On walks through the local landscape we might notice boundary markers like the one above, on Tower Street. These old examples are generally handsome and/or interesting, and I’ve included several of them on previous pages over the years (eg here and here).

I’ve also gathered quite a collection of photos of less handsome notices marking the edges of territories and ownership of land.

Here’s one example of a rather baffling sign on a wall near the City Screen development off Coney Street.

The piece of land it referred to was apparently dull and unremarkable, so much so that I can’t quite remember where it was, but a rough idea of its location is marked on the map accompanying this page.

Also in the city centre, next to West Offices, is this sign, next to a gate which is usually open:

West Offices is of course now the offices of City of York Council. Its main entrance is on the other side of the building. On this side, where the sign is, there’s a car park and a road running up to Hudson House and the old arches under Queen Street bridge.

The railings and gate here already effectively mark a boundary. Quite why it needs this officious sign isn’t clear. (It has been partially obscured by a flyer urging us to smash capitalism.)

As I understand it the proposed redevelopment of the Hudson House site would include a new access across that site from Toft Green through to the other end of this apparently private thoroughfare. Quite how that would work I don’t know. (It brings to mind the new riverside access we’re apparently going to get by a section of the Foss, by the new Travelodge hotel, which also includes a piece of land currently gated and marked as private property. As mentioned on a previous page.)

The sign next to West Offices is perhaps a legacy of its former use as railway offices. As previously mentioned, this former use is highlighted by a sign on the wall of the other railway offices building opposite, across Station Rise, which has been a hotel for some years now. The sign reminds us that ‘this way is not dedicated to the public':

It isn’t just in the city centre that we find such signs, official notices reminding us of ownership. A walk on the riverside path by the Foss from Huntington to New Earswick takes us past a green open area marked with particularly large, sternly-worded signs:

The sign is rather amusing in its emphatic wording and huge size. It looks a bit odd as it’s next to an open green space that has no apparent fencing or other boundary and is clearly well-used by ‘the public’. Presumably the sign is to make it clear, in legal terms, that we shouldn’t try to claim it in any way, but realise that we’re just being allowed to use it. We may feel that, in the words of the song, ‘this land is our land’, but it isn’t. Access is being allowed to us but we shouldn’t think of it as a right.

I wonder how often we think about land ownership and our right to walk in certain places. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot in recent years, with particular reference to particular places I value, green spaces.

The people who have been used to using the playing fields on Windmill Lane as their local green space have had to think about the issue, after a planning application for permission to build housing on it (Press story on this link). This was discussed at a planning committee meeting on 20 April (on YouTube on this link) and it highlighted the whole subject of land ownership and use. Many local people feel a sense of ownership after many years of use, but they’re not the owners of the land. It’s owned by York St John University, who can do what they like with it. There’s a petition, on this link.

Over in Acomb there are similar concerns about the playing fields of the old Manor School site (Press story on this link).

The grounds of Bootham Park, the subject of many previous pages, have recently acquired some particularly jarring and repetitive signage too (ignored by the geese enjoying the grass).

I’m angry about the issues around this hospital and its grounds. The sign forbidding recreational purposes seems, to me, overly officious, offensive and unnecessary. ‘NHS Property Services’ clearly have enough funds available to fill the place with ‘keep off’ signs.

This green area at the front of Bootham Park hospital used to be known as the ‘Gala field’, but that was a long time ago.

Still, we have our strays, don’t we. I’ve been visiting Bootham Stray quite a lot recently. Exploration of its various bits and boundaries reveals at least one fenced area blocked from public access. More on that story later perhaps.

There’s also the railway line (York to Scarborough) running through it, and here we find a completely confusing cluster of signs, which could perhaps win some kind of prize for confusingness.

There’s a gate, with a matching gate on the other side of the track. There’s a large sign with detailed instructions for crossing the line safely. Both of which suggest that this is a crossing. However, the gate is locked, and there’s another sign indicating ‘trespass site identified’. Then of course the standard signs about trespassing on the railway, etc.

The crossing here was presumably put in for a local farmer originally. The large gate suggests so. And so you could say, why should we (the public) be able to cross the line here?

Two reasons – because it cuts in half the stray land, which is supposed to be open for the residents of the city to enjoy, and secondly because there’s another crossing over the line just a little further up the line which appears to be used regularly, with a stile to get over the fencing at the side of the line. So crossing the same railway line on foot is okay at one location but not okay a little further along it.

It’s a bit daft isn’t it.

The difference appears to be that one of the crossings is on the line of a public right of way. The kind that are marked on maps as dotted or dashed green lines, the kind we perhaps take for granted.

Those rights of way are so important, making their publicly accessible way between the privately owned land, owned by individuals and organisations. They’re not always preserved, and can be closed or diverted, but where they survive it’s good to see that even the railway network, cutting so confidently through the landscape as it did, has had to accommodate them.

A startling and rather exciting example of this was discovered on a recent bike ride, which saw a change from the planned route when I looked at the OS map and noticed a right of way going up to and apparently across the East Coast main line, near Shipton. My companion thought it would be an underpass, if the route still existed as indicated on the map. We had our doubts, but a quick cycle down the marked right of way at the edge of a field, and there we were, and rather surprised to see that there wasn’t an underpass, just a bit of tarmac across the line, some steps at either side.

And of course the signs. Rather more dramatic wording than the ones by the York-Scarborough line.

With due care and attention, and looking both ways, the crossing was made. On the other side the public right of way continued, a beaten earth track through the middle of a field. As we cycled across its rutted bumpy ground I thought about how wonderful it is that rights of way are so inscribed in the landscape that even cross the East Coast Main Line doesn’t stop them. But also thought about the larger green areas closer to the city, how under threat they are, how I’m not sure I believe the strays and other apparently protected areas are properly protected and free from the threat of development in the future.

But anyway, let’s focus on the fact that this rather haphazard journey here on this page has led us out away from the city and to a field.

After many rather baffling, unclear or downright forbidding signs, let’s end the page with a gentler and friendlier one, noticed later the same day, on the riverside lands we reached on the other side of the railway lines.

Map

Associated Google map

Footnote

This website is a place where I share my observations, thoughts, local knowledge and research, and it continues to build a sense of place, as it has done for many years. It’s a personal project, a carefully compiled community-minded resource. If you’ve enjoyed it and would like to express thanks and offer support, there’s now a way to do that, via the button below.

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‘Ghost sign’ on the corner of Ordnance Lane and Fulford Rd

We’ve just been looking at buildings in Ordnance Lane, and before we leave there I should mention this ‘ghost sign’ — an old faded painted sign on the brickwork on the corner where Ordnance Lane meets Fulford Road. I thought we’d covered most of the ghost signs in previous pages, but I missed this one. It’s a rather handsome green, and still visible is the name ‘A H Davies’ and ‘Wills’s’. Wills’s made cigarettes. Perhaps behind the more modern billboard added since more of the old advert is preserved, brighter green. It was a huge painted ad, and a closer look suggests it was repainted more than once, as there’s a shadow of a former ‘W’ rather obvious.

It’s now just one of four signs on this prominent end wall, at the end of Ordnance Lane.

‘Ghost sign’, with other signs, on the corner of Ordnance Lane and Fulford Rd

The old signs fade, or erode, and don’t seem prominent enough, so new ones are added, sometimes repeating, rather than replacing, what was there before:

Escrick Terrace, street signs old and new

Escrick Terrace: so good they named it twice.

Also in the same area of York, moving closer to the city centre, I noticed this handsome old hand-painted sign in the doorway of a post-war block of flats on Fishergate:

Sign on Festival Flats, Fishergate

Some of its carefully created lettering has since been obscured by a patch of paint and a note added in marker pen, but perhaps this casual addition makes us appreciate the earlier elegant lettering even more.

Those examples were all from the Fishergate/Fulford Road area. On the same side of town, but off Lawrence Street, heading out towards Hull Road, a relatively modern sign. But it’s old enough to make me feel a bit nostalgic:

Lyons Maid sign, Milton Street

On Milton Street, one of the streets of terraced houses, this plastic sign still sticking out from the wall of what looks like an ordinary house the same as all the others, with a bay window rather than a shop window, but it clearly was a shop at one time and it sold Lyons Maid ice cream.

That image/logo was so successful, a brilliant piece of work. It still evokes carefree childhood times and happy summer days, so many decades after it was designed to represent this brand. According to Wikipedia it is ‘sometimes known as the “Good Time Sign” but more generally referred to in house as the “Dancing Children”.’

The sign is double-sided, and still bright on one side. On its sunny side, the other side, its colours are pale and bleached out by all those years of sunny summer days when we rushed down to the local shop or the ice cream van for ice lollies.

Lyons Maid sign, Milton Street (2: sunny/faded side)

Whether or not it’s hot enough for ice lollies, I hope everyone’s enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend.

‘Signage Sunday’ may become a regular addition to the site, or not. Comments welcome, as always, below.

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Attention now turns to whether to rid the city of another recent invasion: 20 mph signs. Here’s one example, at the entrance to Skelton Court, off the street of Clifton, near Clifton Green.

Skelton Court isn’t just a cul-de-sac, it’s a very short cul-de-sac — its end wall is visible from the archway at its entrance. Here’s an idea of the length of it, on Google Street View.

I’m not a driver, so don’t claim to be an expert, but I doubt very much that anyone has ever attempted to enter Skelton Court at more than 20 mph, or that it’s likely that anyone ever would, sign or no sign. Which means the sign is a complete waste of money. And there are apparently many other essentially pointless examples cluttering up the place.

Obviously they’re not doing any actual harm, but they are rather irritating to many residents, including me, for a couple of reasons. Partly because of the cost of them – around £500,000-£600,000. This money apparently didn’t come from our council tax — which would have made me really quite furious — but from some special budget from central government. But it’s still a lot of money, in an age of many cutbacks in funding for more important things.

The other argument against them is that all this signage is just more ‘street clutter’.

The introduction of these signs seems to have been a project instigated and enthusiastically supported by former Labour councillor Anna Semlyen, so much so that perhaps we could call them Semlyen Signs.

And they might soon be gone, suggests the current administration’s executive member for transport, Cllr Ian Gillies, as reported in the press and radio coverage today.

I’m finding it difficult to understand what benefit there might be in taking them away, now they’re there. Won’t that just cost more? Paying people to go round the suburbs dismantling them? And then what? Stick them all in a shed somewhere? Sell them for scrap?

It looks more like some kind of symbolic gesture, like Cllr Gillies and colleagues want to remove the Semlyen Signs as some kind of visible indicator of how this current administration intends to reclaim the city from all that Lefty stuff from before. Maybe when Conservative-voting drivers pass these signs they see them like some kind of offensive Lefty/Labour flag, stuck there to claim control of the territory and boss us all about.

A comment from Ian Gillies in the Press article today suggests that this may be the case:

“Some of the signs are in ridiculous places – on small streets where you couldn’t get up to that speed anyway. It was political dogma that put them there.”

He’s kind of right on that dogma thing. These signs, when Anna Semlyen and other ’20s Plenty’ supporters talk about them, are presented as having far more power and impact than any painted number on some metal stuck on a pole could possibly have. Even as a Lefty cyclist pedestrian kind of person I’ve found all this quite baffling. It’s now suggested by Anna Semlyen that the removal of the signs will lead to some dramatic results:

“The biggest problem in health is people not doing enough physical exercise. How on earth are you going to get people doing more physical activities if you take away lower road speeds?

As if in the streets with 20mph signs we are of course all running about doing aerobics on the verges and if those signs go we’ll all just flop on our sofas and eat chips all day.

If you find the signs irritating and dogmatic, or think they have the power to magically transform neighbourhoods into healthy peaceful utopias, or perhaps have an opinion somewhere in between, do feel free to add a comment.

A footnote

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Thank you
Lisa @YorkStories

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At the corner of St Mary’s, where it meets Bootham, this house behind the railings has recently been refurbished, and its brickwork cleaned. One day when passing I was admiring this, and its newly painted railings, when I noticed the other newly-painted thing: the iron plate on the wall.

There are quite a few of these about, usually rusting away, blending into their surroundings. Not as obviously noticeable as this one, part of a visually pleasing ensemble of smartened things. I assumed that the new owners — or rather, more likely, painters employed by them — had painted the iron plate when they painted the railings. Nice touch, I thought.

But I’ve noticed others in other streets, on other corners. Here’s one at the top of Peckitt Street:

I often find, when compiling a page on a small detail, that researching it takes up much more time than I thought it would. I expect Googling will find the answer to everything, but it doesn’t. You have to get the right search terms, and sometimes you can’t, and sometimes even if you do all you find is other people who are also wondering what this thing is. Here’s a discussion on ‘SV’ plates, about what the SV stands for.

On another street, Ogleforth I think (though it may be Aldwark, I can’t quite remember):

This time ‘FP’ and the distance measurement of 1ft. Meaning? I don’t know. More interesting perhaps than what all these letters mean is the fact that this repainting of these iron plates is apparently connected, as they’ve all been done in the same colour scheme. It’s one of these small things that isn’t particularly important at all, in fact it’s rather boring, isn’t it. I do realise that.

So let’s liven it up by imagining a completely unlikely scenario … perhaps the owners of the Peckitt Street property saw the one on St Mary’s and thought, ‘that ‘SV’ sign looks smart, I could paint mine, and knocked on the door and said ‘do you mind if I ask you what colours you used?’ and explained why they were interested, and the St Mary’s people said ‘well, we’ve done ours now so would you like what’s left of the paint to do yours?’ And then the Ogleforth (or is it Aldwark) people saw the Peckitt St one and thought ‘our FP sign might look good like that’, and did the same knocking on the door thing, and the Peckitt St people said ‘Well, we’ve finished with the paint now, would you like it?’ And the paint is passed on through the city …

… yeah, okay, more likely it’s the York Civic Trust, or something, isn’t it. If you have insight into this matter, dear readers, your expertise and knowledge is welcome, in the comments box below.

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I took this in August 2004, about a month after the local press reported that House and Son (Electrics) on Blake Street were closing down. As the sign indicates, they’d been trading in York for a century. They occupied their Blake Street premises from 1924, having moved from Stonegate. I’m not sure how old the sign on this door was, but they don’t make them like this anymore, sadly. On a side door painted a tasteful, rather faded blue, a pointing hand helpfully indicated where the shop door was.

Also pictured in August 2004, and also no longer visible. It was attached to the side wall of a building in Coney Street, the one on the left of the opening leading to the City Screen. Severely rusted metal attached to a shaped block of wood informed the passerby that the property is ‘of special architectural and historic interest and scheduled under section 30 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947′.

I took the photo because I’d never seen a sign like this before. I’ve never seen one since. Did all listed buildings once have them? I wonder how long it had been there. Possibly since just after the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947. Who knows.

Rather mysterious. Even more mysterious now as it’s gone. Maybe it got so rusty in the end that it just fell off. Maybe someone with an interest in signage stole it.

Also from 2004, in Clifton, where the fishmongers Cross of York once had a shop. This sign, faded blue and rusty, hung in the archway alongside, over an opening to the back of the premises. I imagine it made a creaking noise on its rusty chain, swinging about on windy autumn evenings. At some point someone probably thought they should take it down before it fell down and caused injury. And in any case, Cross of York aren’t there now. It’s a betting shop.

And not far away from the shops at Clifton, the football ground of Bootham Crescent, home of York City football club since the 1930s. Here indicating where the turnstiles for the away end are, with a rather handsome bit of traditional wooden signage on its less than handsome concrete block wall, at the Grosvenor Road end. Photographed in 2004 because of its faded state, which I found rather aesthetically pleasing, and because I suspected that it would be replaced with some of that efficient but far less handsome plastic signage. As indeed it has been.

Still on a sporting theme, but moving to a sport less popular these days. Sign for the Bert Keech Bowls Club, on Sycamore Place, Clifton, shortly before the disused club house was demolished.

Faded blue and white on worn brick, one of those nice curved brick corners. A handy image to use as a general illustration, as I have in the past. Taken in July 2007, before the building it was painted on was demolished later that year. It was at the opening of what was for many years the Fishergate Centre, now the site of a hostel built to replace the Peasholme Centre hostel (also demolished).

An archway gave vehicle access to a courtyard and buildings behind, and this sign was at the opening. It was built in the days before busy roads full of fast-moving traffic. As I recall you came out of this opening straight onto the corner where Fishergate meets Castle Mills bridge, which would mean pulling out into traffic on a bend without being able to see what you were pulling out into. Hence BEWARE OF THE TRAFFIC.

And just along the passageway, protected from the elements more than the one at the entrance. It used to say that cycles must not be left in the passageway, but at some point got cut in half by a gate across. Not that anyone took any notice anyway, probably.

And finally, in case it all seems a bit blue and brown and muted on this page:

Taken in 2007 at the company’s premises on the corner of Garden Place and Carmelite Street, in the Hungate development area. They hung on in there refusing to leave while the rest of the site was cleared. The council were going to use a compulsory purchase order to get this last piece of the land they needed for the planned redevelopment, so I guessed this jaunty sign wouldn’t be brightening that corner for much longer. The York Bedding Company continued the ‘pointy hand’ tradition of the House & Son sign at the top of the page, but in a brasher and brighter fashion.

Elsewhere on the web

(or, where are they now? …)

House & Son, Blake St, closed:
End of an era for House-hold name, but the management team formed a new company Yorvik Electrical Contractors Ltd.
Number 3 Blake St is now home to the York Cocoa House.

Cross of York can be found still at 3-4 Newgate Market.

An earlier page on this site has more information on the Bert Keech bowls club.

The services offered by the Fishergate Centre are now available from the York Eco Business Centre, Amy Johnson Way, Clifton Moor.

York Bedding Company:
It’s goodnight from beds firm.

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Pictured back in 2004 (a more recent photo on flickr.com suggests it’s still there) on Lendal Tower, a short stone’s throw from the controversial bridge. It relates to the narrow walkway there by the riverside.

They knew how to make effective signs back then. No messing about. CYCLING PROHIBITED. OFFENDERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. The Chief Constable says so.

Cyril T G Carter was appointed to his post in 1954, so this sign must have been put in place to scare cyclists off their bikes some time between then and the mid 1970s. It conjures an image of a different age, of policemen like in Dixon of Dock Green. Who perhaps waited around corners to catch errant cyclists disobeying this rule, and said ‘Look here, sonny, what does that sign say?’

I wonder if anyone was ever PROSECUTED, or if the mere sight of a forbidding sign with words in capital letters was enough to keep law and order back then.

These signs used to be everywhere. I remember them from my 1970s childhood. There was one down the snicket between Beckfield Lane and Jute Road in Acomb, and they were probably down every other snicket too. Another survived until 2004, and maybe still does, at the end of an alley near Clifton Green:

Not as well-preserved or as aesthetically pleasing as the other example. Its bottom left corner bent upwards as if someone’s tried to prise it off the wall.

If others survive I’d be interested to know. And if you have seen one, cyclists, I would expect you to abide by the Chief Constable’s order and DISMOUNT IMMEDIATELY.

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