A SPECIAL treat to help lovers of Yesterday Once More get over their Christmas hangovers this week, as we dip once again into local author Paul Chrystal’s wonderful York Then And Now.

As the title suggests, the book juxtaposes historic photographs collected by Paul with modern photographs taken from the same spot by freelance photographer Mark Sunderland.

Among our favourites is this first one, showing children playing on swings beside the bar walls near the Red Tower (named, Paul informs us, after the colour of its brickwork – all the other city walls and towers being built with Tadcaster limestone). Built in about 1490 by Henry VII, it was damaged in the Civil War siege of York and restored in 1857. Also known as Brimstone House because it was once used as a gunpowder warehouse, it was also used, in about 1800, as a stable. There is no date for our photograph but it looks, judging by the clothes the children are wearing, as though it probably dates from the Edwardian or late Victorian period.

“Today,” Paul notes, “the geese are still there, although the swings have gone.”

Our second pair of photos show the River Foss at Layerthorpe. The first, taken in about 1905, shows the long-vanished electricity generating station. Opened in 1899, it enabled electric lights to be switched on in York for the first time. The ground around the station, which was run by York Corporation Electricity Committee, vibrated from the noise given off, Paul notes.

Today the chimney survives, standing proud next to Morrison’s but everything else has gone – except the ducks.

•York Then And Now by Paul Chrystal and Mark Sunderland is published by The History Press priced £12.99. It is available from most good local bookshops.