Through a Marygate gate: looking towards the Minster over the Exhibition bowling green, 21 Dec 2010

Once upon a time, a long time ago … well, seven years ago, or more precisely, seven years and two months ago, 21 December 2010, I walked through an open gate on Marygate, and took the photo above, looking across a bowling green and car parking area, on land behind the art gallery and King’s Manor, towards the Minster.

This week, 21 February 2018, I walked through the same gate in the old abbey walls along Marygate, and again pointed my camera towards the Minster, across land much changed in the intervening years.

Through a Marygate gate: looking towards the Minster over the edible wood, 21 Feb 2018

So much has changed, here and everywhere, hasn’t it, in that time, in all those years. But let’s not think about the big ponderous things, let’s have a look at this small piece of land and wander across it, taking in some pleasing details, and with a few more ‘then and now views’ I’ve collected over the years. (There’s also a Google map to clarify where it is, if you’re not sure.)

So here’s another comparison, again many years apart. In January 2011, again from just inside the Marygate access gate, but this time looking to the right rather than the left.

Across the bowling green, from the Marygate entrance, 17 Jan 2011

We’re looking towards the corner where this piece of land and its bowling green met the boundary with the Museum Gardens and King’s Manor. Tempest Anderson Hall is visible on the far right.

And now, in early 2018:

To the edible wood, from the Marygate entrance, 21 Feb 2018

Now with an archway encouraging us in, through a beech hedge retained from when it bordered the bowling green. It’s now shaped in a more curving fashion and forms a boundary on two sides of an ‘edible wood’, planted in recent years. It’s an extension to the Museum Gardens, and links it to the art gallery, as you can walk through now from the side of the gallery, through the edible wood, and into the north-western corner of the Museum Gardens.

I’ve not really connected to this place since it was refashioned, and have only rarely wandered through, most recently when taking the photos a couple of months back for the piece about the festive attraction. I realised I should probably make more of an effort to get over my disconnection and lack of enthusiasm, so went back again this week to see if I could.

Clearly, there’s not a huge amount to see in any garden area in late winter, before spring growth and summer exuberance and autumn bountifulness. On the other hand, many of my visits here all those years back were in the winter months, so it makes sense to revisit again in the winter. In winter you can see the structure of it, the lie of the land.

Though this land has been planted as an edible wood, a sign at the entrance asks visitors to try not to eat bits of it.

Please don’t eat the edible wood

This may be some kind of legal thing to cover YMT if visitors injure/poison themselves inadvertently, or it might be because in previous years they ended up with invisible edibles after too many curious/hungry nibblers visited.

Around curved wide paths are planted various herbs, trees, shrubs, bulbs, and perennials, many of them unusual and interesting, or things we perhaps didn’t realise we can eat. I know however from my own experience of gardening and also foraging a bit in recent years that ‘edible’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘nice’.

Edible wood, 21 Feb 2018

Among the muted greens and browns and the faded purples of sage plants were a couple of  yellow ceramic tree trunks, parts of an outdoor installation originally placed on the grassed area immediately behind the gallery. Here they strike a rather jarring note, perhaps that’s deliberate.

A ceramic tree trunk painted bright yellow, stuck in a garden in winter (21 Feb 2018)

The jarring note was soothed away by the beautifully formed notes sung by this handsome little feathered visitor, as I wandered through.

Robin on sage plants, edible wood, 21 Feb 2018

There’s a bench here too, in memory of Katie Rough. Katie ‘loved feeding the squirrels and birds’.

Katie Rough memorial bench, 21 Feb 2018

Though it looks generally muted and winterish here, there are signs of spring growth, just emerging.

Signs of spring, 21 Feb 2018

And at the back of the art gallery itself, as we head for the alleyway alongside it, this stunning bit of planting.

Impressive winter planting, behind the art gallery, 21 Feb 2018

Pleasing vertical emphasis, and those vibrant dogwood stems. Splendidly handsome and cheering.

This sign on the corner as I left reminded me of something else I’ve been wanting to mention.

CCTV camera sign, by the art gallery, 21 Feb 2018

Not sure about the ‘personal safety’ part. Surely in this location it’s more about protecting property and monitoring behaviour. ‘Surveillance cameras in use’ would do.

The sign reminded me that I really should mention a current planning application for seven more surveillance cameras in the Museum Gardens. More details on this link. There appears to be a lack of interest in this, which seems odd to me, as several questions could/should be asked about this latest proposed addition to ‘our’ park. It’s not that long since YMT highlighted the cuts to their funding and gave this as justification for charging for entry to the art gallery, etc. Now there’s enough money available to pay for seven new cameras. Surely there’s a difference between a garden/park area and a city centre street. Surely a lot of people go to the Museum Gardens to try to get away from the stresses and cares, to be in a natural and therapeutic environment. Constant CCTV surveillance doesn’t seem to fit happily with this.

Perhaps they’ll all be trained on the ‘edible wood’, and the Press will start to carry photos of people caught on CCTV surreptitiously pocketing an artichoke.

Anyway, back to the plot … crossing the front of the art gallery I headed for the grounds of King’s Manor, to get a photo of the edible wood from the edge of the King’s Manor car park, following up on photos taken over the years (see below). But I must mention that on the way, just inside the railings, I noticed a wonderful scent. I realised it was a low hedge of sarcococca. It has a lovely scent at this time of the year from its small white flowers. If you’re in the area go have a sniff, and admire the view of the Minster too, and the buildings setting it off so well.

Scented sarcococca hedge, York Minster view, 21 Feb 2018

And so to another ‘then and now’ view. Here we’re on the other side of the site, looking back across to the Marygate gate, where we started this page.

Starting in 2013, with the bowling green:

View across the bowling green, later edible wood, 9 Feb 2013

Then a couple of years on, with the paths for the edible wood taking shape:

View across the former bowling green, edible wood development, 15 June 2015

And now, in early 2018:

View across the edible wood, 21 Feb 2018

Always interesting to see how garden areas are designed, and how they develop. Good too to have more green areas open to the public. But I feel it needs to be kept in mind that a bowling green was closed to make this edible wood – ‘bowlers who previously used the area have been moved to alternative facilities’ (source (PDF)) – and that it was rather controversial at the time. I remember that well.

It was interesting to read, while compiling this page, comments by the Yorkshire Gardens Trust, in a summary of their objections to the 2014 planning application (14/02246/FUL) for the landscaping work, in this report (PDF). The Trust expressed concerns about many aspects, including the curving paths and the dominant service road alongside, and concluded that ‘the proposals should be rejected because they are wrong for this site’ stating that ‘the former bowling green is an attractive green space and should be left as such.’

The edible wood is rather young and new, but it did look like it was flourishing in the summer last year when I took a photo of it from the art gallery balcony during the open day. More of us can now enjoy the area than was the case before, and the edibles aspect is an interesting idea.

At one time this area around the Art Gallery, Yorkshire Museum and Museum Gardens, and the Theatre Royal was referred to as the Cultural Quarter, and maybe still is, though thankfully I don’t see the phrase so often these days. There’s culture everywhere, all kinds of it, this ‘quarter’ is just some of the posher stuff.

Here in the ‘cultural quarter’ a bowling green was turned into an edible wood. So many levels to this story, and connected to the area of grass alongside. A revisit to that was going to be part of this page, but it’s too complicated. Maybe another time.

Instead I’ll end the page with a reader’s comment on a Press story on the opening of the edible wood, on 13 May 2015. ‘York City Blues’ suggested:

The Edible Wood is a back up plan to the food banks and a cheaper alternative to shopping at Aldi or Lidl.

. . . . .

If you’ve enjoyed this wintertime wander, virtual coffees are always welcome, thank you. I’m continuing to add to this resident’s record of York and its changes as often as I can. As some of the photos above perhaps make clear, I’ve been doing this for some years now. And have just remembered a wintertime city centre wander from Feb 2009 which may be of interest. It’s one of the older pages, and has a slightly different format, so the ‘related posts’ below won’t show it.

More information on how to support this site is on this link.

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Entrance to the festive attraction, by the side of the art gallery

This year, since mid-November, many people have been visiting the Museum Gardens for a new Christmas attraction, ‘an after dark magical experience in an illuminated wonderland’, as the Facebook page puts it.

As it costs £14.95 to walk at night through a place I can walk through for free during the day I thought I’d walk through during the day. I visited on 18 December, after the event had been running for a few weeks.

I wandered through with as open a mind as I could manage, despite the fact that I’d had a bad feeling about this from the start, for various reasons previously stated.

Initial impressions, as I walked through the tunnel near the entrance, were of quite a bit of effort going into this seasonal display.

Emerging from the tunnel you’re then faced with wooden huts selling food (closed of course when I was there) and a small carousel, and some pleasant enough decorations.

I’ve read through many of the visitor reviews, positive and negative. Quite a lot of negative. Similar comments were made by many reviewers.

The ticket price is seen as too high even by those who had an enjoyable time. People are annoyed at having to pay another £1.50 for a marshmallow to toast over the fire at the end of the walk. Among those who are unhappy, and there are many, the phrase ‘rip-off’ comes up over and over again, and looks especially bad when phrased as ‘I feel ripped-off’, as many visitors have written. As a York-born person who has been visiting these gardens for decades I’m rather sad that a place I’ve always had a fondness for has left people with that feeling.

Back in early September when the event was first publicised I had a few thoughts/concerns, but hadn’t given the subject any thought since, until a comment on a story in the Press led me to read reviews of the event on Trip Advisor.

According to the comment York’s Museum Gardens had been at number 7 in a list of things to do in York, but by 2 December when the comment was made the gardens had slipped to number 15, and at the time of my writing this, 26 December, they’ve slipped further, to number 21.

Let’s continue the wander through in daylight, with photos I took on 18 December.

In the newish area of the Edible Garden framed illustrations were placed in the flower beds.

The illustrations, taking the 12 Days of Christmas as their inspiration, appeared to be the only element with a sense of place and a link to York, containing recognisably local buildings and details.

These York-themed illustrations would be nice as greetings cards or postcards, perhaps given to the paying customers as a memento of their (expensive) visit. I found it hard to understand why they were displayed in that way.

Moving on to the next area, a former bowling green near the abbey ruins.

Here were structures that one reviewer, Jan D, memorably said she thought were ‘reminiscent of the tee pee frames that my husband grows his runner beans up’. They reminded me of climbing frames, but I’m assuming that they’re not for climbing on, but for looking at. There were many signs forbidding climbing on the installations.

Many of the reviews mentioned the mud. Here in front of the former bowls pavilion (now a café) it became obvious what they meant.

In front of the pavilion there’s now a beautiful mosaic, which I may write about another time, as at the moment it’s looking a bit grubby and muddy, like everything else.

Obviously muddiness is a feature of this dank and cold time of the year, but there are well-surfaced paths through the Museum Gardens, and I don’t remember seeing this kind of muddy mess in previous years.

At the corner near the main part of the abbey ruins we reach peak muddiness, with a rather sad-looking mud-spattered star. Maybe this was cleaned up before the paying visitors arrived.

And more mud, and more tyre marks.

Looking back towards the side of King’s Manor and the art gallery, globes on the grass behind a No Entry sign. Not clear whether the paying visitors can get close to the globes when they’re illuminated, or whether they just look at them over the fence.

From the front of the Yorkshire Museum, looking across the lawn.

There are other illuminated bits apparently on the paths nearer the river. I missed those as I headed straight for the Museum Street entrance.

Then letters, spelling out seasonal phrases, with another stretch of mud.

York Mix included a page of photos of the illuminations as paying visitors see them in the evening, useful for anyone wondering whether to visit.

‘More the Disney kind of Christmas’ wrote Charles Hutchinson in a review in the York Press.

I thought it worth a wander through in daylight, with my camera, to give a different perspective.

While wandering through I also noticed this sign, clarifying the (altered) closing times.

‘The Gardens will be cleared and Closed at 4pm today’.

Recently York Museums Trust asked York residents to support them in the council’s budget consultation. I’d like to have favourable supportive feelings about YMT, I really would. But signs like that might tend to alienate people.

That’s not friendly language. ‘Cleared’. Rather jarring I felt, as we’re talking about local residents and visitors, not clearing up rubbish. No ‘apologies for any inconvenience’ or ‘thank you for your understanding’.

So ‘our’ Museum Gardens have been closing early every day for some weeks so that some income can be raised from paying visitors. Many of those visitors, who paid a lot of money for this much-hyped festive attraction, seem deeply disappointed, use words like ‘disgusted’.

‘York should be embarrassed’, said one reviewer. Maybe we should all be embarrassed, or at least a bit bothered, that this kind of profit-driven event is becoming the kind of thing relied upon to provide income to support the things council funding used to support. I assume that’s what it’s all about. Rather a complicated structure now, with York Museums Trust managing the Museum Gardens, and with Lunchbox productions putting on this event. Not clear how profits from this event will be divided between YMT and Lunchbox, but hopefully there’ll be enough profit to pay for some new turf.

. . . . .

Many people are making good money from their contributions to York’s ‘cultural offer’. I’m not one of them. But I do think it’s important to have different perspectives, which is why I keep writing this — a resident’s record of York and its changes — as often as I can. It takes time, money, and effort to keep this ‘cultural offer’ of mine online. The website hosting fees are increasing in January 2018, and I really do need to get around to selling my work rather than giving it away, but until then, if you’ve found these pages useful and/or interesting, here are a couple of ways to support this work. Thanks.

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Plaque on Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens

We were supposed to be heading over to Holgate next, but a visit to the Museum Gardens seems necessary. On Saturday evening I read about a Christmas attraction: ‘Enchanted trail’ Christmas attraction coming to York‘. I’d avoided the article earlier as I’m not a big fan of Christmas and that time of the year in general, and I didn’t want to think about it in early September. But once I realised it was about the Museum Gardens I was interested.

I’ve written about the Museum Gardens many times in the past, including a series of pages on different aspects of the place back in 2011, and last year, in April 2016, Museum Gardens: ownership and access.

The issue of ownership/public access comes up again in plans for the 2017 festive period. Or rather, it should.

The local media articles about it read like free adverts, merely reporting what’s presumably a press release. Reading this unquestioning reporting I found a host of questions came to mind.

As pictured above, there’s a sign on the museum wall that states that the Museum Gardens were presented to the citizens of York.

As previously mentioned, the official line/official description is that the Museum Gardens are owned by City of York Council and managed by York Museums Trust. On the surface that sounds all fine and reassuring, as both CYC and YMT are there to look after the city’s assets on behalf of the citizens.

These days, for the last six years or so, it hasn’t felt to me like the citizens own the Museum Gardens, or not in the way I’d understand it.

For this Christmas happening a company called Lunchbox productions, ‘Global producers of live entertainment’, in an arrangement with YMT and the city council, will be using ‘our’ park to put on an event that will see the ordinary folks unwelcome after 4pm for a period of about six weeks.

In the winter months the Museum Gardens are usually open until 6pm.

The Museum Gardens meant a lot to me over the decades, since I first visited in the 1970s, and fed crumbs to one of the peacocks. This place was an important part of my teenage years too. Back then it was our town park. Now it’s another part of the ‘visitor offer’. I don’t visit so often now, not in summer when it’s busy, but out of season, late in the day, I found it a fine place to sit awhile.

This year, for the period of the Christmas trail, and according to the Press article, the gates will shut at 4pm.

They’ll then reopen at 4.45 for the paying visitors.

The paying visitors will be paying £14.95 for each adult, £40 for a family of four, plus a booking fee. Reading this I thought ‘How much?!’ The Press comments make it clear that most other readers thought the same. How many York families can afford to pay that kind of entry fee? Presumably it’s not aimed at us but is supposed to bring visitors flocking in from across the north of England, or something.

Are the volunteer guides going to go around the Gardens clearing people out at 4pm every day? Or security guards perhaps? (Like the one I met in Bootham Park who told us we couldn’t walk across the grass because it was ‘authorised persons only’.)

Where are the records of this arrangement being made, the decision being taken, to close the gardens to the wider public much earlier than normal every day for a period of many weeks?

If the park really belongs to ‘the citizens of York’ then why did we have no say in this agreement between YMT and a private profit-making company to use part of ‘our’ land? The same company, Lunchbox productions, are behind the project to put a pop-up theatre on the Castle car park, but that went to a council meeting, decided in public. Is there an equivalent process here, and a public record? I couldn’t find anything.

Is there any information in the public domain about the predicted profits and how they’re going to be split? How much of it comes back to ‘us’, seeing as the Museum Gardens is ‘ours’?

Who bears the cost if it fails? Will it be cancelled if the ticket sales are low? (Which, judging by the comments online so far, they might be)

If this public park really does belong to the citizens of York, as that handsome bronze plaque says, then the organisation managing it needs to make its information on how it’s managing it easier for the citizens to find, at the very least. And if YMT can’t do that then perhaps they can take down that outdated sign on the front of the Museum, or add a new one underneath explaining to the citizens what our ownership rights are in 2017.

There are railings around much of the site, of course, so it should be easy to see the pretty lights etc for anyone who’s interested – unless the plans include temporary wooden fencing around the perimeter. If so I hope there will be a planning application that we can all comment on.

. . . . .

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By the Ouse, 4 July 2007. I’ve been admiring the geese for some years now.

Honk, honk, honky tonk …

Geese, allegedly a problem, were discussed at yesterday’s City of York Council Executive meeting — this link to 49 mins in should take you directly to it. Some people see them as a problem and they appear to have complained regularly to their councillors, so as those elected members have to respond to that in some visible way, money is to be spent finding out where the geese nest, and counting them, and that kind of thing. A vociferous minority may favour more aggressive methods, so perhaps some of us might want to keep an eye on this and not get complacent. It’s my understanding that the majority don’t see the geese as a problem at all. But it was interesting to hear this issue being discussed.

Museum Gardens, free access

Also at the Executive meeting, councillor Andy D’Agorne raised a point I’d been wondering about in a page earlier this week, regarding the Museum Gardens and free public access to it, and whether the citizens of York (to whom it was ‘transferred’, decades back) would retain that right.

If legal agreements are being drawn up then these details matter. I hope that legal experts who are truly independent are scrutinising all of this, as the land and assets transferred to ‘the citizens’ are now part of a far more complex world, where local authorities no longer control and administer the city’s valuable assets in a straightforward and easily understandable way.

Cllr D’Agorne’s question is at 1 hr 38, approx: this link should take you to the relevant part of the webcast.

And bridges …

The York Press website has recently included some fascinating photo galleries, images from the paper’s archives on various themes. This week they’ve included a selection of photographs of bridges. More interesting than it sounds, as it includes several photos of bridges since removed or replaced, including the ‘glass bridge’ over the railway line between the football ground and the hospital which I know some readers remember, and the gasworks bridge over the Foss. View the photos on this link.

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Plaque on Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens, 26 April 2016

Today’s ‘April daily photo‘ is the bronze plaque on the front of the Yorkshire Museum, in the Museum Gardens. It informs us that ‘The Yorkshire Philosophical Society transferred the Yorkshire Museum and Gardens to the citizens of York on January 2nd 1961′.

I’m pleased to see it’s still there, despite all the changes. And it’s a heartwarming message isn’t it. To think that these things are ours, that they’re owned by us, the citizens.

Though of course it’s the local authority, the City of York Council, that owns these things, really. Kind of on our behalf.

And then it has been complicated somewhat by the fact that York Museums Trust (YMT) has come into existence since these important assets were given to the citizens/local authority. The confusion last year over entry charges to the art gallery and museums made more of us think more about the role of YMT and the relationship between them and the council. It made me wonder who owns what, and also whether there’s a publicly accessible record of YMT meetings and decisions, similar to the records for council meetings which are available online on the council’s website.

I still don’t know the answer to that. But it may be of interest to the citizens of York to note that the council’s Executive meeting on Thursday 28 April includes an agenda item relating to YMT. It’s a packed programme, including the previously mentioned Goose Management Scrutiny Review (Final Report).

It’s not only the geese that have a Scrutiny Review Task Group scrutinising them. There’s also a York Museums Trust Scrutiny Review Task Group, and its report is number 6 on the agenda, just after the goose thing. There’s more information about the meeting on this link. The report itself is on this link (PDF).

Readers may remember that last August the Press ran a story headlined ‘Trust mooted idea of entry charges to Museum Gardens, claims councillor‘. I thought about writing about it at the time, but wasn’t sure what angle to take as the story seemed to be riddled with subtexts and hidden (or not so hidden) agendas. Reading between the lines it looked like one of those things where someone may have said ‘of course we could … (do whatever)’ without any intention of doing it, merely raising the point that this was technically possible.

It seemed such a ridiculously unacceptable idea that I couldn’t believe it would ever happen.

But then I notice, visiting the Museum Gardens, how much more money must have been spent on it in recent years, how much more ‘posh’ it is. The recent cafe plan for the pavilion being just a part of that. And it seems important not to be complacent, particularly now, as we know, our York Cards no longer give us free access to the YMT managed gallery and museums, including this one pictured above.

I’ve had a quick look through the report, looking for references to the Museum Gardens in particular. A fairly lengthy list of the ‘Core Partnership Objectives’ includes ‘Public access to the Museum Gardens’, but it doesn’t explicitly state that this will be ‘free public access’ or ‘public access without charge’.

Perhaps the meeting will clarify that point.

The Executive meeting starts at 5.30pm on Thursday and will be webcast: www.york.gov.uk/webcasts

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‘Floods remove summer bandstand’ — Yorkshire Evening Press, 30 Dec 1978

It may be time to leave the subject of the floods, for a while. But before we do, I can’t leave the 1970s newspaper without mentioning a couple of other things reported in that edition of the Yorkshire Evening Press of 30 December 1978.

Bandstand ‘took a hand in deciding its own fate’

I’m sure we all remember the bandstand dispute of 1978 …

Under the headline ‘Floods remove summer bandstand’ the YEP reported:

York’s summer bandstand in the Museum Gardens — subject of a shall – we – take – it – down – and – store – or – leave – it – up – all – year – round dispute — took a hand in deciding its own fate yesterday (Friday).

When North Yorkshire County Council’s Yorkshire Museum Sub-Committee arrived at the Museum for a meeting yesterday, they found the bandstand floating off in flood water, into the swollen Ouse.

“There is grave doubt if it will be found at all after the floods,” committee member Coun. W. E. Lockwood told the Evening Press after the meeting.

“But, if it is, the Yorkshire Philosophical Museum feel very strongly that it should be allowed to be placed somewhere in the gardens for this coming summer. But that they would like proper arrangements to be made for its removal and proper storage each year at the end of the season.”

Several paragraphs follow, detailing the dispute. The Sub-Committee were considering the conflicting views. ‘Now, they will wait to see whether the bone of contention surfaces again after the floods.’ The Hospitium in the Museum Gardens was under four feet of water, and ‘the bandstand was seen banging against the windows before it went over the railings.’

Squirrels: the new star attractions

The piece continues with the proceedings of North Yorkshire County Council’s Yorkshire Museum Sub-Committee meeting:

Not lost in the flood were about a dozen grey squirrels which have recently taken up residence in the Museum Gardens. These, the Sub-Committee heard from the Curator, Mr. Michael Clegg, “have rapidly become star attractions to the public.”

Mrs Mary Pierce, a museum cleaner, had struck up a rapport with the squirrels. There had been educational benefits, as Mrs Pierce had ‘laid on a squirrel performance’.

The paper reported that ‘the peacocks, including the two 1978 hatchlings, now have competition.’ And members were told that the squirrels will not damage the Museum’s trees. But there were concerns that if they get too tame they may damage some of York’s tourists, by leaping onto the shoulders of visitors, expecting a fuss, whereupon nervous visitors might shake them off, and the squirrels might ‘get nervous themselves, and inflict a bite.’

. . . . . .

Did the bandstand ever come back? If it did, was the store it/leave it out all year bandstand dispute ever resolved? Was anyone ever bitten by the squirrels? I’ll leave these questions with you, dear readers.

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