This year, the Evening Press held a writing competition. Entrants had to pen a factual article on York. In the first of the three winning entries to be published, ROB OLDFIELD recalls the carriageworks

HOWEVER well you think you know York there's always another bit of history to uncover.

Between Scarcroft Green and what is known locally as Little Knavesmire there lies a swathe of land which was originally part of the ancient Micklegate Stray.

At some time during the Second World War, encouraged by the Dig for Victory campaign, it was given over to garden allotments.

By the 1970s a growing interest in self-sufficiency had breathed new life into the then neglected gardens. Today it forms an eclectic collection of plots: some well-tended and productive, some the haunt of the weekend or casual gardener, others abandoned and overgrown, each one having some form of greenhouse, summerhouse or shed.

I often walk the narrow lanes and in one of the more remote areas at the top of the hill, I recently noticed a shed that looked like part of an old railway wagon. It's not unusual for gardeners and farmers to re-use redundant rolling stock to make potting sheds, makeshift pig sties or cowsheds, but this one seemed different.

I knew I had seen something like it before so I pushed back the briars and overhanging buddleia and was thrilled to discover not an ordinary 'wagon' but an eight-foot section of an old wooden passenger coach.

A few years ago, I was involved in an exhibition about the history of coach building at the Holgate Works and had access to archive photographs. I knew that somewhere among the images was one of a wagon with those distinctive vertical end panels.

The National Railway Museum had provided a comprehensive selection of pictures, some showing the interiors of the huge buildings that still stand on the Holgate site today.

I searched through my files and at last found the photo I wanted. It was just as I remembered it and the caption read:

Image 1.2: 'Wooden bodies for non-corridor passenger coaches being constructed at York at the turn of the century. The bowler hat worn by the man standing at the end of the left-hand coach indicated he was the foreman'.

From his high vantage point the photographer has captured the scene in one of the busy workshops opened by the North Eastern Railway in 1884. It looks like the sort of organised chaos that might have been seen in any large workshop, piles of timber, workbenches and overhead gantries.

Wooden coaches, similar to the fragment that is now a garden shed, are in various stages of assembly, in parallel rows they stretch away to the huge doors at the far end of the building.

Teams of workers gaze at the camera trying to strike informal poses but look self-conscious by today's standards, aware, perhaps, that this may be the only photographic image of themselves to be passed down to future generations.

They are wearing the working uniform of the day: collarless white shirt, waistcoat and the inevitable flat cap and huge moustache. The foreman, in his suit, bowler hat and gold fob watch, stands in front of a coach still under construction.

A craftsman joiner, distinguished by his long white apron, poses on a pair of stepladders, apparently putting the finishing touches to an open door.

I would really like to believe that the man in the bowler hat is standing in front of the very same coach that I discovered in the allotments.

After the joiners had finished, the coach would have been shunted next door to the paint and varnish shop. Here it would be 'polished like a baronial dining-table, embellished with proud coats of arms and mystic legends'.

The company whose locomotive pulled it could boast that it was a state of the art vehicle, the last word in design and comfort. I am amazed that a small portion of it has survived the northern weather for more than a hundred years with no more protection than what looks like a couple of coats of creosote and a bit of roofing felt.

If indeed it is part of a York coach, it has a shared heritage with the Holgate works where it was built. Parts of both have survived into the 21st century, but their continued existence is precarious. Although re-opened in 1997 by Thrall Europa, the Holgate works has again closed due to lack of orders.

The coach too would seem to be under threat. Youngsters who roam the allotments looking for mischief seem to take delight in setting fire to garden sheds. Half a dozen have been burnt down in the last year.

It would be ironic if, as their fathers lost their jobs at Holgate, they casually destroyed a little piece of York's railway heritage that their great grandfathers helped to create.

Updated: 12:46 Monday, December 30, 2002