Opening in 1971 – the Post House hotel

It took a while to get back to 1971 … (apologies for the long gap in communication).

Previously, we were looking at a hotel that opened this year, 2021, in a building that was formerly an office block. Fifty years ago, back in September 1971, a new Post House hotel opened on Tadcaster Road.

A full-page advert in an early 1970s guide to York previously featured on these pages promotes its opening, with a rather attention-grabbing phrase: ‘Stop short of York’.

Ad for the new Post House hotel, opening in 1971

‘Stop short of’ — decide not to do something, although you almost do. But in this case, now it’s grabbed your attention, it explains that the hotel is some way outside the city centre, on ‘the main approach road from the A1 and the South’, presumably intending to make a virtue of its convenience for motorists coming from that direction, who won’t have to negotiate driving through the city centre to get to it.

I realised I couldn’t picture this place at all, and had no idea if it’s still there. I’m not up that end of town much, and no reason to be looking at hotels when I am up there. But yes, it is still there. Cherry Lane, off the main Tadcaster Road, runs alongside it, and Google Streetview shows how it looks now from Cherry Lane, from a similar angle to the illustration above. It’s now a Holiday Inn.

Holiday Inn (formerly Post House hotel), from Cherry Lane, Tadcaster Road. Image: Google Street View

When it opened, 50 years ago, it had 104 rooms, described in the advert. ‘All are centrally heated, with private bathroom, room tv, phone and radio, and facilities for making tea and coffee.’ This doesn’t seem like the height of luxury now, but presumably seemed so back then. Though it’s not clear to me how ‘posh’ this hotel was, at the time.

As a comparison, in the same publication there’s an ad for a country guest house in Acaster Malbis. It states, that ‘all bedrooms have hot and cold water, room-controlled central heating (all the year), electric razor points, bedside lights and electric blankets’.

We always went self-catering, and I was just a young child at this time. I’m struggling to get the context of the Post House hotel experience of the early 1970s, and the level of luxury offered.

The 1971 advert also makes a point of referring to the history of the site: ‘There used to be an old manor on the site; we’ve kept all we could of its gardens, including a magnificent Cedar of Lebanon.’ I’m not sure how common it was back then for mature trees to be kept when a site was cleared for redevelopment.

But what about ‘the old manor’, I wondered. Would we now completely demolish an old manor house to build a new hotel? What kind of state was it in? Perhaps in a ruinous condition and thought not worth saving?

I’ve not been able to find any images of the ‘old manor’, or much information about it in general, but it’s shown on old maps.

OS map, 1892, showing manor house and church, Dringhouses

I tend to forget that this area of Tadcaster Road is called Dringhouses. But the old maps remind us that Dringhouses was a coherent old place, with a church and a manor house next to one another, before the Post House hotel was built on the site of the manor. Here’s the satellite view from Google for comparison, with the church and the hotel next to it.

Aerial view of church and adjacent hotel, Dringhouses (Google)

Clearly there’s a lot of tree cover and space between the two, but it’s hard to imagine a development like this in other historic settlements outside the city walls, with a similarly large modern hotel built next to a church. I wonder if there were any objections to this development at the time.

Interesting to note that there’s a planning application for a nearby development going to the planning committee tomorrow (2 Sept) (ref 20/00507/FULM). The applicant wants to build a retirement complex, just across the other side of Cherry Lane from the hotel, on the site shown towards the bottom of the aerial image above (plan here, PDF). However the committee report recommends refusal, stating that the proposed development ‘would harm the visual amenity of the streetscene, the form and character of the adjoining section of Tadcaster Road and the setting of the Tadcaster Road Conservation Area.’

It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the large 1970s hotel is also rather obvious in the streetscene. As a comment in response to an article in the Press puts it: ‘This would really spoil the view from the beautiful and historic Holiday Inn.’

The recommendation for refusal of the proposed development perhaps illustrates the difference in our approaches to planning and conservation matters, compared to 50 years ago.

Anyway, time to head back into the present, heading into town, along that historic route in from the south. From the corner of Cherry Lane, past the hotel, and the church. Glancing up, as we do, at its spire. This is apparently made of fibreglass, which surprised me.

I wondered if I have a photo of it … just this slightly blurred one, through trees.

Spire of St Edward the Confessor, Dringhouses, from the Knavesmire, Aug 2018

I wondered if it was common to replace church spires with fibreglass replicas. I found a couple of other examples, including this one.

The church, St Edward the Confessor, is a Victorian era rebuilding of an earlier church on the site. By the second half of the 20th century the church appears to have been rather dilapidated and in need of repair, and the fibreglass replacement spire was part of that, erected in 1970. As construction of the hotel would have been taking place alongside it at around the same time, there’s perhaps a connection there. Perhaps anyone who knows more will add information in the comments below.

Likewise, if you remember the Post House in its early days, or the old Manor House before it, your local insights and knowledge are welcome, as always.

Update: Dringhouses Manor

Many thanks to Edward Waterson, who after reading the above sent me photos and information on Dringhouses Manor, demolished to make way for the hotel.

Dringhouses Manor

The cedar tree, mentioned in the advert above, and apparently still on the hotel site, is on the right in the photos above.

The manor house doesn’t look like an ancient dilapidated dwelling, which is how I’d imagined it must be. Indeed it looks smart and well-maintained, and not particularly ancient. This is explained in the information Edward sent to accompany the photos.

When the owner of the Dringhouses estate, Col. Eason Wilkinson, died in 1941 the manor house was bought by F W Shepherd, who reclad it. A much older house (?17th century?) was encased in modern brick.

He added: ‘The family formed St Edwards Close to the rear of the hotel and kept some cracking good plots for them to build new houses on, referred to locally as Shepherds Bush.’

Thanks too to Andy Walker, who has sent me another photo of Dringhouses Manor, this time taken from the front.

Dringhouses Manor

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2 Rougier Street, from just outside the city walls, 7 May 2021

Previously we were peering into a pond just outside the city walls. Now it’s time to look upwards, to a clock, and the building it’s on, just inside the city walls. Yes, it’s time to admire the majestic skyline of Rougier Street …

This ‘landmark’ building, 2 Rougier Street, was previously insurance company offices. It has been included on these pages before. Adverts in decades past featured rather stylish hand-drawn illustrations of the building.

2 Rougier Street, 1970s advert

I’ve also previously mentioned its clock, when compiling pages about the various clocks to be seen on the city streets. The one on this building was for a while one of the city’s many stopped clocks, but is now showing the right time. I guess it would have to, or would have to be removed, as an old stopped clock doesn’t give the right impression on a new hotel. Which is what this building is now.

Malmaison hotel, 2 Rougier Street, 7 May 2021

In recent years there was a planning application to convert the office block to residential accommodation, but that didn’t happen. It’s now a hotel under the ‘Malmaison’ brand. It was due to open this month, but apparently its opening has been delayed.

This previously very tall building is now a bit taller, with one of those weird additions that seem to be the thing in recent years, of adding height to a building but setting the extra storey back a bit, presumably to make it less visible/intrusive. But part of it is visible from the city walls, and it’s very visible from the Leeman Road area near the railway museum, as pictured on an earlier page.

It’s also quite visible if you’re down the other end of Rougier Street looking back up at it.

Let’s go through the archway and enter the gloomy canyon …

Rougier Street view, 10 May 2021

In the distance there, the archway we’ve just come through, and the Memorial Gardens and triangular park beyond it. They’re all bathed in evening sunlight, but none of it reaches down here, because of the height of the light-blocking buildings, 2 Rougier Street and its more recent neighbour.

I really don’t like the look of the extra storey, but get the impression that many people are looking forward to visiting the ‘sky bar’ up there, when it opens.

Back down at street level, I recently I found an interesting image in an article in the Press, showing a view of Rougier Street from a similar place to the one above, but before the office block in the foreground was built.

Rougier Street, 1982 (from York Press)

I’m used to the way Rougier Street looks, and the scale of that office building, but looking at it afresh, in this photo, I wonder how a building of that scale was permitted in such a sensitive location. It just looks wrong, plonked there, out of keeping with everything around it.

Perhaps it was thought that the railway offices to the left of it had set a precedent for tall buildings in this part of the city. But the contrast between the two and the impact of the large office block is clear.

Since then of course the foreground area, where the low building was, has been filled with another large building, as pictured above.

On the subject of tall buildings, and as we are on Rougier Street, looking at one side of it, maybe it’s time to turn to the other side of it to confront ‘the most shameful and absurd decision any committee has ever made‘ … ?

… or maybe it needs some more thought.

Let’s briefly escape 2021 and run off into 1971. More on that story later.

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Gasworks railings, between Heworth Green and Layerthorpe

This week we’re heading (again) down the snicket between Heworth Green and Layerthorpe, by the side of what’s left of the gasworks site. Its boundary is still marked with now rather rusty railings, painted with a colour I’ve heard referred to as ‘gas board blue’.

This old snicket was at one time known as Fawdington’s Lane, apparently, a name which probably meant something to the people in the area, as the old names usually did.

Not sure about the new names. Here’s one of them, for the road running alongside it, partially constructed in recent years:

I’m not sure but I guess that the ‘Eboracum’ bit is connected to the naming of the buildings in the new residential development between this road and the Foss, which I mocked rather rudely some years back in a page titled ‘Selling York’.

There’s a large office block here, on the part of the old gasworks site redeveloped some years back. It reflects what’s left of the gasworks, and this red brick building in particular, which I’ve been told is the old gasworks social club.

Eboracum Way passes this office block and then ends abruptly — basically a road to nowhere. It has been that way for years.

But in recent weeks the other half of it has been under construction, while for many months before that, as briefly mentioned on a previous page, a building has risen up to one side of this site, near the Foss. It’s a new hotel, a Travelodge, pictured here on the right as we look across towards Layerthorpe. That Foss Islands chimney so prominent on last week’s page is again a landmark on this photo.

From the photos on these pages of mine you might get the impression that it’s always sunny in York. Not the case, of course, but I’ve always tried to capture my images of this place on bright days. And the same on this walk, the target of which is this rather controversial new hotel building. It seemed even more important in this case to get good sunlight on the thing, to show it to its best advantage, to see if we can find any merit in it, as the comments I’ve seen online suggest most people really aren’t impressed.

And as it was cloudy and dull on my first attempt I went back to try again. Actually I’ve been taking photos of the development for months, but building sites and buildings under scaffolding aren’t enormously interesting to a wide audience, so I thought I’d wait until it was unveiled. And here it is, the new Layerthorpe hotel, captured from various angles. This photo taken through the barriers at the end of the snicket isn’t the greatest quality but it does show an important angle, with the Minster in the background:

The Minster looks a bit shocked.

It’s huge and dominant, this new building. Perhaps that wasn’t seen to matter in this particular place, as the Layerthorpe area has already been destroyed and rebuilt and its earlier character and history obliterated. (See the Layerthorpe page on this site and my accompanying Layerthorpe project site for more on its recent history.)

Here’s the new hotel from the other side, viewed from Monk Bridge at the start of Heworth Green:

It perhaps looks better when reflected in the Foss. Here we’re following the curve of Foss Bank, back towards town:

The round iron structures on this side of the river are apparently the old supports for a bridge that once carried a small gasworks railway over the river. As pictured on an earlier page:

The hotel site is part of what was once a very large gasworks, occupying land on both sides of the Foss. I’ve written a few pages about the gasworks.

When work began on the hotel development it initially involved removing the legacy of that previous use. In spring 2016 fragments of old ironwork were visible through the building site fencing:

Part of a gasometer perhaps? Or part of the gasworks railway? Rather handsome, isn’t it.

I have several photos of the lumps of rusty iron the site clearance revealed, and may share some more with you, dear readers, at a later date. I bet you can’t wait.

There used to be several gasometers in this area. Now there’s just one, no longer used, sitting on the site on the other side of the snicket we’ve just been down, looking rather flat and low:

Development of the hotel site was held up by this gasometer, according to the report prepared for the meeting at which the hotel planning application was decided, back in 2014 (PDF on this link).

That same report makes clear how many holdups and setbacks there have been to the redevelopment of the hotel site:

An application was also made in 2004 for 158 residential apartments at the site (with basement parking). The scheme was approved by members, subject to a legal agreement to deliver affordable housing, offsite open space provision, a bond for remediation of contaminated land, a contribution toward a car club and access arrangements to a riverside walkway. The legal agreement was not signed and the application withdrawn as the scheme was not financially viable.

And:

Planning permission was granted for the same type and amount of development in June 2012 (application 11/02210/FULM). It has not been possible to implement the previous permission as the hotel aspect could not go ahead until the gasholder, which is to the northeast, is de-commissioned. This was a requirement from the Health and Safety Executive due to the scale of the hotel and its proximity to the gasholder. The gasholder is yet to be de-commissioned, therefore applicants have come forward with an alternative scheme which moves the building further from the gasholder to the extent that the HSE requirement would no longer apply.

(23 October 2014 committee report: PDF)

So there it sits now, the new hotel, almost finished, on its site by the Foss where the old gasometers used to be.

Looking at it from further up Foss Bank I was particularly struck by this view of it:

The other sides are full of windows. This side, facing the city centre, has very few, and those that are there look like windows on corridors. Standing here looking at it, then turning round and facing the other way, I could see the Minster. Why was the building designed to face the other way?

It might be, of course, that the Sainsbury’s on Foss Bank and the large former hospital building behind it block out views of the Minster from the new erection, hard to tell from down at street level, but surely something of the city’s handsomeness could be glimpsed from windows facing that way? So why is the whole thing orientated the other way, turning its back on the charms of the city it’s wanting to make a profit from?

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this development, at least from my point of view, is a new access to the Foss riverside. A riverside walk, following on from a section of riverside that already has benches and a path.

That existing section, however, is gated with a security lock and a ‘private property’ sign:

So I’m not sure how and when it’s going to be opened up to the public.

A revisit may be a good idea when the new road is open, and when the new riverside walk is accessible.

On the site boundary on the old snicket of Fawdington Lane there’s a noticeboard with information about the building work, a site notice for a licensing application, and this invitation:

Not sure what kind of suggestions they’re hoping for, and it would be interesting to know if they’ve had any.

Meanwhile, your views on this new addition to the skyline are welcome here via the comments form below.

Map

Following a request from a reader I’ve marked the location of this week’s wander on a Google map: see this link.

Footnote: then and now

I’ve been writing about York, and taking photos of York, and freely sharing it all online for many years now. Some of those earlier pages I’ve linked to above — for example this one from 2007 — have really small photos, because that was appropriate in those ancient days when most of us didn’t have broadband. That’s how long I’ve been doing this.

As I now have my own archive going back more than a decade, and as I now have more of an understanding of how it all works, these plans and changes, it seems a good idea to keep producing these pages. On the other hand it’s working for free, and that can sometimes be hard to justify. So if you’d like to express your appreciation and power more pages, here’s a way to do that, with my groovy new ‘buy me a coffee’ button. Thanks to the supporters who powered this week’s page.

(via ko-fi.com. “Ko-fi helps creators get support from people who love what they do”)

Pages now usually appear weekly, on Tuesdays. For notifications of new pages appearing, join the mailing list or follow me on Twitter.

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Let’s go for a little walk … starting by the gasworks wall. A fragment of it remaining, on the snicket between Heworth Green and Layerthorpe, next to a building site.

Hotels, hotels, hotels … Layerthorpe

There’s a hotel being built here. At the end of the snicket, turning right towards town, we meet the junction at the end of Hallfield Road. Looking back to where another section of gasworks wall used to be until quite recently, where a new road is coming through. The new hotel is on the left of this photo.

More on that story later perhaps.

… and Peasholme Green

Continuing on towards the city centre, in a straight line up Layerthorpe and then onto Peasholme Green, we arrive at the Black Swan, a well-known historic pub. Here it is pictured in May 2014.

Since the photo above was taken the Black Swan has had the Hiscox building overshadow it on the right, but the curved glass of that building reflects it, in what is generally seen as an impressive addition to the cityscape.

The view shown above would be drastically altered by a large hotel building planned for the site behind it. This planning application will be decided at a planning committee meeting this week — Thursday 23 March. Further details and documents for the application are on this link:

16/02801/FULM | Erection of five storey hotel (use class C1) | Former Haymarket Car Park Dundas Street York

York Civic Trust have objected, referring to the planned hotel as ‘uninspiring in design and consequently detrimental to both adjacent properties of historic and aesthetic merit’. Historic England state that ‘we are somewhat disappointed with the architectural massing and appearance of the scheme’. Many individuals have also objected.

Nevertheless the report prepared for the meeting (on this link, PDF) recommends approval, as these reports so often do.

Developers often have to make some kind of contribution to the local townscape/community, in the form of a section 106, as is the case here. The report suggests that the developer could contribute £18,000 to street improvement works on the opposite side of the road. Seems a very small contribution from such a large profit-making development?

Apparently it would be a ‘Moxy’ hotel. I’ve struggled with this brand name ever since first reading it. I can only think of the word ‘poxy’, and the ‘m’ makes me think of words like maudlin and morose. Maybe that’s just me. But anyway, I’ve just been reading about these ‘Moxy’ hotels. Apparently, according to the official info, a Moxy hotel ‘comes at a cost to build that is very easy to digest’. The link also leads to a PDF referring to ‘a robust demand generation engine that drives top-line revenue while maximizing bottom-line savings’.

So if they’re not too expensive to build and the staff aren’t going to get paid a lot perhaps a bit more could be reinvested in the streetscape then, so we can admire the paving rather than having to look at the hotel? Or perhaps elected officials could refuse to grant permission and wait for something that doesn’t just feel like yet another investment opportunity being plonked into our streets.

It’s important to note that York is a hotel ‘hotspot’, placed second in this year’s UK Hotels Market Index. We’re almost top of the league when it comes to being a desirable location for investors to acquire an existing hotel or develop a new one.

Doesn’t fill me with joy, I have to say. Does it you?

As usual the meeting to discuss this and other applications will be webcast live and also available to view later too if you miss it. The agenda for the meeting and further info is on this link.

… and Piccadilly

We continue on from Peasholme Green, along Stonebow and Pavement, turning left into Piccadilly. We were here a couple of weeks back, and we’re back again as it’s all happening on Piccadilly. The plans for 46-50 Piccadilly — next to Ryedale House — are now online and open for viewing and comment.

Another hotel.

17/00429/FULM | Erection of part 5/part 6 storey hotel (140 bedrooms) with ground floor restaurant and 6 storey building comprising 8 no. apartments (class C3) | Proposed Hotel 46 – 50 Piccadilly York YO1 9NX

The Press reported recently that Northminster, who own the site, might withdraw their plans because of the Spark:York planning application for the site over the road.

Interesting on so many levels. The comments under the Press article cover many of the thoughts many of us may be having about the various perspectives on and interpretations of this situation, so I don’t think I need to go into them here.

The main thing, perhaps, is the bridge access the Northminster plans offer. The hotel plan includes space on one side for access to a pedestrian bridge across the Foss, or as the Design and Access statement puts it: ‘Boundary treatment is pulled inboard of the site boundary on the south-east edge of the site to facilitate access to any potential pedestrian bridge planned as part of the Castle Gateway proposals by CYC.’ The bridge has been part of the wider plans for the area for many years. It’s included in the council’s Castle Gateway plans I wrote about earlier.

The Castle Gateway plans depend on various parties working together. Not looking that good so far is it, with Northminster already wanting to control what happens on other sites nearby that they don’t own.

More on this story later perhaps, when we know a date for the Spark:York application going to the planning committee for consideration.

Let’s head back up Piccadilly, and get some motorised transport perhaps, as we’re heading for the suburbs — to the mean streets of Clifton …

Corner House becomes Heron Foods

Heron Foods used to occupy a retail unit in the centre of town, on Stonebow, but it had to close for the gentrification of Stonebow House. At least one person missed it enough to write a letter to the Press.

Guess where it’s relocated to? To my patch, the Clifton area. To that building I wrote about a few times: the former Corner House pub.

The shop opened this week, on 20 March. The signage is a bit garish, but at least this reuses a building rather than flattening it, which is what should always happen, wherever possible, (and should be possible with that other building I wrote about recently). We can still see that it was built as a pub, even if it isn’t one anymore, and it links us back to the history of this residential area.

A quick walk up the street and round the corner takes us to Bootham Crescent, the home of York City FC. Which takes us to the last ‘H’ of this week’s title …

Happy Wanderers

On Saturday a line of coaches full of York City supporters set off from the Bootham Crescent ground. Many of us who didn’t travel to Lincoln listened attentively to the game on all the various devices the 21st century offers us. Some of us managed to listen to it on an old AM/FM radio out in the garden by wrapping an piece of wire we found in the shed round the stump of a snapped-off aerial, to get the FM frequency. Or maybe that was just me.

So, the club is celebrating getting to Wembley again, for the FA Trophy final. Hurrah. That will be in May. For now, in March, a reminder of another happy time in the history of York City FC, from another March, 62 years ago:

It’s the other half of a pair of programmes that had managed to survive intact in a cardboard box under a leaky roof. It belonged to George, who is on the right of the photo of the ‘Gasworks Gang’, on this page from some years back. This ‘souvenir pictorial record and story’, as the cover puts it, seems to have been produced for that game they were going to on 26 March 1955. Note the illustrations of birds dressed as footballers/supporters on the front cover. They’re robins, for reasons explained here.

And the Happy Wanderers thing? I wondered too. It’s from a song, popular at that time. I think this might be the one.

I found a couple of other songs coming to mind as I started this page, which I thought I’d share in case anyone’s feeling a bit jaded and in need of relaxation or jolliness after all that reading. That fragment of gasworks wall where we started always brings to mind the first line of this rather poignant tune, and the page started with the first line of this 1970s delight. Watch Showaddywaddy in the 70s and try to forget about how much of York is being bought up and overdeveloped to service the requirements of outside investors?

Well, it looks like that to me. Quite happy to be wrong.

. . . . .

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This impressive building – a reminder of how York was once an important railway city – has been the Cedar Court Grand for quite some time now, and I’ve not got around to mentioning this change.

For a memory of its former life, see York Walks 3: Station Rise from 2004. And perhaps add your own.

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