Fossgate, earlier today

Steve Galloway’s blog recently drew my attention to a planning application due to be decided this Thursday (6 April). It proposes the installation of a large metal sign across the street at the top of Fossgate. It would be black and silver, and announce the entrance to the ‘Merchant’s Quarter’. It would replace the current plastic banner (shown above) that was presumably meant to be temporary but has been up there for quite a while. It doesn’t particularly enhance the street and so clearly the idea is to put up something permanent with a similar message, to promote Fossgate.

The planning application for the sign (17/00159/ADV and associated 17/00071/LBC) has been recommended for refusal in the committee report produced for the meeting. The reasons given for this are, in my view, convincing, and interesting. So I thought I’d share some extracts from the available documents, and also have a wander down Fossgate way today to take some photos.

Considering this application leads us to consider the special nature of York’s streets in this area, the routes we walk on our journeys through the city, the views we have when we do.

The application has been submitted by York Civic Trust, in association with local businesses. I’ve wondered before, noticing the proliferation of plaques going up around the city, whether the Civic Trust just has to suggest a sign/plaque and up it goes. There may have been planning applications for the plaques, if so I’ve missed them. But this particular sign will be discussed at a meeting of the Area Planning Sub-Committee this Thursday. The committee report (PDF) states that Councillor Denise Craghill requested that the application should be determined at sub-committee , as ‘Fossgate, as part of the city centre, is a matter of key concern for many residents and it is in the public interest for the application to be considered at committee.’

Guy Hanson (Design & Sustainability Manager, City of York Council) wrote in response to the proposal (PDF on this link):

The whole route up Walmgate and beyond to Colliergate towards the Minster (and in the other direction) is an important dynamic and evolving series of historic views. The proposed fixed overhead metal sign in spanning the street clearly interrupts and in some places dominates this integrity of the views of this important route. In deliberately drawing the eye and in placing it across the street (which is highly atypical) this is harmful to the experience of the open historic route.

A photo taken today shows how the current sign across the street partially blocks that fine view of the Minster from Fossgate:

Fossgate, earlier today, looking towards the Minster, partially obscured by the current banner (on the site of the proposed replacement)

Would a rather fancy metal sign in black paint and silver be any better?

The good thing about planning applications and the documents associated with them is that they often provoke thought on aspects of the city maybe forgotten about or taken for granted. Reading the above reminded me that some years ago, when working on Walmgate, I regularly walked from Bootham to Walmgate, past the Minster and along Petergate, down Colliergate and Fossgate, and the description above reminds me of this, of how it was so clearly a historic route. It felt like a straight line, though it isn’t quite, having a slight shift southwards overall, but essentially clearly a through route from one side of the city to the other. The fact that streets were given their own names doesn’t detract from this. The more I walked the same route the more I was aware of how historic and significant it was, the Bootham to Walmgate route.

To have a modern sign declaring one particular part of it as somehow an entrance or a special ‘quarter’ doesn’t seem appropriate.

As Esther Priestley (Landscape Architect, CYC) puts it in her response (PDF):

The proposed signage suggests a gateway or entrance, and a separation between Colliergate/Pavement and Fossgate; which is inappropriate because Fossgate is a street that continues from another in each direction. Fossgate is not a separate entity.

The streetscape in this area is described as:

a natural flow from Colliergate to Fossgate to Walmgate, presenting an attractive array of buildings and a series of evolving views. The view along Fossgate is particularly attractive from Pavement as the road dips down towards the Foss and Foss bridge and on to Walmgate which tantalisingly and subtly disappears from view around the curve in the street.

It suggests that ‘to add a metal banner into the foreground of this view adds unnecessary clutter’ and that it is ‘a contrived structure/gimmick in an otherwise historically evolved street’.

Guy Hanson’s response reaches a similar conclusion:

The proposal in branding Fossgate “Merchants’ Quarter” is a new concept/brand. It is not a recreation of a former structure and, whilst parts of the decoration alludes to a former fish market on Fossgate, such a brand inevitably is not able to represent the historic complexity of Fossgate. In being designed in a quasi historic aesthetic it is potentially historically misleading-constructing a false history. This erodes the value of the historic townscape.

The Merchants’ Quarter label is a little odd. References to the ‘Cultural Quarter’ (referring to the area around the art gallery, Theatre Royal and Museum Gardens) used to be common in council documents but the label doesn’t seem to have been generally embraced, as imposing such things tends not to work. Surely these identities for areas only work if the notion of a particular district with a particular theme evolves over time, over a long time, and if it does, it doesn’t need a massive great sign to point it out, as it’s so cool and enticing people are just naturally drawn there?

The point is also made that this type of sign, though popular in the late 20th century, isn’t looked upon favourably now:

Based on contemporary best practice, the urban fashion for these devices has largely disappeared and seen as crude even for contemporary city centre shopping centres

Have to say that all that makes sense to me.

I wonder what the councillors who vote on it will think.

It is true that Fossgate feels a little cut-off from the main part of the city centre, and the written responses to the application quoted above also recognise that, and suggest other possible solutions. What’s most obvious, from the top of Fossgate, is how for the pedestrian it is cut off by a road — a fairly wide road, compared to the width of the historic route from Petergate through to Fossgate. As illustrated in this photo, taken in summer 2015 on one of the ‘car free’ days.

View down Fossgate, on a car-free day, summer 2015. Rather cut off by a large expanse of road at the top

Kerbs and tarmac effectively delineate the road and pedestrian space, as tarmac and pavements with kerbs tend to do.

Changing the paving at this junction here to flatten it and subtly emphasise pedestrian ‘flow’ towards Fossgate would be more effective perhaps, as suggested in the documents quoted above.

Thinking of that walk I mentioned I used to do, from Bootham to Walmgate, what also comes to mind is the way parts of it open out, lessening the sense of the historic route. Two substantial alterations to the medieval street pattern blasted holes in what would have continued as a fairly narrow and built-up route. Firstly on Petergate, where Duncombe Place was created to open up a view of the Minster, and then here in this area as we approach Fossgate, where suddenly there’s the opened out area to the left, with the hulking bulk of Stonebow House and the street of Stonebow next to it. A 20th century intervention. It’s that that has cut off Fossgate from the streets it used to be more closely linked to.

Clearly removing the road isn’t an option but that unhappy junction where it meets Pavement and Fossgate and Whip-ma-whop-ma-Gate could be improved with paving changes, the kind that make pedestrians claim the space and any buses and taxis slow down.

Fossgate seems to be quite a dynamic and happening place already, and clearly there are many significant developments underway or recently completed close to it that will mean more local residents and more passing shoppers. The Hungate development continues, with another phase of residential build apparently almost complete. Stonebow House, a stone’s throw away, is being remodeled, which will also involve some tidying of its scruffy end near the top of Fossgate. At the other end, there’s student housing down the road in Walmgate and another block planned. Then there are the proposed developments in Piccadilly – the Spark:York plan, or the hotel, or maybe both.

Cluttered with scaffolding and vehicles, but still so handsome: Fossgate, from Fossgate Bridge

Presumably with the large student population living in the blocks down Walmgate this is where, increasingly, Fossgate’s customers come from. There’s been a huge cultural shift in this area. Several established businesses frequented by a previous generation of York residents have disappeared: the furniture store in the old cinema building most recently (soon to be a restaurant) before that the Barbican Bookshop (now a cafe) and Army and Navy Stores (now Sutlers bar).

There are of course many small independent businesses down here. Fossgate really suffered in the recent floods at the end of 2015. Some of the businesses down there had a horrendous time. They and all other city centre small businesses deserve our custom and support. But I can’t see how a dominant sign at one end of Fossgate will help with that.

And the clock …

It was only today, getting back with the photos I took and looking through them, that I remembered the clock, visible on the photos on the building next to the banner. It wasn’t working when I took the photo in 2015, but it is now, and very handsome it looks too, as well as being useful. It was recently restored, as covered by the Press (there are more photos on this link, from BBC York on Facebook). ‘It means a lot to see the clock back up. When we decided to take it down, we didn’t know whether to scrap it or renovate it. We chose to renovate it to keep the character of the street the way it was for over 100 years’, said Maurice Woollons, whose family own the building.

The current banner obscures it and presumably the proposed replacement would too? Which doesn’t seem right.

(Though I think it needs someone to adjust it for British Summer Time …)

Fossgate earlier today – and its partially obscured handsome clock, recently restored

The matter will be discussed and decided upon at the meeting starting at 4.30 on 6 April. There will be a webcast (www.york.gov.uk/webcasts), which is always available to watch later too on the council’s YouTube channel if you can’t watch live.

. . . . . .

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Exhibition Square, June 2007

A good thing about the council’s ‘Reinvigorate York’ projects and the accompanying consultations is that they make us pay closer attention to places we perhaps take for granted. What the King’s Square saga showed is that it’s obviously better if we contribute our thoughts on the plans before the point when features are being removed and the paving is being lifted.

So I hope word is getting round about the current consultation (running until 21 Feb) and that we’ll fill in the survey/consultation form.

The online survey/consultation seems to be a combined questionnaire covering all three schemes. If so that’s a shame as many of us may have strong feelings about one particular project but not the other two. Reading the information takes long enough. I wonder how many people will comment via the consultation form. More than for King’s Square, I hope.

Anyway, the projects are:

Fossgate, May 2013

Fossgate

Fossgate improvements – City of York council information

It has been mentioned often over the years that Fossgate should perhaps become another daytime footstreet, and these proposals implement that. I don’t have an opinion on this, if you do, comments welcome below.

The plans also include repaving of the two entrances to the street (from Walmgate and from Pavement) and areas of pavement widening, which could include seating. I assume this must mean benches, not cafe seating, as Fossgate is very narrow.

Exhibition Square: paving and fountain

Exhibition Square

Exhibition Square & Theatre Interchange improvements – City of York council info

The available information suggests that these plans are not as radical and destructive as the King’s Square changes seemed. The Yorkstone paving is to be retained and added to, rather than lifted. The plan is to extend the paving with reclaimed stone (the slabs recently lifted from King’s Square, perhaps).

Whether this is a change of approach in the light of the response to King’s Square, or was always the plan, I don’t know. It would appear that the paving slabs in Exhibition Square also date from the 1970s, as before then the area was mainly used for car parking, right up to the front of the gallery.

I’ve already written about Etty and the fountain.

Other suggested changes include reducing the size of the parking bay, and relocating the bus shelter. From my point of view, as a pedestrian who regularly walks across this area, these seem like good ideas. I can’t say I’ve ever thought ‘I do wish someone would move that bus stop’, but now they mention it, yes, it would be easier if all us pedestrians passing weren’t behind funneled into the fairly narrow space behind it.

I don’t like the sound of ‘coloured asphalt’ across the road in front of Bootham Bar. Particularly if it’s reddish in colour, which would be a bit loud and attention-grabbing? When really it should be Bootham Bar claiming our attention. Particularly on a summer’s evening when its old stone glows in the late sunlight. I hope CYC keep their coloured asphalt away from here. Though the junction’s not looking that great at the moment, cluttered with Lendal Bridge closure signage.

Duncombe Place/Blake St

Duncombe Place/Blake St junction, Sept 2013

Duncombe Place & Blake Street Junction improvements – City of York council information

They’re right, it’s a daft clutter at present, with the raised flowerbed and triangle of bits of road. But again, ‘coloured asphalt’ is proposed, again it’s supposed to be an impressive view, towards the main focus, the Minster, and I wonder if a wide band of coloured asphalt leaping into that famous view would be an improvement?

How to have your say

Press release, info on online consultation and staffed consultation events

Background on individual projects – see links under headings above

Online consultation/questionnaire

… And please share, spread the word

Please share the information about the consultation as widely as possible, particularly highlighting the Exhibition Square ideas/proposals.

Many people were upset – and yes, I chose that word carefully, as concerned/angry doesn’t quite describe it – by the changes to King’s Square. They didn’t realise that there had been a consultation about that project. More community ‘engagement’ means more chance of more of us having a city we can feel happy about, rather than feeling angry, disenfranchised and ignored.

. . . . .

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Foss, near Rowntree Wharf, Jan 2004

From the paved bank of the Foss between Foss Bridge and Rowntree Wharf, in 2004. I’m not sure why I didn’t take the more conventional view showing the full height of that impressive 19th century building, but this photo does capture some of the buildings on the opposite bank, to the right, and this is where the obvious changes have happened in the intervening years.

Foss, near Rowntree Wharf, Jan 2014

The river here now reflects new buildings, taller. Residential accommodation built on the old yards off Walmgate. The old industries based here are long gone. The river is something we look at rather than something we use for the transportation of goods.

By the Foss, looking towards Foss Bridge, Jan 2004

Looking the other way, towards the picturesque Foss Bridge, in 2004. A friend first showed me this place about thirty years ago. We used to sit here and talk and smoke cigarettes. It’s apparently still a favoured spot for young people to gather – a group arrived while I was there. I was conscious of them sitting behind me on the bench, no doubt thinking I was a bit mad, as I made several attempts to line up properly this next 2014 ‘view’.

By the Foss, Jan 2014, thriving shrubbery

Yes, that is the same view, more or less. The bridge is in the background, obscured by the winter remains of a thriving shrubbery. Buddleia bushes growing out of the river bank. Buddleia does grow very quickly, and makes a lot of growth in a season, but this could be several years’ worth of growth. It has certainly got its roots down and got well-established in these Foss-side niches.

Foss Bridge House, Jan 2004

The impressive Foss Bridge House, boarded up and empty in early 2004, but still proudly signed – the home of Stubbs the ironmonger, as it had been for almost a century. At the time I took the photo the shop must have been empty for a year at least, as the posters pasted on its boarded windows say ‘Don’t attack Iraq’.

Foss Bridge House, Jan 2014

It didn’t stay empty for long. The refurbishment of this listed building included the repainting of some of its old Stubbs signage, but with the more prominent ads on the corner brickwork near the entrance replaced with the Loch Fyne name.

Foss-side, near Piccadilly, Jan 2004

Also next to the Foss, a stone’s throw away. This isn’t a landmark building, it’s just one of those fairly ordinary 20th century buildings fronting on to Piccadilly. I can’t quite remember what it was used for back in 2004, but I’ve always quite liked the way its side curves with the river.

This photo was taken, I guess, because of the large banner. Hard to read on this old low-resolution photo, but it’s an ad for the ‘Castle Quarter’. A ‘radical new vision’, so radical it was never realised. Instead of a massive project involving the complete redevelopment of a large area, we’ve settled for smaller-scale piecemeal redevelopment of some of these Foss-side plots. Work looks set to begin soon on some of them.

Foss-side, near Piccadilly, Jan 2014

But this building remains, and is unlikely to be demolished in the ‘regeneration’ of Piccadilly. Part of it, fronting onto Piccadilly, has been for some years now occupied by a Tesco Express. Its river-facing side has been considerably smartened, the brightness doubled in its reflection in the Foss. Old Foss, flowing slowly on its way to the Ouse, past so many changes, over the decades and the centuries.

My walk took in many more places, from the bar walls at Bootham to the highlights of Hungate, before my old camera’s card got full. More later perhaps.

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Barbican Bookshop, Fossgate, York, 24 June 2012

A photo of the Barbican Bookshop on Fossgate in York. Hastily taken, when passing, in June 2012. I didn’t stand in front of it and try to get its shopfront properly lined up. I’ve been looking in my photo archives to see if I had other, better photos, from earlier years. I can’t find any. I really thought I had more. But then I often think that. I often think I’ve got a photographic record of a particular place but really they’re just in my head, remembered like a photo, as I passed and looked so many times. I forget to take the photos I should take. I take things for granted because they’ve been there so long. Most of us do.

Closing down: sign in Straker’s Passage, alongside Barbican Bookshop, Fossgate, York, 25 Dec 2013

Eighteen months on from the above photo. The Barbican Bookshop is closing down. The closing down sale is advertised not only in the shop window but in the alley alongside.

Not surprising that many bookshops are closing. Things have changed so so much.

Interior of Barbican Bookshop, Dec 2013

Our now traditional Christmas Day afternoon walk into town usually has a target or two. The target this year was this place, to get some photos when the shop wasn’t open and the street was quiet. This one was taken through its closed doors, the interior of the shop, with its red and white signs advertising massive price reductions.

Barbican Bookshop, York, 25 Dec 2013: closing down

Since summer 2012 the lettering seems to have been replaced on the shopfront, but it’s still red on green, and a bit 1970s, in a good way.

They’ve been here on Fossgate for decades, with all those rooms of secondhand books in a shop apparently small when you see it from the front before you realise that it goes back such a long way from the street, and up narrow stairs.

I’ve visited again, since taking this photo, and bought books. I’ve written about that too but don’t feel like sharing it. I hope to share some of the pamphlets and books of local interest I found in boxes at the back of the shop. But for now I just wanted to say goodbye, and thanks, to the Barbican Bookshop. It closes on 11th January.

The Press: York bookshop to close after 53 years

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Back in May, passing the place while heading for the Army and Navy Stores, I noticed for the first time its interesting interior. (Pictured through the glass of the shop windows, with the door reflected, not the clearest view.)

I would have described these as tiles, but on further thought, they must be glazed bricks. They’re in repeating patterns in various colours. This is the lower part.

Along the top of the wall, above an area of plain white, blue bands and green in a repeating pattern.

On a later wander with a friend past this shop we were discussing whether they could be an original feature, dating from 1898. They made me think of the 1930s, rather than the late 19th century. I also wondered if they related to the sale of food, back then, early 20th century/late 19th. Why else would you have such a ‘clinical’ surface? Clinical in the sense of being easy to clean, but fancy at the same time, with these carefully-planned coloured patterns.

It’s nice to find you were right, isn’t it. According to old directories and other sources 11-12 Fossgate was a fishmonger’s shop.

Even better, our local archives have a photo. From around 1900, according to www.imagineyork.co.uk (Photo: © City of York Council). Possibly celebrating the opening of the premises — it’s hard to see why else someone would take a photo of a fish shop, however ornate its frontage.

Note the tiling in the geometric pattern, on the right-hand side of the photo.

And it’s still there. The same section of wall, looking rather battered now from a century of weathering and people passing through. But still recognisable. Alterations on the ground floor level in the intervening 100 years or so made a side entrance alongside the 20th century shopfront, with a doorway set back a little from the pavement, which has left this section exposed. Inside the shop it has been better protected.

And will remain so, judging by this photo, taken last month (Photo: Tom Baker, @Tommyhop):

The building is reopening later this month as The Hop, an Ossett Brewery bar.

From fresh fish to the finest ales.

But it’s not open yet, so let’s have a look at an old directory listing, from 1895, showing that Mr Waudby the fishmonger originally had premises further up Fossgate, at ‘6½’:

Hard to be sure now where this was, as the top part of Fossgate was demolished when Stonebow was created. But there was Mr Waudby in his ‘half’ premises, and he got rich enough to build the fine place we now know as 11-12 Fossgate.

While we’re waiting for the bar to open, let’s have a look at that impressive frontage again.

The official record for this Listed Building includes a description of this particularly impressive part of its exterior: ‘Scrolled pediment to centre bay has moulded eagle finial, and tympanum incorporating date, monogram of YAC and the York City shield of arms embedded in palm fronds.’

I wondered what ‘YAC’ could stand for.

I don’t think that says YAC. It’s a W and an H, isn’t it. ‘William Henry Waudby’. You can imagine him: ‘I want scrolls, palm fronds, big tympanum, the date up there, my initials in the middle, really grand. Oh, and an eagle, I want an eagle, right at the top there.’

So if you’re popping in to The Hop on Fossgate, to enjoy its fine ales, raise a glass to William Henry Waudby, won’t you. Hop-based beverages aren’t my thing, but if the ‘finest wines available to humanity’ are also available I’ll raise a glass in honour of his fish, fine frontage, fancy brick, and that eagle.

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During a wander down Fossgate recently I had a look through the closed doors of the now empty Army and Navy Stores. Not quite empty. Near the door a handwritten sign advertises ‘umbrella / walking stick stand £10′ with a phone number underneath. Alongside the stand also stand a pair of dislocated mannequin legs, wearing brown suede shoes and what appear to be black long johns, with another sign offering this ‘trouser / jeans display’ for £3.

Behind this, bins put neatly in a corner and the old wooden drawers with small brass label holders. For ‘work gloves’ and what looks like ‘LNER gloves’ or perhaps ‘liner gloves’. The drawer unit itself, beautifully aged and battered, is marked ‘not for sale’.

A very manly place, the Army and Navy Stores, as its name suggests. Round the corner, in its window facing onto Pavement, a label left behind on the window display records that it also sold aprons, perhaps not so manly. But I remember it as a man’s shop, and have been asking the man of the house if he remembers buying things from there. We think perhaps that the blue cotton jackets we both wore in the late 1980s came from here. He had two and gave me the smaller one. His apparently was a ‘railwayman’s jacket’. Was mine a railwayman’s jacket? I asked excitedly. Why didn’t you tell me? Like I would have cared back then.

The late 80s seems like long enough ago, but the shop had been here for decades before that. It closed last year after 93 years of trading. Soon to be another pub/eaterie, it seems.

The shop is well-known for having old fixtures and fittings, and we value this kind of thing now more than we used to, so I imagine the refit will probably preserve as much as possible, as Loch Fyne did with the old Stubbs building further down Fossgate.

Before moving on — I had to go and find these, packed away in an old suitcase. I wonder if other people keep old clothes for sentimental reasons. These are the jackets mentioned above which I think came from Army and Navy Stores, and it’s about 25 years since they were worn. My quick research suggests that the one on the left, grubby and faded, with rubber buttons, is a railway worker’s jacket. The one on the right, not so sure. Maybe someone reading had similar and can confirm that Army and Navy Stores in York sold these. Looking at them takes me right back to 1988, and brings thoughts of Sunday lunchtimes at the Spread Eagle, down the road on Walmgate. More on that another time perhaps.

Your thoughts and memories welcome, as always.

Elsewhere on the web

Army & Navy Stores up for sale after 93 years — includes information on the history of the shop
Bar and café plan for former Army & Navy Store premises in Fossgate

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