Welcome to York

Walmgate Bar

The Waggon & Horses is a ten minute walk from the centre of York. Head through the beautiful Walmgate Bar and along Walmgate, taking in the shops and restaurants along the way, and enjoy our historic city. York is an historic walled city sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city is noted for its rich heritage and it has played an important role throughout much of its almost 2,000 year existence.

 

 

 

Walmgate

The city was founded as Eboracum in AD 71 by the Romans and was made the capital of Britannia Inferior. During the Roman period influential historical figures, such as Constantine the Great, became associated with the city. The entire Roman Empire was governed from York for two years by Septimius Severus.

After the Angles moved in, the city was renamed Eoferwic, and served as the capital of the Kingdom of Northumbria. The Vikings captured the city in 866, renaming it Jórvík, the capital of a wider kingdom of the same name covering much of Northern England. Around the year 1000, the city became known as York.

Richard III wished to make York the capital of England, but before he could effect this he was deposed. After the Wars of the Roses, York housed the Council of the North and was regarded as the capital of the North. It was only after The Restoration that the political importance of the city began to decline. The Province of York is one of the two English ecclesiastical provinces, alongside that of Canterbury.

 

Aerial view of York Minster

 

From 1996, the term City of York describes a unitary authority area which includes rural areas beyond the old city boundaries. The urban area has a population of 137,505, while the entire unitary authority has 184,900 people. Currently, the core of the city within the walls is a major tourist destination, attracting visitors from all over the world.

York Minster, the second largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe, stands at the city’s centre. York’s centre is enclosed by the city’s medieval walls, which are a popular walk. The entire circuit is about 3 miles (5 km), including a part where walls never existed, because the Norman moat of York Castle, formed by damming the River Foss, also created a lake which acted as a city defence. (This lake was later called the King’s Fishpond, as the rights to fish belonged to the Crown.)

Clifford’s Tower, a stone quatrefoil keep built on top of a Norman motte, was the site of a massacre in 1190 when the small Jewish community of York sought protection in the tower on the feast of Shabbat ha-Gadol. Many Jews took their own lives rather than face a violent mob in an event regarded as one of the most notorious examples of antisemitism in medieval England.

The Shambles is a narrow medieval street, lined with shops, boutiques and tea rooms. Most of these premises were once butchers’ shops, and the hooks from which carcasses were hung and the shelves on which meat was laid out can still be seen outside some of them. The street also contains the Shrine of Margaret Clitherow, although it is not located in the house where she lived. Goodramgate has many medieval houses including the fourteenth century Lady’s Row built to finance a Chantry, at the edge of the churchyard of Holy Trinity church.

 

York Railway Station and Royal York Hotel

 

Another feature of central York are the Snickelways, narrow pedestrian routes, many of which led towards the former market-places in Pavement and Sampson Square. The city has many museums, including the Castle Museum, Yorkshire Museum and Museum Gardens, JORVIK Viking Centre, the York Art Gallery, Richard III Museum, the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, the medieval house Barley Hall owned by the York Archaeological Trust, Fairfax House owned by the York Civic Trust and the Treasurer’s House owned by the National Trust.

The National Railway Museum is situated just beyond the station, and is home to a vast range of transport material and the largest collection of railway locomotives in the world. Included in this collection are the world’s fastest steam locomotive LNER 4468 Mallard and the world famous 4472 Flying Scotsman, which is being overhauled in the Museum.

York is noted for its wealth of churches and pubs. Most of the remaining churches in York are from the medieval period. St William’s College behind the Minster, and Bedern Hall, off Goodramgate, are former dwelling places of the canons of the Minster.