Carlton Tavern, October 2017. If you owned this, would you want to demolish it?

Time to return to the Holgate/Acomb area, to the Carlton Tavern. If the current planning application (17/00476/FULM) is approved at a meeting this week then the applicants will have permission to demolish the building.

The planning committee meeting is at 4.30pm on Wednesday 18 October. Further details on this link.

I wrote about the building back in March, when the planning application was submitted. Since then there has been an impressive campaign against the proposed demolition.

It’s not only about local residents and heritage organisations wanting to save the building, but also, more recently, interesting ideas for its future use have been put forward which would make more use of the building, for the benefit of the local community.

Seems obvious really, doesn’t it, that in 2017 we shouldn’t be destroying handsome Victorian buildings when they could be reused and appreciated.

But it’s more complicated than that. So many angles we could approach this from, but let’s start with this angle — a bit of the front of the building.

Carlton Tavern, detail

Handsome, isn’t it. I wonder how long it took to attach these tiles in this pattern. I wonder how long it will take to destroy this pattern, and the rest of the building with it. I wonder if these tiles will be salvaged and sold on, or just slung into a skip, all broken. Then there’s the bricks, the slates, the handsome windows, the impressive conservatory, all the internal joinery, all that work by the Victorian builders and joiners and craftsmen.

Carlton Tavern and conservatory

I can’t help but think about another large Victorian villa on my side of town, also the focus of a campaign to save it from demolition, more than a decade back. Burton Croft, on Burton Stone Lane. In that case, as in this, if planning permission is granted, to the developers the building is just an object to be cleared, from ‘Land Acquired’.

Burton Croft, Clifton, 20 Nov 2004

Burton Croft, like the Carlton Tavern, was originally built as a family home. Both had a second life as a care home. The Carlton Tavern was for many decades the Godfrey Walker home for children, as previously discussed. Burton Croft, a BUPA-owned facility, was one of quite a few smaller residential care homes for the elderly that closed in the early years of the 21st century.

A lack of care

There’s a bigger picture here of course — the lack of care home provision. Following on from the closure of smaller care homes, cuts to council funding have led to the closure of the larger council care homes, including Oak Haven, a couple of doors down from the Carlton Tavern. So it’s over to the private sector to provide these facilities. Clearly there’s a bit of a panic about how and where older and vulnerable residents of the city are going to live when in need of care. Crown Care appeared and put forward these plans for a care home for the Acomb/Holgate area.

Just a shame that the site they chose has the Carlton Tavern in the middle of it.

The pub company who own it want to make profit from selling it to a care home company, and the care home company doesn’t care about the handsomeness of the building or its use to the local community because it just wants the site cleared for its new build.

Thinking about Burton Croft, mentioned above, I did a quick bit of Googling for more information on the care home industry in recent years. According to a Yorkshire Post article from April 2002 the closure of Burton Croft and other care homes back then followed ‘complaints from private sector homes that fees paid by local authorities are too low while they have also been expected to upgrade standards to meet new regulations.’ Apparently these problems continue in the care home industry. It’s an industry ‘in crisis’, according to a report in the Guardian earlier this year.

Should a building that has managed to survive for over 130 years be cleared out of the way to provide what might only be a short-term gain, in what seems to be a rather precarious care home industry?

Still, Crown Care are confident in their plans for this development. On their website their list of ‘new developments’ includes one in York — presumably the Carlton Tavern site — despite the fact that the planning application hasn’t yet been approved.

Whether it will be approved or refused is ultimately up to a group of local elected representatives to decide — our local councillors on the planning committee. Crown Care don’t care about the value of the existing building to the local community, but York councillors should.

In the balance

In planning terms, as always, the planning officers have to weigh these things up in terms of perceived ‘harm’ and ‘benefit’, and then recommend that councillors either approve it or refuse it.

The report prepared for the decision meeting this week recommends approval:

In conclusion … the overall judgement is balanced. Nevertheless it is considered that the significant benefits which the Care home would provide would be sufficient to outweigh loss of a non –designated heritage asset, even one of the undoubted local importance of the Carlton Tavern, and furthermore would outweigh the loss of a listed Asset of Community Value. It is considered that the possible harm to part of the root zone of the nearest tree to create the lift platform is not sufficient to weigh in favour of refusal in its own.
– Committee report (PDF)

I’m sorry, I’m not convinced, having read the committee report, and the many objections.

As the report mentions possible harm to one of the trees on the site, let’s have a look at the roots of the fine old mature trees at the front of the site. I was rather impressed by them.

Hanging on in there, trees in front of the Carlton Tavern

They’re a really impressive feature on the driveway to the pub.

Trees and their roots, Carlton Tavern entrance

The plans appear to retain the trees, but presumably there will be damage to the roots of some of them once the work starts on digging out the site and putting foundations in for the new building. According to the committee report ‘the trees have good vitality and are likely to respond to any loss of roots with regeneration of new root tissue.’ ‘Likely to’ doesn’t mean ‘will’.

The committee report also mentions that bats live in the building:

Dusk and dawn activity surveys were undertaken in June and July 2017. This concluded that the public house currently supports small numbers of roosting Common Pipistrelle bats, which emerged from under the wooden fascia on the north eastern elevation. Due to the number of old droppings found within the roof space a maternity roost may have been previously present (and therefore could be again in future years)

(- but not if the building is pulled down.)

They’ll have to be evicted and perhaps settle for a nest box in one of the trees. They don’t get any say in the matter.

But the locals should get a say, and be listened to. After all, the sign at the entrance proudly declares: ‘Your Community, Your Pub’.

Carlton Tavern sign: ‘Your Community, Your Pub’

Nice cosy advertising slogan, giving customers a nice warm glow and a feeling of ownership. All nonsense, of course, as the proposed sale of the site and demolition of the building shows.

Good to see though that the local community has a sense of ownership and has campaigned against the closure.

Louise Ennis, Carlton Tavern campaigner and local resident explains:

“This isn’t just an empty building plot. It contains a much-loved local landmark which also happens to be an Asset of Community Value and a heritage asset with significance for the history and character of the local area. It’s also on the Local Heritage List which would be taken into account by planning decision makers if the York Local Plan was in force. It would be sad indeed if this important survival was lost to future generations – like neighbouring Shelley House, and Burnholme, both recently demolished for development – because bad timing meant reduced protection.

Historic buildings matter to communities. The Carlton Tavern, or West Garth makes a huge contribution to Acomb and Holgate both architecturally and aesthetically, but it also matters to local people, giving continuity to their lives, and memories of visiting, working or living at the Godfrey Walker Home for Children which held a central place in Acomb life from the 1940s to the 1980s.

West Garth also tells us so much about the development of this affluent York suburb of Holgate where York’s civic leaders built their Victorian and Edwardian villas just outside the city walls. The first owner was Lieut. Col. Arthur H. Russell and his family. West Garth has been attributed by local heritage experts to celebrated York architect Walter Green Penty, whose firm Penty & Penty designed Elmbank on The Mount and Tudoresque Aldersyde on Tadcaster Road, as well as buildings in Hampstead Garden Suburbs.

It’s not just national and local heritage experts, from York Civic Trust, and York Conservation Trust, to the Victorian Society that think the Carlton should be saved. It’s part of the shared history of our community. Having spoken to hundreds of residents over the past few months, I know that I truly represent local people when I say that they do not want to lose this building.”

I mentioned Burton Croft earlier on. To end this piece, a couple of photos of that Victorian building as it ended up — in heaps of broken slate and brick and timber. Twelve years on from that particular destruction, I hope we can do better in the case of the Carlton Tavern.

Burton Croft demolition, 5 Feb 2005

A heap of slates and bricks: Burton Croft demolition, 5 Feb 2005

Further information

Members of the public are welcome to attend the planning committee meetings at West Offices. The Carlton Tavern application is first up on the agenda at the meeting starting 4.30pm on Wednesday 18 October. Campaigners for the Carlton Tavern would I’m sure welcome further public support.

Members of the public can also attend the site visit, along with the councillors who will decide the issue, on the morning of Tuesday 17 October. See this PDF for details of timings.

Objections to the application can still be registered but at this late stage any further representations will be reported as numbers only, so don’t spend time writing a long essay in objection. The committee report has been written and includes a summary of objections received so far.

The meeting will also be webcast — ‘council telly’, as we call it in our house — to watch live, or later. Should be an interesting discussion.

. . . . .

I’m continuing to add to this online ‘resident’s record of York and its changes‘ as often as I can. If you’d like to be notified when new pages appear here, please sign up to my mailing list, or follow me on Twitter.

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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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Cattle trough, Acomb, 3 July 2006

If you were accompanying me on the previous page’s wander you’ll know that we’d reached the cattle trough, and no doubt hundreds of readers have been eagerly awaiting further cattle trough news. There it is, above, pictured in 2006, for the original page about Acomb, which we’re revisiting ten years on.

I took a photo of it because I remembered it, and found it an interesting relic of past times. I thought I remembered it full of flowers, back in the 70s and early 80s. In 2006 the only greenery was the weedy growth at its base.

Retracing that walk, a decade on, I found flowers again. 3 July 2016:

Cattle trough, Acomb, 3 July 2016

There’s very little information available on this interesting structure. Clearly it’s a long time since it quenched any thirsts. It would be nice to know when it was placed here and when it stopped giving watery refreshment to cattle passing and instead got filled up with soil and turned into a floral display. The one website page I found with info on it states: ‘Acomb is not the original location of this trough. It has been relocated from somewhere else.’

The mystery deepens. I’m curious, and would like to know more, because things like this form the stories of a place, and its character, and I feel like this walk of 2016 brings me to a better understanding of the place, more than I had on my 2006 wander and more than I had when I grew up here, decades back. Or perhaps just a different understanding, more layers.

Anyway, let’s stop gawping and wondering at the cattle trough, and stride purposefully across the patch of grass near it (is this also a part of Acomb Green, though not seen as such?) towards the corner of the fenced triangle of land we know as Acomb Green.

Where we briefly pause to look at some benches and fencing, as I did in 2006:

Benches by Acomb Green, 3 July 2006

A quick snapshot that meant something to me as I remember sitting here with friends on summer evenings, decades back, when we were teenagers, passing time chatting and messing about and staring out onto the road ahead and thinking about the road ahead in terms of when we could get out into the big world beyond Acomb and not have to be back home by the times our parents told us we had to be back home.

As I passed here this July I had to take a comparison photo:

Benches by Acomb Green, 3 July 2016

It’s pretty much the same. The benches haven’t been replaced yet with the approved standard design of bench as so many others have, and I note this approvingly, as I’m much older now and pay council tax and care about what it’s spent on and don’t want it spent on pointless bench replacement. Does anyone even sit on these anymore, I wonder.

Anyway, we’re supposed to be visiting the Green, so let’s move along, along the perimeter of Acomb Green, by its wooden fence, to the view from its edge near the Sun Inn.

In 2006, on my earlier photographic wander:

Acomb Green, 3 July 2006 (1)

And now (3 July 2016). Ten years of growth on the trees, young saplings then:

Acomb Green, 3 July 2016 (1)

The main change is in the playground equipment: back then all painted metal, painted in cheery colours but with large spaces between each playground ‘attraction’, and perhaps not massively attractive to a 21st century small person in search of entertaining play.

Acomb Green, 3 July 2006 (2)

Now there’s play equipment in wood making better use of the space. Looking very popular.

Acomb Green, 3 July 2016 (2)

It probably needs to be mentioned that when I took the photos on 3 July 2006 that was a weekday evening, a Monday, and that the revisit this year on 3 July was a Sunday, which I imagine has some bearing on it, on how many people were on Acomb Green. It was busy, this sunny Sunday evening.

One of the observations on the original page was about the steps up from the Green, on the other side. Here they are in 2006:

Friends Meeting House and Acomb Green steps, 3 July 2006

… And on the same day in 2016:

Friends Meeting House and Acomb Green steps, 3 July 2016

With not much changed. The same weeds grow in the cracks, softening the concrete.

But I notice more now than I did then, and wonder why those concrete bollards are there, in the flight of steps. I wonder if they’re supposed to be a help, for leaning on perhaps if you get tired on the way up. They seem like more of a hindrance.

Beyond them, the small chapel. A Friends Meeting House in 2006 (originally a Primitive Methodist chapel, built in the 19th century) and still the same in 2016, though the land around it changes.

We’re in the heart of Acomb, in its most picturesque parts, so we should pause a while and look around us. As I did in 2006, firstly looking back down the steps onto the Green:

Acomb Green steps, 3 July 2006

Okay, the steps and the bin and the signage isn’t exactly beautiful, but this route across this land means a lot, so many of us have walked this way, down the weedy steps.

… And in 2016, recreating the same:

Acomb Green steps, 3 July 2016

The metal rails by the steps are just the same and so cast the same shadows, the staggered broken lines, in the high light of early July, ten years apart.

No people in the 2006 view. A busier Acomb Green in 2016. Perhaps, as I mentioned above, because it was a Sunday evening, or perhaps Acomb Green is generally busier most evenings. A young woman was sitting on the steps reading a book, and she smiled at me as I passed.

Forty years or more have passed since a very small me first went up those steps, probably holding my mother’s hand.

At the top here, by the Friends Meeting House, in 2006 I stopped for a moment and took a photo of the view, towards the church, St Stephen’s, across Acomb Green:

Acomb Green, 3 July 2006 (3)

And did so again, on the same evening in 2016.

Acomb Green, 3 July 2016 (3)

New play equipment, old shrubbery removed. Around it all the same old fence, touched by many hands, perhaps people leaning on it to look out across this open space, where maypole dancing used to take place, once upon a time. Above it all the church spire, and all those fine old trees.

Behind us, alongside the Friends Meeting House, is an alleyway, where this wander continues. More on that story later.

For now, I leave you with a link to an intriguing image of Acomb Green, painted long ago by an unknown artist and viewable on this link: Acomb Green: The View from My Window. It’s from the other side of the triangular green, a view not pictured in my photos. It wouldn’t be possible to replicate the view anyway, as it’s clearly from above street level, perhaps from a building no longer there. It’s said to date from 1880, but it doesn’t seem to include the Methodist Chapel/Friends Meeting House, which apparently dates from 1846. Another small mystery which, like the cattle trough, I’d like to investigate further, but can’t. Heading off towards the alleyway. Comments welcome, dear readers, as always.

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Milepost on York Road, Acomb, 3 July 2016

Yesterday I went over to Acomb, to retrace my steps for a ‘ten years on’ revisit. Something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I’ve had this site for a long time, and back in the early years it was a personal website not often added to. One of the 2006 pages was a page about Acomb, a photo essay. I’ve had many emails about it, and many comments have been added to it in recent years. And because of that, and because it’s ten years on, I’ve been thinking for some months that I could/should do a revisit, on the same day, 3 July, at the same time of day (early evening), retracing my steps of 2006, seeing what’s changed and what’s stayed the same.

If it had been a rainy, gloomy kind of day I wouldn’t have bothered. It needed the same kind of weather conditions to be a fair comparison. Also, I don’t like wandering about in the rain and gloom. But hurrah, it was bright and sunny, and so I set off on the big trek from Clifton, over Clifton Bridge and Water End, down Boroughbridge Road and onto Carr Lane, nipped down some side streets towards Rosedale Avenue, intending to start taking photos at the cattle trough by Acomb Green, as I had back in 2006.

But took a couple before that, of this old wall and gate, the back entrance to the churchyard of St Stephen’s, Acomb’s parish church. All charming under a blue sky.

Gate to St Stephen’s churchyard, Rosedale Ave, Acomb, 3 July 2016

I was marching swiftly past, and didn’t intend to stop here to take a photo, but remembered that a comment on the 2006 page referred to this gate. Sarah lived in Rosedale Avenue as a girl, in 1969, and went to the school near the main entrance to the churchyard:

Funny the things that stick in your mind when you are 4! I remember having a key to the little gate in the wall of Rosedale Avenue, so I could take a short-cut through the graveyard to school rather than having to walk all the way round.

Gate to St Stephen’s churchyard, Rosedale Ave, Acomb, 3 July 2016

Unfortunately I didn’t have a key to this locked gate, but perhaps just as well as I may have got sidetracked into wandering around and admiring the churchyard and its views, just as I did back in 2006. The main gate, on the other side, led me to the path through the churchyard. This is how it looked on that evening in 2006, looking towards Rosedale Avenue and the gate pictured above:

Path through St Stephen’s churchyard, 3 July 2006

I hope it looks just the same now, in 2016.

The view from it will have changed though. In 2006, on my wanderings through the churchyard, I took this photo, struck by what a good view you get from this hilly bit of Acomb:

Sugarbeet factory, from St Stephen’s churchyard, 3 July 2006

The sugarbeet factory prominent on the horizon, back then. Closed and demolished since. Some things stay the same, some change.

Let’s move on, back to 2016, and this 2016 wander. We were on Rosedale Avenue, weren’t we, heading for the cattle trough and Acomb Green.

This year’s walk had a musical accompaniment. From the Carr Lane area onward I could hear loud music, rock music, recognisable songs, one by Queen. Assumed it was coming from a nearby house, and thought it must be annoying for the neighbours. It seemed to get louder and louder, and I couldn’t work out where it was coming from. On Rosedale Avenue it was particularly loud, and clearly quite close.

It must be on Acomb Green, I thought, and felt a bit concerned about how I was going to take the ‘then and now’ photos I needed if the Green was packed with people watching a band. I was mentally preparing myself for possibly looking like a weird and strange person (probably not for the first time), carefully framing a view of the weedy concrete steps, as planned.

At the top of Danebury Drive I realised that the event seemed to be at the sports club field nearby, not at the Green at all. Phew. I could assemble my strange photos without a huge audience.

I wandered over the sunny road towards the cattle trough. Only a little bit later than the time I arrived there on 3 July 2006.

. . . . .

But that, dear readers, is for another page. Acomb’s ‘ten years on’ revisit deserves a few. More soon. For now, here’s Acomb’s handsome milepost, 2016 and 2006, looking a bit smarter than it did back then.

Milepost on York Road, Acomb, 3 July 2016

Milepost, York Road, Acomb, 3 July 2006

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The post Acomb, revisited, part 1 appeared first on York Stories.

This is real York. Blurry video, but never mind. Captures something the tourist-orientated stuff doesn’t. Soundtrack from The Enemy, carefully chosen tracks. A favourite band and a well-known bus route home.

Uploaded to youtube.com by drtuptup.

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