Etty views the Bootham Bar loos

We’ve just been looking at the history of toilet facilities in and near Church Lane, off Spurriergate, so it’s as good a time as any to alert readers to the planned demolition and rebuilding of the public toilets near Bootham Bar. Etty has them in his sights here as he looks from his Exhibition Square vantage point.

The planning application documents can be found
> on this link <

Caring about toilet facilities can I guess look a bit small-minded and petty. We should have our minds on higher things perhaps. But as we all know, it’s impossible to have your mind on higher things if you’re desperate for the loo. And basic things like toilets and bins are things York residents and visitors alike care about.

As was illustrated some time back by this sign on the site of the ‘Splash Palace’ — a toilet block on Parliament Street demolished in recent years.

Anger and desperation regarding toilet demolition, March 2012

Note the desperation in the note added in blue biro.

The Bootham Bar loos — well, I’m only familiar with the ladies half — are scruffy and have definitely seen better days. They’re nice and light, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about them. Oh, and you don’t have to pay to use them. I imagine we will once they’ve been rebuilt.

John Oxley, on Twitter, had some details of the plans:

@YorkStories @GSwinburn plan is new loos, & small shop with glass floor to view Roman fortress wall now in yukky basement under gents loo

— john oxley (@yorkarchaeology) May 16, 2014

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it. Better, even.

What immediately occurred to me, as someone who once had a cleaning job involving some toilet cleaning, is that I would imagine anyone employed to clean the place would say ‘demolish them and build something easier to clean’. On the other hand, if the changes mean the current cleaners lose their jobs, then they might think differently.

So many things to think about, regarding one little public toilet facility. And then there’s the fact that it’s right next to one of the city’s most important monuments, and has a bit of Roman wall underneath it, and so everything has to be carefully scrutinised and approved by English Heritage.

Historical perspectives on public convenience provision

Hugh Murray’s book Where to Go in York gives a historical perspective and makes it clear how the number of public toilets has been reduced in recent decades, both in the suburbs and the city centre.

The history of public convenience provision tells us a lot about wider changes in society. By 1900 York city centre was well provided with basic facilities (urinals) for men, but only one public convenience was provided for women. Many of the urinals were placed at the ‘entrances’ (or exits) to the city — near the bars and posterns. Later, as motorised transport became more popular, they were located in the car parks, where several remain.

Here’s a photo from the city archives of Bootham Bar before the toilets were built.

Bootham Bar with cabman’s shelter and urinal behind (against wall). (c) City of York Council

The notes accompanying this image in the York Images collection explain that the small building alongside the road is a cabman’s shelter, and the small structure against the wall behind it is a urinal.

The men’s toilets were built at Bootham Bar in around 1930, and rebuilt after the war, when women’s toilets were also added alongside, in what was Milburn’s Yard.

The City Engineer had earlier suggested that the ladies loos could be located underground in Exhibition Square, under the Etty statue, with Etty’s plinth serving as a ventilation shaft. Poor old Etty.

Hugh Murray’s book ends by asking whether the provision of public toilets is adequate for a city with so many visitors. Several more have closed since it was published 14 years ago. Certainly the smell in many of the city’s alleyways and doorways suggests we should perhaps go back to the Victorian idea of widespread urinal provision.

According to the council’s website, all the public toilets are closed at 8pm. In a city with so many people out drinking in the evenings, until the early hours?

Can we rename it?

Gwen Swinburn had seen the site notice for the proposed demolition and mentioned it on Twitter. I searched on the planning access pages for the application documents. Searching for what most of us would I think call ‘the toilets at Bootham Bar’. This didn’t yield any results. I tried  ‘Bootham Bar’ and ‘St Leonard’s Place’, both of which seem logical. On that photo above, the street sign for ‘St Leonard’s Place’ is directly above the doorway of the ladies loos. But no, they’re listed as ‘Public conveniences, Exhibition Square’. And on the council’s information page as ‘St Leonard’s Place (Exhibition Square)’.

If they’re being redesigned, how about renaming them too? They’re not actually in the square, but they are next to a massive great gateway called Bootham Bar. Such things are important and would assist residents like me who often get stopped by lost visitors trying to find things like toilets.

And ‘public conveniences': it’s a bit Edwardian isn’t it. Hugh Murray’s book ends with a list of terms used over the centuries to refer to toilets: ‘closet of ease’ is one of my favourites. And of course the act of leaving a room to use the toilet has also given rise to many creative and amusing phrases. He quotes the delightful ‘I’m just going to turn the vicar’s bicycle round.’

Anyway, enough about toilets. I’d rather write about trees, and hope to do so soon.

In the meantime, comments welcome. Please discuss among yourselves while I ‘powder my nose’ and check no one’s excavating under Etty.

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As previously mentioned, a highlight of the plaques walk was the investigation of an old abandoned public toilet. No, really, it was. Which makes the walk sound a bit rubbish. That’s not what I mean at all. It was so interesting I’m revisiting it.

Our small plaque-bearing party headed off from Spurriergate towards what in recent times has been known as one of the snickelways, but which we used to call an alley or a lane. Church Lane curves round towards Low Ousegate, and at its bend is a grubby old alley leading straight down to the river. Paul was about to place on a wall near this corner a plaque referring to some toilets which used to be near here.

‘The toilets were down there!’ I declared, confidently, pointing down the grubby alleyway. ‘Down at the bottom, near the river!’ And we all set off down the grubby alleyway.

Well, dear readers, I was wrong. Or rather, I was partly right and partly wrong.

In the interests of factual accuracy, because we care about that on this site, and challenge myths, clarification is needed, so let’s recreate last Saturday’s wander. As I did a few days later when revisiting to take some of these photos.

A stroll down Fish Landing Lane

The alley is full of bins and signs about where bins shouldn’t go.

Clearly there’s an issue with badly placed bins. This sign is a few metres along from the first one.

It used to be called Fish Landing Lane. No fish around here now, but clearly there’s some wildlife, as indicated by a container full of rat poison, placed prominently on a wall.

At the bottom there are steps, concrete steps, up to a concrete riverside walkway, just a short stretch, past two shop units, then you’re at Ouse Bridge. The walkway also leads to an entrance to Yates’s.

Under the concrete steps there used to be public toilets. They’re still there, but haven’t been used for years, except by pigeons. We discussed their previous life — Richard remembered them too.

Paul placed the plaque on the wall and and we took photos.

We all headed back up the alley, away from the pigeon poo and graffiti, back to Coney Street, glad to have seen a bit of authentic ‘old York’.

I was pleased I’d made a contribution, my only contribution, as I hadn’t made a plaque, or turned up early enough for the discussion beforehand, or made sandwiches, or done anything else useful at all. But at least I knew the place to put the plaque … 
… but I was wrong.

The 1950s toilet facilities

Later on, back at home, I thought about the fact that the plaque marked a meeting in the 1950s, and that my memory of those toilets at the bottom of the lane was decades later, the 1980s. Where we girls used to check our make up and if necessary reapply our eyeliner before heading into town.

Would those toilets have been there in the 1950s? Were they old enough? It bothered me.

I emailed Stephen, as I knew he lived in York in the 50s, and I thought he might be able to help. As indeed he did. Thank you Stephen.

He said he remembered toilet facilities nearer the bend of Church Lane, in or near what is now Yates’s beer garden.

After much searching, I found ‘urinal’ marked on the 1891 town plan.

The toilet/urinal may have been rebuilt in the intervening decades, and perhaps shifted position slightly, but it was still at this junction of the alleyways behind the church in the 1950s. Stephen said: ‘It was an old fashioned affair, adorned with those old type reddish brown tiles, and not a place a young lass would check on her make up I’m sure!’

At this corner where the narrow alleys met setts were set in various patterns and directions with cart tracks between, in the 19th century and perhaps reordered since.

I remembered too a book by Hugh Murray on the history of public toilets in York. It has the fab title Where to Go in York. I don’t have it, but found the library did. Clifton Library had a copy, even more convenient. But it was Sunday, and Clifton Library wasn’t open. I spent Sunday in eager anticipation of finding out the answer to all my public-toilet-related queries, and on Monday afternoon jumped on my bike and cycled really fast up to the library — and even faster back again, as it was about to rain heavily — and got back with Hugh Murray’s book tucked in my rucksack.

And what an interesting read it is.

Church Lane’s first urinal was provided in 1857. Urinals in those days tended to be roofless. The goings-on therein were apparently clearly visible from the upper floors of nearby buildings. Hugh Murray’s book records complaints being made by the occupants of these properties in 1872. The solution was to put a roof on the urinals, at a cost of £20.

The proximity of the urinal to the back of shops in Spurriergate resulted in later complaints too, in 1957, by the owners of a handbag shop overlooking it. It wasn’t just a toilet facility, but a meeting place. See Paul Furness’s article in York Mix (Location 4) for more information.

The replacement facilities

Loos near the Ouse, 15 August 2004. Can be enlarged.

In 1966 new toilets for men and women opened in a purpose-built facility at the bottom of the alley, near the river. And those, of course, are the ones I remember. And where we placed the plaque. Which, as we now know, should be on the corner near Yates’s.

They were still in use in around 1983, closed at some point since. (Perhaps closed in 1987 or thereabouts. Hugh Murray’s book says the facility was rented on a 21 year lease.) This photo was taken in August 2004, from Ouse Bridge, on one of my ‘York Walks’ of that year.

Above the toilets, accessed from this concrete walkway, was a record shop I remember visiting a lot. I may have misremembered, but as I recall it was called ‘Songs and Stories’. But that’s a story for another time. After a bit more about toilets.

Actually there are many stories spinning off from this grubby alley, and I’d like to share them, but I’m no longer able to give everything away for free so I’ll be trying to sell them to you later instead. More on that story later too.

For now, let’s escape this pigeon-poo-plastered place, and head off elsewhere. To another toilet. Mind how you go though, as we pass yet another warning sign, near the back of Yates’s.

The post Toilet stories from Church Lane … appeared first on York Stories.

Earlier this month, one evening, I was dashing past the end of Parliament Street and noticed this new and rather beautiful view. Pleasing not only because of the way the evening light shines on the lantern tower of All Saints, Pavement, but also because of the satisfying contrast of colour and style between the ancient church and the ornate red brick and terracotta of the Barclays Bank building (dating from 1901, by Edmund Kirby).

Presumably this view was available to us in the past, before that strange little toilet block known as the Splash Palace was built. It dominated this end of Parliament Street. Since its recent demolition, this view is opened up to us again. From the corner near M&S we have pleasing architectural contrast across an open space.

Surprising to read that not everyone likes the change. A letter to The Press calls it ‘bleak and desolate’, down here at the end of Parliament Street.

There’s also a Facebook campaign to install a statue of Joseph Rowntree in this new open space. We do of course already have buildings, parks, charitable trusts, organisations and indeed the whole village of New Earswick, to remind us of the good work of Joseph and other members of the Rowntree family.

If he was here I reckon he’d say we should spend our money on looking after the living, as he did.

And he might also quite like the view as it is.

Your views on this view are welcome.

More information/links

More on Joseph Rowntree from the excellent website of The Rowntree Society. Which includes the information that his grave is marked by a simple Quaker gravestone. I get the impression Quakers aren’t big on grand memorials to mark their achievements in life.

More on York’s statues

See also

A video on YouTube includes a shot of this part of Parliament St (at around 1 min 22 in the film), before the ‘Splash Palace’ was built.

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I was passing the ‘Splash Palace’ demolition site yesterday, and couldn’t help noticing that the toilet block has almost completely gone, and that there’s a useful council-provided ‘What’s going on’ type announcement, attached to the fencing, which many people were reading. I stood beside a gentleman who was studying the information carefully.

I felt a bit silly to be so interested in a disappeared toilet block. Maybe he did too. As he walked off we exchanged thoughts on the toilet issue, bafflement mainly at why toilets were being demolished, when we already don’t have enough, and the ones we do have are so manky. I mentioned that we do have those ones in Silver Street, but that I wouldn’t bother as they cost ‘about 40p’, and we agreed that it was best to use the ones in Marks and Spencers, for free.

M&S presumably are fully aware of this, and that’s why they’ve located them in a far-flung corner of the top floor, and made them as small and pokey as possible, to deter us.

After he’d gone I noticed another sign attached to the fencing, an A4-sized home-made one, declaring this demolition a ’scandal’. Many people have expressed similar views in the comments sections of The Press website, but to actually make a sign and attach it to the railings requires far more effort. The fact that someone had I found quite cheering and amusing.

Underneath, added in biro – a plaintive and perhaps desperate message:
‘CAN U LET THE PUBLIC KNOW WHERE THE TOILETS ARE’

The post That toilet block again … appeared first on York Stories.

As most people probably know, the demolition of the ‘Splash Palace’ toilet block on Parliament Street is underway. To mark this not-very-interesting event, I have a dull photo from when we passed it on our Christmas Day walk to the windmill. Someone with a sense of humour decorated it with a string of festive lights (visible on the enlarged view). Perhaps in honour of its (not very) long service and in recognition of its imminent demolition.

I don’t go looking for videos about toilets, but happened to find that this one has been immortalised, via YouTube. This video, filmed a few years back, has clearly had a lot of views, so perhaps you’ve all seen it already. If not, it’s a glimpse inside the gents part of the toilets, and very funny. “There’s actually poo on the wall”. “And the sad thing is that it’s got potential.”

It was apparently the most popular of the series … and if you’re really interested, there’s another YouTube video of the creators discussing the filming of their memorable visit:
Commentary – York Episode – Worlds Most Shocking Toilets

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