Teardrop treasures

At 85 acres, the site is roughly two-thirds the size of York city centre.

It may take 15 years and £600 million to turn into a centre for business, leisure, housing and transport.

However, anyone who considers York Central a blank canvas is making a dangerous and misguided assumption. This is the heart of our railway city.

The buildings here, while not having the architectural pizzazz of a Minster or Fairfax House, formed as important a part of York's rail industry as much that is preserved in the National Railway Museum.

We should not send in the bulldozers without carefully appraising what to keep and what we can afford to lose.

Bill Fawcett is the leading authority on north-eastern railway architecture. He says the buildings on the York Central site are a unique ensemble charting the origins of the railways to the present day.

Bill is happy to see the area developed. But he wants the city to know and assess what it has got there before it is lost forever.

"The railway was the basis for all of York's industrial activity in the 19th century," he said. "If the railway wasn't here, we wouldn't have many of the other industries.

"We have wonderful medieval and Georgian architecture here, but there's also some important 19th century buildings. We don't want to erase this stuff as if it never existed.

"What I really want is for people not to look at York Central and assume they have got a blank site; that there's just the NRM and everything else can go.

"I want a proper appraisal of the site and an assessment of the significance of the buildings that are there now. After that the judgement can be made about which should go."

Those that deserve to be retained could be renovated for a new purpose.

"Any building has got to be reused to ensure it earns its keep," he said, citing the Railway Institute gym which is now housed inside a former rail workshop.

He is urging the city council to act now on assessing York's railway heritage before it's too late. "You only get one chance," he said.

Bill took me on a guided tour of the York Central site to point out some of the surviving Victorian railway infrastructure.

The foundries

We began at the bottom of Foundry Lane, off Leeman Road, where the Albion Foundry once was. This was part of the York Railway Plant Co, and moved here from Aldwark in about 1872.

Our graphic is not to scale, but gives an idea of the location of the different buildings. The building marked (1) was the foundry; (2) was the machine shop; (3) is not identified; (4) was the offices, and (5) most likely the blacksmith's.

The foundries

A high wall separates it from what is left of the Phoenix Foundry of Close, Ayre and Nicholson (6). One of the partners, John Close, was "Railway King" George Hudson's secretary before going into business himself.

The foundries supplied all sorts of ironworks, mostly for the railways: everything from bridges to lamp standards. Foundry workers once lived in the houses on Carlisle Street and Carleton Street.

Around the NRM

The Main Hall of the National Railway Museum (9) is on the site of the York North engine sheds. The NRM Station Hall (10) is in the former York goods station built between 1875 and 1877 (at the same time as today's passenger station was built).

The rounded corner block (8), which is now the Arc Light Project for the homeless, was built a few years earlier as the offices for the mineral manager. It overlooked a big coal depot, where coal arrived by wagon and was emptied through doors on the bottom into compartments rented by coal merchants.

Walk westwards along Leeman Road and you come to a brick building which was once stables for railway horses (7). Goods station deliveries were made using horse-drawn "rulleys". The horse keeper's house is on the end.

When the motor age dawned, the building had various uses, including mess rooms for railwaymen. Now it has fallen into disrepair. It is owned by the NRM.

Around Queen Street

The members of the 1889-built Railway Institute (13) have already expressed concern about losing their facilities in the York Central revamp.

Other buildings at risk nearby were once part of the Queen Street locomotive works. This is the site of some of York's earliest train and carriage building. The few engines built in the city were created in a shed long since demolished (15), situated on land which is now part of the station car park.

What is now the Railway Institute gym (12) was built in 1850 as a wagon works. It was later used as a machine shop. Then, in about 1884, the roof was raised to accommodate new, bigger engines and it became the erecting shop of York Locomotive works. Engines were brought or major repairs and could be lifted off their wheels by cranes suspended across the ceiling.

In 1879, a new erecting shop (11) was built alongside (this is now used, in part, as a rifle range). Here was the beginning of York's historic carriageworks industry. Nearby is the water tower (14), built in 1839, to supply water to engines using York's first railway station, a temporary structure which pre-dated the one built just inside the city walls in 1841. After that date, the water tower supplied the engine sheds.

A map of the Queen Street locomotive works in 1865 shows a clutch of buildings now lost, including fitting shops, joiners' shops and an engine shed.

Updated: 10:57 Monday, February 17, 2003