Memories of Petergate Fisheries and Scott the butcher's

I NEVER fail to read the Nostalgia section of The Press with its many photographs of York buildings, now long gone or under new names.

To me it is still Yorkshire Evening Press, even though it was known in common usage as The Press.

In my teens after getting home from away rugby games with York RUFC we were always keen to get the Pink 'un, out on the streets about 5.30pm as it had all the football results and more important to me, the rugby league matches.

How had the boys done at Clarence Street -Willie Hargreaves, Stan Flannery, Edgar Dawson and all the others including our great goalkicker Vic Yorke?

As schoolboys we always stood behind the posts on the concrete steps at the Rowntree's end. Rowntree's a place many players were familiar with including including Vic: "he's not playing well today " and "aye, well he just come off shift at 6.30!".

The photos of buildings bring back to mind people from the past - The Royal Oak in Goodramgate where Mick Sullivan the great St Helens winger took over as landlord when he came to York. He was a great signing and would lead us to promotion (except making him a landlord was perhaps the cause of our disappointment as he fizzled out).

John Zimnoch in the 1960s when he worked at the Midland Bank in York

Happy days - it was the greatest ground, easy to get to, entry free at half-time for us youngsters, and a short walk to the Punch Bowl for after-match beers, with landlord Hull KR player Bryan Coulson who always gave me gyp for playing rugby union when I delivered meat on a Saturday morning for butcher Tommy and Elsie Dunn, just down the street.

Even the former back page of ads gets me going: Geoffrey Benson furniture in Petergate - a street with many memories because of my Ebor Prep school pals who lived around there. Ebor Prep was a tiny school on the corner of Abbey Street. I have memories of sports at the Homestead, three-legged races and the like; cricket on Clifton Green, and horses regularly on the Green with a big horse trough on a mound in the middle where it is now level and trees planted. It was better as a playground in my eyes.

Everybody in their right mind loved Scott the Butcher's. When living overseas I once had my mum bring me an enormous ham and egg pie, totally against Canadian customs rules which made it taste all the better.

Scott the butcher's Low Petergate in 1983

The Guy Fawkes is still Young's Hotel to me and the Hole in the Wall the Board Inn where our schoolboy drinking started at 15. Those were the days.

Whatever happened to the pub next to the Assembly Rooms where we had lunch and pints, in our senior school uniforms, before Archbishop Holgate's services at The Minster for Carols and founders day?

I remember playing Cowboys and Indians round the Boer war memorial, expeditions on the bar walls and getting thrown out of Minster grounds by men in dark skirts, even playing inside the Minster itself when entry was free.

For a long time there was a covered carousel behind a fence by the Deangate Door and we would go under the canvas to get inside.

The Ice House by Monk Bar was easy to enter and used inside as a place to dump rubbish - early fly tipping ?

Peckitt's of Petergate where Walter sold army surplus, jeans and the like was a great shop for York's poorer residents - Walter was easy going and very likeable. I'd ask him how he could sell a forage cap for 2/6d and make a profit ? Big laugh: "well it's difficult as it cost me a penny".

Never mind the Magpie in Whitby the best family fish and chip shop in the world was Petergate's with Albert frying fish and watching the world go by in the window through his Hank Marvin glasses as giant of a brother Jim did the same whilst his Mum and sisters did all the work.

Petergate Fisheries in York - now Drakes. Image from Google Maps

When I worked at the Midland bank his sister always gave me an extra free fish to go with my chips and mushy peas, no wonder I ate there at least twice a week, typical Yorkshire kindness.

On return from a first trip abroad - an Archies school trip lead by history teacher Brian Anderson to Paris Stade Colombes to watch England - our first port of call, before I headed home to Haxby, was for some decent food at the fish shop. Who wouldn't do the same?

Share your memories of York

For more old photos of York, do visit the city council's Explore York archive (images.exploreyork.org.uk).

If you love looking at old photos of York, make sure to buy The Press every Wednesday for our weekly nostalgia supplement and join us in our Facebook group, Why We Love York - Memories. Join us at www.facebook.com/groups/yorknostalgia/.