HERE'S a festive treat for you. No, nothing to do with Christmas. Instead, it is a look back to one of the biggest festivals in York's long history – that held in 1971 to mark the city's nineteen hundredth anniversary.
Yes, we know, it's a bit confusing. York celebrated its eight hundredth birthday just a couple of years ago – and yet it turned 1900 more than 40 years earlier.
We were celebrating different things, of course. The 2012 celebrations were held to mark 800 years since York was granted its city charter by King John.
The 1971 festival, meanwhile, celebrated the anniversary of the founding of the Roman city of Eboracum in AD71. And as readers of a certain age will remember, celebrated was the right word.
The highlight of the year's festivities was undoubtedly the visit of the Queen and Prince Philip on June 28, 1971.
Royal Visit York, June 1971: The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh with the Lord Mayor of York Ald. Richard Scruton walking past some of the pageant scenery
Crowds packed the pavements on either side of Blossom Street six deep and roared their delight as the Royal couple were driven up to Micklegate Bar in an open Sovereign carriage, escorted by a troop of 60 Household Cavalry.
The cavalcade then headed through York to the Assembly Rooms, where the Queen was due to lunch with 250 guest. It was the first time for more than 300 years that the Household Cavalry had ridden through the city’s narrow streets.
The Royal visit may have been the highlight of the year – but throughout 1971, York was in party mood. The photographs on these pages, scanned in from black and white originals found in our archives, tell the story.
August 8, 1971: a 21-gun salute fired in the Museum Gardens, York, to mark the birthday of the Queen Mother
June saw not only a Pageant in the Museum Gardens celebrating nearly 2,000 years of York history but also, over at the Knavesmire, a medieval jousting tournament in which mounted knights in full armour thundered towards each-other in the lists.
A few months later, in September, the Knavesmire played host to an altogether different weapon of war, a nuclear submarine – or at least, a quarter-scale model of one. Thousands of people queued to get a look around inside, including at the sub's replica control room.
Roman soldier Graham Hollingsworth leads a horse carefully from the stage on the opening night of the Pageant at Museum Gardens in June, 1971, for the York 1900th Pageant.
The submarine formed part of an armed forces equipment display at the Knavesmire, as part of which five helicopters gave lunchtime aerial displays – including transporting fuel by air in a giant net slung below the aircraft.
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Special stamps, medals, coins and goblets were struck or minted to mark York's 1900th birthday. And so determined was the city that visitors should enjoy the celebrations that a special troupe of guides was recruited – young women in blue uniforms who rode around on red scooters and were based at the city's Information Bureau. The Texaco Tourist Pilots, they were known as.
No clues for guessing who sponsored that idea...
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