Sign to ‘keep left’, Bootham, 2 Dec 2020

I had to go into town today, and thought I’d walk through the Museum Gardens first.

But a walk in the park isn’t what it used to be.

Instructions (sign 1), Museum Gardens, York, 2 Dec 2020

The phrase ‘a walk in the park’ is used to suggest something that is easy, pleasant. Not so much now that even the parks have signs reminding visitors how to behave. Even in December, when there are so few people here that we’re easily ‘socially distancing’ without all the signs reminding us to do that.

Instructions sign, Museum Gardens, 2 Dec 2020

Perhaps just me, but it feels irritating/a bit depressing, to be in a green open space and to still have the same old bossy signs. I think, after all these months, that we know by now, don’t we?

There were very few people around when I got to the main gate on Museum Street. No risk to leave by either side of the gate. But a proper officious sign here.

No Exit, Museum Gardens, 2 Dec 2020

And on the other side:

Sign, Museum Gardens, 2 Dec 2020

‘Thank you and goodbye’. Mmm.

If you’re approaching from Museum Street (the main entrance), rather than the Marygate side, as I did, you have quite a few signs to take in:

Museum Gardens gates, 2 Dec 2020

Earlier in the year there was, as I recall, an even bigger display of signs with even more detailed information on what was allowed and what wasn’t.

We’re encouraged to visit green spaces for the sake of our mental health. It’s hard, perhaps, to get a sense of perspective, and thereby improve our mental health,  if the gates of that green space are full of officious notices and the place within has several other nagging reminders.

As it’s now early December, and we’ve all had a fair while to understand government guidelines, is all this really necessary?

I had one task in town, which involved a brief visit to Coney Street. Here it is today (2 Dec 2020), in the fading light of a December afternoon (3.30ish).

Coney Street, 3.30pm, 2 Dec 2020

And here’s the same view, taken six months ago, 2 June, late morning.

Coney Street, 11.10am, 2 June 2020

(Ignore the time on the clock. It’s a stopped clock.)
Today, on my brief excursion into it, town seemed fairly busy.

On the way back home I thought I’d wander through Dean’s Park, and go back via Chapter House Street, onto Goodramgate and Lord Mayor’s Walk. I’ve always appreciated being able to cut through here, by the side of the Minster.

But here too, the signs …

Sign, Dean’s Park gate, 2 Dec 2020

Sign, Dean’s Park, 2 Dec 2020

When I got to the other side of Dean’s Park all the gates were closed, and this sign in particular felt very unfriendly …

Don’t walk this way

So I walked back round to the gate I’d come in through, and headed off home.

Think I’ll go back to what I’ve been doing through the earlier stages of this weird time — going for walks out of town, rather than into it.

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New Sports Direct store (formerly BHS), Coney Street

Recently, the new Sports Direct and USC stores have opened in what used to be BHS, on Coney Street. This was reported in the York Press as ‘a major boost for York’s premier shopping street’.

A brief wander into town on Christmas Day took in Coney Street, as I wanted photos of a particular shop further along the street, and thought I’d have a look at the new occupant of the former BHS, pictured above.

On a normal day when the shops are open it’s difficult to stand about in Coney Street staring at things and pondering, and taking lots of photos, without looking a bit weird and drawing attention to yourself. I called in on Coney Street this year on Christmas Day to stand and stare and to try to see it as it is now, in an objective kind of way.

Did the street look rejuvenated and reinvigorated now the former BHS was occupied again?

Well … not in a way that appealed to me.

Sports Direct, Coney Street, new store , Dec 2019

I looked at the new shopfront for the USC/Sports Direct store and thought it looked jarringly garish, out of place. A cloudy December day, a quiet street, a street with an ancient history (and not just as ‘York’s main shopping street’).

Large screens in its windows offered fast-moving images to the virtually empty street.

I stood directly in front of it and looked back towards the St Helen’s Square end of Coney Street, taking in the line of shops continuing on from the new store.

Coney Street, 25 Dec 2019

It all looked a bit rubbish, a bit wrong, a bit dated … well, a bit late-20th century. Like the new storefront had landed there in a street that was fading away from what the new store represents.

Looking above the shop level on Coney Street we have handsome buildings, or at least an interesting mix of them. Blending in harmoniously, in brick, wood, iron, lead, small and often wonky windows, the occasional weed (probably buddleia) growing out of a drainpipe …

Down here at street level, plastic signage on the shops that are open and rather desperate-looking shops that aren’t open. And the new shiny plastic of the Sports Direct logo looking too bright and garish on this faded shopping street.

What I thought did look completely ‘at home’ on Coney Street was this shop, Fabrication:

Fabrication, Coney Street, 25 Dec 2019

I mentioned it before – it was here in December 2018 and I’m pleased to see that it still is part of Coney Street. It’s in one of the older handsome buildings near the corner with New Street. It sells handmade things, made locally.

Fabrication, Coney Street, interior (apologies for poor quality, photo taken through the window when it was closed)

For some years now I’ve been thinking about the phrase ‘spending power’.

And how the ‘power’ bit of it should be the most focused on, rather than the spending, but that it probably isn’t.

Or maybe that’s changing, at last.

Anyway, on Coney Street there’s a big new store where you can buy things to help support Mike Ashley’s retail empire. Personally I don’t find that very exciting.

I’m finding Coney Street more fascinating than I did before, but mainly because I’m waiting for it to find its 21st century reinvigorated self.

. . . . .

This is one of the December Daily pages, supported by your virtual coffees. Thanks for your interest in, and support of, these pages.

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Late 20th century plan of York city centre shops, Coney St

Yesterday the focus was on the store built for Leak and Thorp, on the site of an old coaching inn.

Today we’re across the other side of Coney Street, looking at another large site that was the site of a coaching inn but in the later 20th century was home to a large department store. I think it’s maybe obvious which one it is, from the plan above (previously featured on this page).

Black Swan, Coney Street (source: thecardindex.com)

The Black Swan on Coney Street lasted longer than the George. The photo of it above dates from the first half of the twentieth century.

Like the George, the Black Swan seems to have occupied quite an area, as all these places stabling horses presumably had to (reminding me of the piece from many years ago on the horse repository on Tanner’s Moat, which went upwards a long way too).

I was looking for more photos or illustrations of the Black Swan on Coney Street, and couldn’t find anything. That was perhaps a good thing, as further searches led me to a couple of written descriptions, which are often more evocative than photographs — depending on who’s writing them, and for what purpose.  A journal by the American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, writing in 1857, includes these descriptions:

It is a very ancient hotel ; for in the coffee-room I saw on the wall an old printed advertisement, announcing that a stage-coach would leave the Black Swan in London, and arrive at the Black Swan in York, with God’s permission, in four days. The date was 1706; and still, after a hundred and fifty years, the Black Swan receives travellers in Coney Street. It is a very good hotel, and was much thronged with guests when we arrived, as the Sessions come on this week.

And from another visit that same year:

The Black Swan, where we had been staying, is a good specimen of the old English inn, sombre, quiet, with dark staircases, dingy rooms, curtained beds, — all the possibilities of a comfortable life and good English fare, in a fashion which cannot have been much altered for half a century. It is very home-like when one has one’s family about him, but must be prodigiously stupid for a solitary man.
— Passages from the English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Volume 1 (1875)

Nathaniel Hawthorne was travelling by train, a relatively new form of transport.

I’ve mentioned before C B Knight’s book This is York, published in the 1950s and presumably written in the late 1940s/early 1950s. Mr Knight was York born and bred – as he states with some pride in his introduction – and his book includes many valuable insights from the perspective of someone who knows the city well. On one of his guided walks there’s mention of the George on Coney Street, and then the Black Swan, ‘one of York’s most famous coaching inns in pre-railway days':

The other famous inn was the Black Swan, which was closed fifteen or twenty years ago, although half the building still remains.

I read this and wondered which half, and why I’ve not seen any images of the demolition of what was clearly a major building on Coney Street. But clearly, at some point presumably not long after Mr Knight wrote the above, the wide and long site previously occupied by the coaching inn became a British Home Stores – BHS as it came to be known.

The shop was large when it opened, and later expanded even more. You could go into BHS from Coney Street and leave it via the New Street entrance or the Feasegate entrance, across land that was once the back plots and outbuildings and yards of so many premises crowded into this area between those streets and Davygate.

York’s BHS store closed in recent years, as did all the others, and for some time we had its wide blank front at 44 Coney Street.

Former BHS store on site of Black Swan, Coney St, 25 Dec 2018

Like the old Leak and Thorp store, the former BHS seems to be shrinking back to smaller units. The block with an entrance onto New Street (number 11) has been partitioned off, to form a separate retail unit. Recently it’s become clear that the rest of the old BHS has also been split into smaller units.

Former BHS store split into separate new stores, opening soon (19 August 2019)

These new stores may have opened since I took the photo above back in August. Though if they had I guess I’d have seen some local media coverage of it, as any new store opening in what we used to see as our main shopping streets is generally highlighted, as so many stores in those streets have closed.

. . .

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The post Coney Street’s coaching inns, and what replaced them (part 2) appeared first on York Stories.

George Hotel, Coney Street, circa 1850 (source)

As previously mentioned (and as shown on the late 20th century plan), the buildings of Coney Street are in many cases tall and narrow, on long narrow plots of land — though perhaps we tend not to notice that because of the modern shopfronts. After looking more closely at Coney Street, and photos I’ve taken of it, I’ve been thinking about two buildings with much wider frontages, on opposite sides of the street. Both built in the 20th century, on the sites of former coaching inns.

One of those coaching inns, the George, is pictured above, and shown on this 1852 plan.

Extract from the 1852 map of York

The George was at the heart of a busy and bustling Coney Street in the days of horse-powered transport. It occupied a large site between the river and Coney Street. The opening to its yard is still there, and one of its columns at the edge of that entrance. There’s a Civic Trust plaque on the building that now occupies the site. (There’s also some  in-depth and interesting information on coaching inns on the Civic Trust website.)

Leak and Thorp, a department store, opened in 1869 on the site after the George was demolished. The original store is pictured on an old postcard included on my previous page on Coney Street. That building was destroyed by fire in the 1930s.

A new store was built on the site, to replace it, and that building’s still there, with its distinctive Art Deco appearance. Here’s a 1970s illustration of it:

Ad for Leak and Thorp department store, York, 1973

(Originally included on this page from 2014, which also includes many more groovy ads from the early 1970s.)

Here’s Leak and Thorp’s store looking bright and inviting on a dark evening in the late 1960s, in what appears to be the run-up to Christmas.

Leak and Thorp, Coney St, 1967 (Photo: York Press)

The store was part of Coney Street for over a century, a highly-regarded part of York’s shopping scene, a place many residents will remember. Van Wilson’s book on Coney Street, York’s Golden Half Mile, includes many memories and recollections of Leak and Thorp’s, a place with many stories. (And apparently an extra storey added to its height at some point in the late 60s/very early 70s, comparing the images above. Perhaps that’s where the Norseman Restaurant, mentioned in the 1973 ad, was located?)

By the time I was shopping on Coney Street, in the 1980s, Leak and Thorp’s had closed. A photo from the York Press archives reminded me of this part of Coney Street as I remember it, with Chelsea Girl and Etam occupying what used to be the Leak and Thorp store.

Coney Street in 1983 (Photo: York Press)

The large impressive premises purpose-built for one local retailer had by then been divided up into smaller retail units.

In recent years the units have been occupied by Next, Monsoon, and River Island.

Next and Monsoon in former Leak and Thorp store, 25 Dec 2018

River Island’s Coney Street store closed last year, leaving another empty shop unit on Coney Street.

Across the road there was once another coaching inn. That’s a story for another day. For now, I just wanted to mention that this relatively modern building, while not officially Listed, is seen as a ‘building of merit’ in the Conservation Area Appraisal.

No. 19 Coney Street … an Art Deco department store with stone façade. It is considered a building of merit despite a poor additional upper storey which spoils the roofline. It is not as good an example of the style as No. 52 Coney Street which is listed Grade II.
— York Central Historic Core Conservation Area Appraisal (number 11: Central Shopping Area)

Number 52 is indeed a handsome building, but the next focus of attention is a different building on Coney Street.

. . .

This is December Daily number 11. Thanks for your virtual coffees in support of my wanderings and ponderings, around this ancient and modern, multi-layered place I call home.

The post Coney Street’s coaching inns, and what replaced them (part 1) appeared first on York Stories.

Coney Street, 25 Dec 2018

Before the brief detour down Bootham to look at a phone box, we were in the city centre, in the Coney Street area, looking at a plan of its shops some decades ago. I found the plan a while back, after taking some photos of Coney Street when it was quieter than usual, on Christmas day, and realising I really should get around to writing something about this interesting street. I realise that I’ve taken it for granted a bit, Coney Street, and perhaps I’m not alone in that.

It’s one of York’s ancient streets, a thoroughfare for many centuries, but perhaps we don’t think of it in that way. It has tended to be thought of as the city’s main shopping street, the home of many of the larger stores for the well-known brands, in the later 20th century and into the early 21st century.

Now, it has many gaps in its ‘retail offer’. Quite a few empty premises. Including the former BHS store, with a particularly wide frontage to Coney Street. Everyone recognises that Coney Street isn’t what it used to be, and that the changes here are mirrored in other shopping streets and other towns and cities across the country.

Here it is, busy and bustling, in the first half of the twentieth century.

Coney Street, 1930s (source: thecardindex.com)

At some point it seems to have lost its connection with its layers of history. Maybe around the time I was growing up here in York. I had a look at some old guidebooks I have from the late 1970s/early 80s, to see how it was described. The ‘York Official Guide’ sums up Coney Street rather briefly:

‘One of York’s main shopping streets, with few old buildings left.’

I guess it’s defining ‘old’ in the context of York’s wealth of historic buildings, but it’s a description that looks rather strange now. Thankfully our appreciation of ‘old’ buildings, of place, of heritage, seems to have deepened and widened in the decades since — and of course we can add another few decades to the age of Coney Street’s buildings since that description was written.

A quick look at the Historic England website confirms that Coney Street has many listed buildings, so clearly ‘old’ enough and interesting enough to have that kind of recognition and protection. Some are older in part than they look at the front, as they’ve been extended and raised and refronted as well as having those rather plasticky looking modern shop frontages put into them at ground level.

Coney Street, 25 Dec 2018

Look up, and the vertical emphasis is clear. Tall and in some cases very narrow buildings. At street level, more of a horizontal emphasis, for the chainstores and their wide window displays, because that’s what the old style high street expanded into, in streets in town centres like this.

It isn’t just about shops, and what it looks like now. Under our feet, under the setts of the late 20th century repaving and the tarmac patching, under the cardboard and sleeping bags in the doorways of the closed shops, there’s an ancient way, an ancient thoroughfare, and the homes and workplaces of centuries upon centuries of people, in the grand buildings fronting the street, the smaller buildings fronting the street, and the many plots behind, stretching back to the river or to backs of the plots of the neighbouring streets. Do we think much about that when we walk down Coney Street looking in the shop windows?

Coney Street, 25 Dec 2018

If you walk along Coney Street when it’s empty and quiet and look up, there are many stories in the various storeys above ground-floor level. Windows re-set, widened, facades added on, some rather bland frontages from postwar rebuilding after bomb damage in the area around St Martin’s church.

Merely being old doesn’t make something interesting though, does it. We have to feel connected to it. And in some way that’s deeper than just going in to a shop to buy a pair of trousers or a fruit bowl. Perhaps we haven’t felt like that on Coney Street. Maybe the meaningful memories and connections were to stores that aren’t there anymore, such as Woolworths, where many teenagers once congregated on Saturday afternoons.

We appear to be reaching the end of that period in our history where going into town to shop was a regular part of daily life, or a looked-forward-to weekend activity, and the empty shops on Coney Street reflect that.

What will happen in the longer term? Perhaps the larger retail units will be divided into smaller units, with shops shrinking back from the massive size some of them had in the later 20th century. This seems to have happened already with the old BHS store.

Shops perhaps reverting to residential? Many of those buildings would look rather grand and handsome if their 20th century shopfronts were replaced with a traditional front door and window. But then it is still a busy and noisy thoroughfare, and perhaps too rowdy for residential.

Though it was nice and quiet on Christmas Day when I took the photos used to illustrate this page. It appears to have taken me six months to write the page to go with them, and in that time the concerns over Coney Street continue, with the local Press reporting regularly on shops that may be closing, or have been saved from closure, and recently suggesting that the street is experiencing a ‘mini-revival’, as a phone shop has opened near Waterstones.

Coney Street, 25 Dec 2018

Perhaps more interesting than that, at least I thought so, was the ‘pop-up shop’ called Fabrication, which was temporarily based in one of the empty retail units, and I hope it’s still there.

Fabrication, Coney Street, 25 Dec 2018

It was selling many beautiful carefully-crafted things, and spending money here would mean money going to the makers of the beautiful things in a direct and pleasing fashion. Perhaps Coney Street needs to have more of that kind of thing, and perhaps in time it will.

. . . . . .

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The post Coney Street concerns: notes and queries appeared first on York Stories.

Late 20th century plan of York city centre shops, Coney St

Time for a bit of gentle nostalgia …

Going back to those long-ago days of … the late 20th century. And the shops that then made up York’s city centre ‘retail offer’, via this interesting plan I found recently.

The plan records part of the city centre as I knew it, as many of us knew it. Above, Coney Street — generally seen as York’s main shopping street (or it was …) — and the area around it. It has many of the familiar high street shops, some names still part of our city centre, some not. BHS has gone, Woolworths has gone, Boots has since moved into the old Woolworths store. Around those large stores are many smaller retail units, many on the long thin plots stretching back to the river.

In the bottom right, a building that at the time was under alteration, to be Yates. Close by, in one of the small units near the steps up from the narrow lane I’ve written about before is Riverside Records (previously Songs and Stories, and mentioned on that earlier page).

The plan is from a 1996 planning application for the Davygate Centre site, as it was then. Hard to tell if it was put together in 1996 or some time before that. The Davygate Centre is marked in red and thick black outline on this section below.

Late 20th century plan of York city centre shops, Davygate Arcade

The Davygate Centre is no longer part of York’s shopping scene, but perhaps the image above provokes memories of shopping there, following its covered route from Davygate to New Street, or vice versa.

I think many people have fond memories of it. I don’t remember it too well, but it appears to have had a good selection of shops, including a computer shop, menswear stores Precinct and Traffic, a wool shop, Gillies Fabrics, a model shop, a camping and outdoor store, a hairdresser. It also had a shop called Weigh Out, which sounds like it sold foods loose, perhaps you could take your own container to be refilled? Anyone remember? (An idea that’s becoming more popular again, it seems.)

Also shown on the above plan is Athena, on nearby Feasegate. A place I do remember spending a lot of time in, coveting various posters, back in the 80s.

The plan also shows the area around St Sampson’s Square.

Late 20th century plan of York city centre shops, St Sampson’s Square and surrounding streets

Brown’s department store is the most obvious retail presence, and it’s still there, though so much around it has changed.

I’ve been trying to write some thoughts and observations on this area for some time, but it all got a bit long-winded, and needs some editing down. Clearly there are concerns over the changes in our town centres. Coney Street is a particularly interesting example of those changes. More on that story later.

For now, I hope this reminder of York’s late 20th century city centre shops is of interest to you, dear reader. (I used to use the phrase ‘dear readers’, but as the gaps between recent writings on here have been quite long recently I think there may only be one reader of it to address, the rest of the readers having drifted away to something more regularly written.)

I’d like to credit the creator of this plan, but there was no indication of who had put it together. It can be found within the planning statement (PDF) for application ref 16/02639/FUL, relating to 11 New Street.

. . . . .

Time for a cuppa, and a look at my half-written things on Coney Street, to see if I can turn them into something succinct and readable. If, dear reader, you’d like to support this resident’s record of York and its changes then virtual coffees are helping to power its pages. Thank you.

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