This image is a record of something we can’t see anymore. Well, not from this angle, not framed this way, as there’s wire mesh in the way.

It was taken from one of the openings to the Anglian Tower – not far from the famous Multangular Tower, behind the library – with a nearby brick wall framed by one of the other openings in the Anglian Tower. All now obscured, and all openings closed up.

I’ve been meaning to include mention of this place, as it’s 8 years since I did, on one of those very long pages which didn’t seem so long then.

It’s one little historic structure, but there are many ways of seeing:

1 … 2 … 3

– and more than that, no doubt, so please feel free to add your comments.

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I live in an era where ‘opening up’ seems to be the thing, where ‘open access’ is a phrase used more and more often in so many areas of our lives. It’s based on noble principles, that we – all of us – should have equal access to resources, places.

Here’s one place opened out, to which most of us had access, at least during daylight hours when the gates next to the library were open. As recorded in comments by Mallory on an earlier page, fit young people who could climb over gates could access this area at other times too.

Once it’s opened up, it’s open to abuse, misuse, littering, graffiti. So here we have the sad sight of the place my friends called ‘the summerhouse’, now all sealed up with wire mesh. The path alongside the walls designed to lead to it now goes nowhere, just to a dead end.

I’m realising that there’s as much closing down as there is opening up. I still miss the closed path through St Peter’s school, and just tonight found that All Saints Lane has been gated. Perhaps if somewhere is special and charming its special qualities have to be preserved for the benefit of the privileged few. Those who understand, appreciate, preserve a place, and have the funds and ability to do so.

As mentioned in a previous page, it has been suggested that the redevelopment of the council building on St Leonard’s Place could include a new access point to this sad-looking dead-end, and its Anglian Tower, on the edge of the Museum Gardens.

Opening up this area behind the library might enhance the place or it might ruin it. Though the wire mesh sealing up the tower has already ruined it, dead-ended it, really, hasn’t it?

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I was too young, in 1970, to recognise this tragedy. So were the teenagers who later scrawled all over the commemorative plaque. Pictured here in 2004, before it disappeared.

This photo is one of those images from my local wanders which has no artistic merit but which could prompt a whole page of analysis, or at the very least, questions. Like why a group of people – girls, apparently – would write on a commemorative plaque. Whether all surfaces are equal if you want to label another girl as a ’slag’. Whether the lack of respect is due to not having lived long enough to know what death means. And what the relatives and friends of Jeffrey Radley would feel, seeing this. That last question makes me feel a bit uncomfortable about including this photo, as it did at the time I took it.

Closer inspection shows that amongst the scrawl there has been added ’sorry u died Jeffrey’. So a moment of recognition then, and a message written in a rather endearing way, directly to Jeffrey – after they’d written their teenage scribblings all over his plaque.

They’ll be grown up now, and may now know what death means, and may perhaps have been to lay flowers in a specific and important place, precious to them, which they’d want other people to respect.

I’ve taken thousands of photos of York since this one, but this is the most thought-provoking, still.

…

Here in the layers of earth and stone Jeffrey Radley died when the structures supporting the excavation gave way. On 22 July 1970, 42 years ago today, the local press reported the cave-in and that he was feared buried.

The Yorkshire Evening Press, in April of that year, had reported that a scheme for the opening out and permanent exhibition of the Anglian Tower had been approved.

The plaque commemorating Jeffrey Radley’s work here was unveiled in 1971. It seems to have disappeared sometime in the last couple of years. As have several other valuable bronze plaques placed by York Civic Trust in other city centre locations.

Jeffrey Radley also wrote poetry, my online research revealed. I hoped that the library building overlooking the place where he died would have copies of his poetry, but it doesn’t seem to, so sadly I can’t end this page with any of his work. Perhaps someone out there can assist.

I climbed up the banks nearby recently, and looked down on this area, and saw the excavated layers from a new angle, and lined them up, framed in photographs. It was only later, looking at them again on another screen, back at home, that I remembered that I’d meant to mention the Anglian Tower again – its sealed-up state, and that bronze plaque.

So thought I’d do that today, 42 years to the day since Jeffrey Radley died here, in recognition of his work in opening it up.

I can’t offer a bronze plaque, just a website page.

I am fully aware that I’m writing this as someone who didn’t know Mr Radley, and that I’m only an observer, decades on, of our city’s more recent layers. Comments are welcome below, and on the associated pages on the Anglian Tower.

Links

Scarred Temple, by Jeffrey Radley, at abebooks.co.uk

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This ruined remnant of ages past is known as the Anglian Tower.

We called it the summerhouse.

One sunny day – in 1983 or 1984 – I was out in town, probably on a Saturday, with two friends from school. We had various places we would hang around, perhaps where we’d smoke cigarettes surreptitiously. One of them was near to here, we called it the tunnel. More on that later perhaps. We were probably in the tunnel when my friends mentioned this place just around the corner, that it was amazing, and was somewhere no one else knew about. I’m paraphrasing of course – it was about thirty years ago.

Though I can’t remember the conversation well, I can remember the feeling of the place, as we stepped into the roofed ruin with sunlight slanting on stones outside and these ancient stones around us. I felt connected to something bigger than myself, had one of those moments which if it had occurred in a church I might think had a profound religious meaning. A spiritual moment, if you like.

…

Moving forward to 2004, when I came here with a camera, at the end of January, on one of the early wanders for this website. I looked at the place differently, framed by the camera and thinking about my imagined website visitors. I didn’t expect to recapture the sense of connection, and didn’t, but did notice the bronze plaques on the exterior, which I don’t remember noticing before.

And litter on the floor. Clearly it was still a hiding place for residents, maybe younger ones, looking for a den or a secret corner, just as we had, though I don’t think the floor was covered with litter then.

…

Moving forward again, to 2012, and the summerhouse is sealed up, its openings blocked with wire mesh guards. In my visits in the intervening years I noticed more litter, more beer cans.

Whatever magic there had been here seems long gone.

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The banks of the title are not of the financial variety, you may be glad to hear. This page could also be titled ‘Please do not climb on the banks’, because really you shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have done so either, but I did, in order to see and record ‘one of the most interesting and impressive views in York’, pictured here.

I’ve been looking at the documents connected with the plans for 1-9 St Leonard’s Place, which include a letter from Peter Goodchild, of nearby King’s Manor. It suggests that the redevelopment should include an opening up of the area behind St Leonard’s Place and the library, where there’s the Anglian Tower (which apparently isn’t ‘Anglian’ at all) and a series of banks, labelled as being from different periods.

It is, as he notes, a dead end. But climbing to the top of the earthen banks gives access to ‘one of the most interesting and impressive views in York’. One which I haven’t seen, I thought, reaching for my camera. It continues: ‘there is no indication or sign to say that it is there, and probably very few people ever go up it to see the view.’ Whereupon I wanted to be one of the few, and got suitable footwear, and headed off for the banks.

This is probably why few people go up there – because a stone inscription tells us not to. Clearly I’m a very law-abiding person and so on previous visits here I’ve done what it said.

But Peter Goodchild is right. From the top of the banks – as pictured above – you can get a far better sense of all those levels the signs below try so hard to represent. I’ve never understood it properly, and still don’t, but from the top of the banks it’s clearer, the layers of it. Climbing down again I almost ended up at the bottom of the banks more quickly than I intended – it was muddy and slippery. For this reason, and because the sign forbids it, I don’t advocate climbing up the banks. But perhaps Mr Goodchild’s suggestion will be implemented, allowing everyone easier access.

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