and what’s left of the carriageworks. Of which there’s a lot more to say, on later pages currently under construction. (Update: constructed since, on this link and here and all things tagged ‘carriageworks’.)

But for now we’re crossing the footbridge and turning left down Railway Terrace, for the next page.

This page on the Network Rail virtual archive may also be of interest: York South Depot.

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