Enjoying retirement
In The Red Rose County
By car then Park and Ride into York to do as much of the snickelways as we could in unpromising weather and visit Fairfax House which we had never done before. Using the Snickelways Guide we started at Bootham Bar. The existing structure is not Roman but it has been around for quite a while. The archway itself dates from the 11th century and the rest of the structure is largely from the 14th century. In 1501 a door knocker was installed as Scots were required to knock first and seek permission from the Lord Mayor to enter the city. The bar was damaged during the siege of York in 1644. Like Micklegate Bar, it was sometimes used to display the heads of traitors, the heads of three rebels opposing Charles II’s restoration were placed here in 1663. Bootham Bar was the last of the gates to lose its barbican, demolished in 1835. Just through Bootham Bar we found our first snickelway next to the Hole in the Wall pub. What a different world exists when you search the snickelways! Hardly anyone to see, and lots of peace and quiet, and stunning buildings.... 2, 3, 4, and 4a Precentor's Court is an historic row of three buildings which are Grade II* listed structures dating to around 1710. Precentor's Court led us to Dean's Park, the site of the Roman fortress, where the surviving remains of the medieval Old Palace include the building that once housed the palace's chapel. Now a Grade I listed building, it was restored in 1810 and was afterwards used as the Minster Library, the largest cathedral library in Britain, it holds over 130,000 items. It houses the library, archives, the Collections Department and conservation studio of York Minster. Dean's Park forms part of the Minster Close..... What was the Purey-Cust nursing home was very recently converted to 9 amazing houses overlooking the Park and the Minster..... In the Park there is also arcading, dating back to the twelfth century, with some superb modern restoration, which now serves as a memorial to the Second Infantry Division who prevented the Japanese from invading India. The structure has seven arches, in the central one is a bronze laurel wreath which contains the Kohima epitaph- "When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today". The magnificent Deanery is from 1938-9....... Walking along characterful Ogleforth we passed the statue of St Peter from about 1400 which until 2013 occupied the central niche over the great East Window of the Minster. Next to the Treasurer's House, a Grade I listed historic house owned by the National Trust, who also maintain its garden. Thomas Young, Archbishop between 1561 and 1568, and his descendants are responsible for the structure of house as it is today. In the early 17th century the Young family added the symmetrical front and almost entirely rebuilt the house. Behind the Treasurer's House is Gray's Court a Grade I listed house. Dating back in part to 1080 and commissioned by the first Norman Archbishop of York to provide the official residence for the Treasurers of York Minster, it is one of the oldest continuously occupied dwellings in the United Kingdom.Now a luxurious hotel, we decided to investigate and saw a small notice attached to the gate which said the public were welcome to look at the gardens on request. We entered by the characterful front door..... through the Jacobean Long Gallery to the fabulous gardens which, unusually, access the walls direct........ Among a little huddle of similarly historic homes on Ogleforth is Tower House, the oldest parts dating from the 1700's. On the other side of the street the Old Brewery, now apartments and Airbnbs....... The Dutch House is a listed building believed to be York’s oldest brick built house dating from 1648.......... Ogleforth led us out briefly to Goodramgate....... ........where we found our next snickelway Bedern. The area of Bedern has a very chequered history being an area of appalling slums around the 1840s. Now some very sensitive housing has replaced the slums. The Bedern College was founded in 1252, to house 36 vicars choral associated with York Minster and its last surviving buildings are the chapel, built around 1252........ and the hall, mid fourteenth century. We eventually exited in King's Square thence via Petergate and Stonegate.... to our lunch destination, officially opened by our new King and Queen a couple of weeks ago, York Minster Refectory.....a beautiful building in every way. It used to be the York Minster School, established in 1903 in a building that was initially built for St Peter’s School within the Minster’s Precinct in 1833. lovely, but not cheap..... Rain meant no more snickelways..... .....and we just about made it to Fairfax House which in our time in York we had never visited....The Fairfaxes were a long established Yorkshire Catholic family who owned extensive land and property in the county. Their principal residence was Gilling Castle, 20 miles north of York. Charles Gregory Fairfax, ninth Viscount of Emley (1700-1772), who commissioned the re-modelling of Fairfax House, inherited his title and estates in 1738 upon the death of his father William Fairfax, the eighth Viscount. The Viscount married twice, losing his first wife Elizabeth Constable (nee Clifford) within a year of their marriage in 1721. His second marriage to Mary Fairfax, a not so distant cousin, produced nine children – seven of whom died in infancy – with Mary surviving barely two years after the birth of their last child. A further daughter, Elizabeth, died aged 17, so that by 1753 the Viscount had only one remaining daughter, Anne. It was they who used Fairfax House as their winter house. An exceptional collection from the golden age of English cabinet-making and clock-making forms the centrepiece to the Noel Terry Collection which adorns the house. Born in York in 1889, Noel Terry was the longstanding chairman and great grandson of the founder of the confectionery business, Terry’s of York. I interviewed him in the Seventies as part of my logistics project on the confectionery industry, and found him courteous and very interesting, with an in-depth knowledge of the industry. I drew his attention to the neglect of the family graves in York Cemetery, and he wrote a nice letter to me saying he would see to it! Anyhow over the course of his lifetime he formed an outstanding collection of Georgian domestic furniture and clocks which Christie’s have stated to be one of the best private collections of mid-eighteenth-century English furniture. The collection was originally housed at Goddards, Noel and Kathleen Terry’s Arts and Crafts style-home. He bought each piece on its own merit and was not interested in creating interiors in the style of the eighteenth century. Terry’s tastes in collecting furniture were particular and surprisingly consistent, a dislike of gilding and anything too ornate, coupled with a demand for excellent quality. The collection, however, is not only significant because of its exceptional quality, but also because of its provenance. Indeed, its completeness as a collection (kept together in nearly its full entirety) helps to illustrate Terry’s collecting passions, the development of his taste and the evolutions which took place in the process of collecting in the 20th century. A passionate lover of the city of his birth, in 1946 Terry was one of the four Founders of York Civic Trust, for which he served as Honorary Treasurer for twenty five years. It was this that led to his determination that the collection should remain for the benefit of the City of York and, after his death in 1979, his trustees offered the collection to the Civic Trust as a gift on the proviso that it was placed on permanent display. Opposite Fairfax House is another Grade I listed Georgian house, Castlegate House.
The house was commissioned by Peter Johnson, who served as Recorder of York from 1759 to 1789. The site was previously occupied by a number of small houses and, prior to that, had formed the principal part of the grounds of a Franciscan priory. The house was designed by John Carr, a prolific local architect working in the Palladian style, who was considered to be the leading architect of the era in the north of England. Although its completion date is not known with certainty, it has often been estimated at 1763, as this date appears on a rainwater head at the rear of the property. The house consists of five bays, and it has three stories above ground, in addition to a basement. It is constructed of orange-brown bricks, and has a hipped roof covered with slate. The main entrance is through a Doric porch, up a short flight of steps. Although altered, much of Carr's original interior design survives, including staircases and plaster decoration. It seems to be now used as a Masonic Hall.
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