Stonegate in the 1940s/50s. Photo: Explore York Libraries and Archives

In recent days there has been angry reaction to the rather patchy state of the paving in Stonegate, and a petition has been set up. It’s reminding me, in some respects, of another paving-related controversy in 2013.

Then, as is so often the case, it was enlightening and interesting to look back at images from the archives. So I thought we could do that again, with some images of Stonegate, in times past. They’re all from the online collection at Explore York Libraries and Archives.

Specifically, I’m trying to draw attention to the changes in the surface of the street.

It looks rather ‘earthy’ and cobbley in the late nineteenth century. By the mid twentieth century the road surface appears to be tarmac/asphalt.

Many of the comments on the petition and elsewhere online regarding the removal of slabs (broken, apparently, and so needing to be replaced) make it clear that some people are upset, outraged even, at what is seen as our history being destroyed. I don’t like to see people being upset and outraged, so let’s stand back and calmly consider the issue.

Here’s another photo of Stonegate, in the late nineteenth century:

Stonegate, 1880s (Photo: Explore York Libraries and Archives)

And another, from 1904:

Stonegate, 1904. (Photo: Explore York Libraries and Archives)

Another from the mid twentieth-century:

Stonegate, 1940s/50s (Photo: Explore York Libraries and Archives)

And one from a little later, early 1970s perhaps?

Stonegate, early 1970s? (Photo: Explore York Libraries and Archives)

No stone slabs across the roadway, from the 1880s to as late as the 1970s, according to this photographic evidence.

Fact is, these stone slabs in Stonegate are a relatively recent addition. Some sources say that they date from the 1970s, others the 1980s.

Clearly the actual stone, being natural stone, is in itself old and venerable, but its arrangement here as a surface for the roadway is quite recent history. As was the case with the cobbles and cart tracks in Kings Square.

Though a relatively recent addition the stone slabs are clearly accepted as somehow fitting with what we think a street called Stonegate should look like. But let’s not assume that there’s something historically accurate and ‘authentic’ about it.

‘York stone’ is a widely accepted term we tend to use without thinking about it. I know I have. We tend to use the word to refer to any natural stone in slabs. In this particular paving controversy the name seems to have been taken as a sign that this stone somehow ‘belongs’ to York, as if there’s a quarry for it somewhere in the city or its outskirts.

The Stonegate slabs are apparently English Pennine sandstone, so they’re coming from some distance away. And they’re very expensive. And, according to the Streetscape Strategy not the best road surface:

Streets with stone setts and cobbles should be conserved and maintained. The exception is Stonegate, unusually surfaced in riven English Pennine sandstone flags in the 1970s. As a carriageway material this has proved to be a dramatic failure and requires expensive and continual maintenance due to the impact of heavy delivery traffic.

Source (PDF)

I guess what we’re seeing at present is part of that ‘expensive and continual maintenance’. In a footnote it continues:

There will be challenges to this view because there is a perception that the stone flags are an authentic expression of the streets historic roots

Discussion of authenticity and history is one thing, but the bottom line is that just now it looks a mess. Despite the council apparently having a strategy for the streetscape it doesn’t seem to have worked well in this case, does it. When I first saw photos online I thought the patching was just in one area, but there are blobby bits of black patching all the way along, as I realised when I walked along Stonegate yesterday.

Perhaps some warning might have helped, a council press release explaining what they’ve attempted to explain since. Seems odd that anyone could think that so many slabs could be removed and patched in such a central and important street without people noticing.

And, like I said, it brings back bad memories of the time the council’s paving work close to another much-loved York street brought us to the attention of the Daily Mail, and much angry and outraged tweeting followed, with councillors and council staff then having to deal with the flak. I remember spending much of that Friday evening writing this page about it — one of my most-visited.

Meanwhile, beyond the touristy bits, old stones and irreplaceable stable paviours are often lifted and lost, or covered with tarmac/asphalt, and barely anyone notices or cares. If someone started a petition or campaign to protect the hexagonal loveliness of some of the city’s back alleys I’d sign that, but as far as Stonegate goes, I’m sure the council will reinstate it all pretty sharpish, and no doubt spend a lot of money doing so.

More information/update (16 May)

In response to some queries and discussion on Twitter, I’ve done a bit more research.

According to Patrick Nuttgens in York: the continuing city Stonegate was paved in 1975, after being pedestrianised in 1971. As the book was first published in 1976 I guess we can assume that this date is accurate. (I have the later edition, 1989, which includes a photo of Stonegate with its slabs.)

My earlier piece on the Stonegate Arcade included a link to an article about Eric Pearson, former City Planning Officer. It says: ‘Mr Pearson masterminded the scheme to make Stonegate a pedestrianised area. His policy included using second-hand paving stones and creating characteristic entrances to highlight adjoining streets.’

. . . . .

If you’re interested in York’s paving, old and new, there are many pages on this site on the subject. See the related pages links below or try this link.

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Ad for the Stonegate Arcade (York Official Guide, early 1980s)

The adverts in an early 1980s guide to York featured on these pages a while back included an ad for the Stonegate Arcade. I couldn’t remember much about it, or where its entrances were, but recently had a wander down Stonegate and peered through the now gated openings, which I must have passed many times over the years and never given much thought to.

The ironwork gates at the entrance show that it’s called ‘Stonegate Walk’, though you can’t walk down there now, as the gates are always closed.

One has a nameplate still — Hornby’s Passage — and looking down it gives a glimpse of the back of the large New Look clothes store, the entrance of which is round the corner on Davygate, perhaps across what used to be the other entrance to the arcade, shown on that ad from the 1980s, above.

Though the entrances are gated now and the arcade is long gone, the paving detail on Stonegate still points to it, with lines of narrow setts breaking up the otherwise stone-flagged surface, subtly denoting the entrances. Something I’d never noticed before, a detail used in other places on Stonegate to mark the entrances to other narrow alleys off the main street.

Looking through the other gate, a wider entrance:

A forgotten post box, in a weedy corner. A reminder that this was once a thoroughfare thought important enough to have a post box. Its posting slot is sealed and the information on the times of the next collection is long gone. I wonder when its last collection was, and if anyone noticed. There’s something a bit poignant about its sealed-up state. I wonder why it has been left there, faded and forgotten.

On the wall of the passage there’s still an iron fitting which presumably once held the gate back, in the days when we could walk along here to go shopping in Stonegate Arcade.

I did a bit of online research on the arcade and its successor, this ‘Stonegate Walk’, neither of which I particularly remember. There’s a lengthy list of links below, in ‘further information’.

But I was pleased to find a proper description of the place, a lengthy and evocative one, in the now famous ‘snickelways’ book. Or rather, in the edition I happen to have, which dates from the late 1980s. The book has been updated many times, and recent editions will have had to remove these particular snickelways, Hornby’s Passage and Pinder’s Court, formerly the Stonegate entrances to the Stonegate Arcade. My 1989 edition has a handsome drawing of part of the arcade complex, showing the back entrance of the Pennyfarthing shop. This is the accompanying text, as we cross Stonegate on the snickelways walk in the late 1980s …

“… to the entrance to Pinder’s Court.

Not that you would see that name here: the sign says Stonegate Arcade. But this is only the collective name for a new collection of Snickelways, a creation that excitingly and satisfyingly blends old and new. Walk up the passage into a little courtyard, and you unexpectedly see the Minster, framed by a spacious glazed canopy. Look back, and you are greeted by a back-door view of Stonegate and its roofs – the deliciously random yet harmonious pattern of medieval buildings, with which we’ve become familiar in our nearly-completed wanderings. For Pinder’s Court, and its parallel companion Hornby’s Passage, which are at the heart of the Stonegate Arcade, form a happy and fitting penultimate to our list of fifty Snickelways. In their case, the surprise is that not so many years ago, this attractive area was the dank, dark, oily and echoing City Garage. How many more ancient Snickelways lie behind York’s shop-fronts and warehouses, awaiting re-discovery and re-birth?

In commercial terms, the best formula for the Stonegate Arcade has yet (early 1989) to be achieved; but visually it is wholly satisfying.”

— Mark W Jones, A Walk around the Snickelways of York (4th edn, 1989, p77)

That last paragraph tactfully hints at some problems with the arcade’s commercial viability. Around the same time, the Architects’ Journal put it more bluntly: ‘York’s Stonegate Arcade has been branded as a commercial failure and is unpopular with shoppers’ (source: Google Books), and mentioned plans to boost its fortunes with a new development scheme.

A piece in the Press in 2002, referring to the redevelopment of the site, also acknowledged its problems:

The project finally brings to an end the “white elephant” tag for a mall where much of its 20-year history has been plagued by empty shops because shoppers in Stonegate and Blake Street tended to pass by its connecting alleyways.

(source)

If you have memories of the Stonegate Arcade, please add a comment.

More information

Links to photos of the arcade as it was, and to articles in the Press online archives:

http://yorkwithinthewalls.com/html/hornbyspassage2.html

http://shimmer.shu.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/SHU~3~3~613769~172068:Stonegate-Arcade

http://pastsearch-archaeo-history.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Newsletter-9-Sept-2013.pdf (photo: p3)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtTGq9DCQAI_5bS.jpg:large

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7969684.Seven_out_of_23_shops_left__open_in__ghost_arcade_/
(April 1998)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7960801.__5_million_to_save_York_arcade/
(Nov 1999)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7960813.New_hope_for__secret_arcade_/
(Nov 1999)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7936072.Stonegate_scheme_all_set_to_start/
(Oct 2001)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7931539.Rooms_with_a_view/
(Jan 2002)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7930089.City_development_under_way/
(March 2002)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7926801.Well_found_as_Stonegate_Walk_is_cleared/
(May 2002)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7925309.Stonegate_space/
(June 2002, reader’s letter)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/4789660.The_Lion__The_Witch_and_Santa___s_grotto_at_York_s_Rock_plex_Centre/ 
(see comments: mention of a Santa’s grotto)

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/1292949.explans_chief_dies/
(see reference to Stonegate paving and adjoining streets)

Links to photos etc from comments on http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/are-these-brontes.html?view=flipcard

York Computer Centre was at 7 Stonegate Arcade, as mentioned in this 1984 computer and video games magazine (PDF) (worth a look, as an object of ‘historical interest’ in its own right)

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