HE was known as "York's greatest benefactor". Walk around the city and you are never far from the influence of John Bowes Morrell. Every time a university student visits the JB Morrell Library, a shopper walks past the 14th century Bowes Morrell House on Walmgate or a visitor trips along Alderman's Way in the Castle Museum, they are reminded of his continuing presence.

So it is an irony that the home of this great conservationist looks set to be reduced to rubble.

Today Burton Croft has little charm. The gardens are overgrown and some of the windows boarded over. A casual passer-by looking at this Burton Stone Lane residence and learning it was to be replaced by flats may even think, "good riddance".

But then they wouldn't have seen Burton Croft at its best, when it resembled a miniature museum and played host to the great and the good of York. They would not know that it was from here that Alderman JB Morrell worked assiduously on so many plans which would see his city progress while its history was preserved.

John Bowes bought Burton Croft in 1908, for £2,800. By then, he had already packed a lot in. Born in 1873, the son of a York bank manager, he was educated at Bootham School. At 17 he finished his education and joined Rowntree and Co, rising to become the firm's youngest director at 25.

Four years later he married Bertha Spence Watson. They were to have three children.

In 1903 he entered the newspaper world as a director of the company which owned the Northern Echo. Later he would become chairman of the Westminster Press newspaper group, and took the helm at the Yorkshire Herald Newspaper Company, owners of the Evening Press, when it became part of the group in 1953.

A lifelong Liberal, he first stood for York City Council in 1905. Demonstrating his capacity for seeing what others missed, he included a proposal for a bridge over the Ouse at Clifton in his electoral address. Sixty years later, that idea became a reality.

It wasn't a desire for grand surroundings to match his growing status which prompted this York public servant to find a bigger home. John Bowes and Bertha's second daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1907 and they wanted more space for the family. So they left their house in St Mary's for the more spacious Burton Croft.

In her 1966 biography of the Morrell clan, Three Generations: The Fortunes Of A Yorkshire Family, Anne Vernon went into some detail about Burton Croft.

She described the mid-19th century house as having four good rooms downstairs and five bedrooms and two dressing rooms above. An older wing, probably a farmhouse originally, contained the kitchens, the servants' quarters "and a garage for the motor-car which John Bowes had recently acquired, but practically never drove himself". There was also a large garden.

During the difficult days of the 1920s slump, Miss Vernon wrote, "the weekends at Burton Croft were a pleasant respite.

"The house was a place which bubbled now, with the vitality of the younger generation. There was a quite unstudied informality about John Bowes' household... When the son of the house went to Bootham School in 1926 there was what John Bowes describes as a 'constant stream of schoolchildren to lunch on Sundays'".

When the economy picked up, Alderman Morrell began to indulge his passion for collecting. In 1930 his annual income was more than £6,000. "He had always collected books," noted Miss Vernon. "Now he began to take an interest in pictures - some good, some bad, but most of them large - furniture, china, silver, and almost anything of an honourable age.

"Furthermore, as the older members of his own and Bertha's family had died, keepsakes from them had flowed into Burton Croft; things like Aunt Margaret's beautiful silver teapot, Aunt Jemima's portrait, and Great-Aunt Maria's grandfather clock."

The author went to visit JB Morrell at Burton Croft in 1962, when he was 88. It would have been impossible not to be curious about a house which featured a bronze statue of Buddha in the front garden.

By this time John Bowes was a widower, and his domestic affairs were kept in order by a housekeeper. It was a quiet house, and one room was particularly well soundproofed: the library.

"The morning saw him in his library, reading or answering his correspondence, or telephoning a friend about some committee or some plan," wrote Anne Vernon.

"The telephone in this room had the only concession to age in the whole house - a gadget which enlarged the numerals on the dial (John Bowes 'did not use glasses', in his own words, though he had once worn them for a time in middle age.)

"...There were always plans on the desk; plans for the new university, plans for a folk park, plans for an extension to the museum. The whole room was lined with bookshelves, and dominated by a large head-and-shoulders bust of John Bowes himself, in the robes and chain he had twice worn as Lord Mayor of York."

In his high-backed leather chair in the library, JB Morrell put York to rights.

This work took many forms. It was John Bowes who spotted the potential of Pickering doctor John Lamplugh Kirk's collection of bygones, and pushed for the creation of what became York Castle Museum. Many of JB's own artefacts found a home there.

In 1946 he co-founded the York Civic Trust and remained its chairman until his death in 1963.

The trust protected the ancient streets from the sort of post-war regeneration which blighted so many British cities.

Four years later, aged 77, he embarked on a 10,000-mile ten-day tour of America to promote York's Festival Of The Arts.

But perhaps his greatest legacy is the University of York, which celebrates its 40th birthday this year.

John Bowes had been acquiring land at Heslington to build a folk park. But he soon realised that a university would be a worthier use of the site, and donated all 180 acres.

He also put forward the idea of a folk park complementary to the Castle Museum.

Today the council wants to build a shopping mall next to the museum, and knock down Burton Croft - as soon as the squatters who recently took up residence there have been evicted. Forty years after the death of York's greatest benefactor his principles appear to have been forgotten.

It may be a more fitting tribute to the memory of Alderman John Bowes Morrell if his Castle folk park dream were realised, and his home at Burton Croft were restored to its mid-20th century glory, complete with the legendary owner's art and book collections.

The Morrell Museum: that would be a fine addition to the places which bear his name.

Updated: 10:57 Monday, July 28, 2003