York's hidden history - a look back at Walmgate

TAKE a stroll down Walmgate in York city centre and you will find an amazing array of ethnic restaurants as well as an impressive new complex known as the Student Castle.

Vastly different from the 1972 ‘depressing’ street described by art historian Niklaus Pevsner in his book Yorkshire: York and the East Riding. Go further back in history to the 1840s and Walmgate housed many desperate refugees from the Great Famine in Ireland.

It is said that ten years later the streets and alleys housed half the population of the whole city. You can still see several entrances to so-called yards where people lived, crammed in alongside light industry, one such example being Foundry Yard. There was dire poverty and overcrowding. Outside 54 Walmgate, local resident Mark Evans filled me in on the history of his street telling me how his modern flat had once been a hotel for travellers and then a furniture store.

Tell-tale differences in the shades of the façade brickwork show where the shop window had once been.

In 1901, Walmgate had 20 pubs; today there is only one, The Watergate Inn, and one or two other modern café bars that serve real ale.

Last pub standing in Walmgate. Photos by David Wilson

Many houses in Walmgate are more than two hundred hundred years old. At the entrance to the street, at Fosse Bridge End is no.6, an impressive building that once housed the Dorothy Wilson Hospital.

Plaques on the façade of the house tell the story. Dorothy Wilson’s charity of 1719 provided accommodation for ten poor women and instruction for 20 poor boys in English, reading, writing as well as the provision of clothing. Later, a school and schoolmaster’s house were built directly behind the alms-house. The present house dates from 1812.

The half-timbered house at 77 Walmgate dates back to the 15th century and 35-37 Walmgate were built in the 16th century. Today, Josh and Victoria Overington own two French restaurants in Walmgate: Le Cochon Aveugle at no.37 and La Cave du Cochon at 19 Walmgate. Their restaurant manager Lewis took me up to the first floor of 19 Walmgate and showed me the 16th-century beamed wall.

Walmgate is no longer a depressing place to be, and it has been transformed. But some tokens of its past can still be clearly seen.

In 1200 there were four churches in Walmgate: St Denys, St Margaret, St Mary and St Peter-le-Willows; today only two church buildings survive and only one of these, St Denys’s, still stands and functions as a living worshipping community. St Margaret’s was de-consecrated in 1974 and in 2000 was converted into a concert venue for the National Centre for Early Music.

At the far end of the street is Walmgate Bar, one of the most visible relics of York’s history. This gate into the city was the scene of the Siege of York during the Civil War in 1644, when Cromwell’s Roundhead forces attempted (and failed) to enter the city. You can see the marks of cannonball fire and bullets on a turret of its outer walls. And it still has its original barbican intact with oak wooden gates dating from the 15th century.

Bowes Morrell House, a Grade II listed building at 111 Walmgate, reminds us of a world that has largely disappeared. The house cuts a solitary figure at the end of the road, just a few yards away from Walmgate Bar. It was built around 1396 and is another good example of a timber-framed construction, of which there are several others in the city, most notably the house of Sir Thomas Herbert in Stonebow and The Black Swan Inn in Peaseholme Green. The house has undergone considerable modification and restoration in its 800-year history most notably in 1932 and in the 1960s.

Photo of Walmgate from 1915.

It was bought by The York Conservation Trust in 2004 and was named after John Bowes-Morrell, a former Sheriff, Freeman and Lord Mayor of York who had also been a founder of the Trust and a co-founder of The York Civic Trust.

The premises are currently let to Changing Lives, a charity devoted to helping people who face homelessness, domestic violence, addiction, long-term unemployment and other social challenges.

During the 19th century it had been a cheap lodging house for travelling workers and towards the end of the 1800s it was owned by the O’Hara family subsequently passing to the Kilmartin family in the 1930s. Unfortunately, the house acquired the reputation of a doss-house, despite a sign that used to hang above the door saying ‘good lodgings down this passage’.

So why was it built originally? We know that a licence had been granted in 1396 for four houses to be built in the churchyard of St Peter-le-Willows. It is thought that this house may have been the vicarage for either St Margaret’s or St Peter-le-Willows church.

The first mention of Walmgate is in the 11th century when it was known as Walbegate. In medieval times, Walmgate was the site of a sea fish and cattle market. Modern Walmgate is a far cry from what it once was. It is now a prosperous mix of restaurants, hair salons, offices, apartments and workshops. Much of Walmgate’s history is hidden in archives. But traces of its colourful past are still visible, and they give this street its fascinating character.

David Wilson is a community writer for The Press