Road Trip (North): York - Shambles and about town

Part 1 - Churches ¦ Part 2 - York Minster and surrounds

York is such an interesting town with amazing architecture and a rich cultural heritage. I loved that the architectural styles span every single era dating back hundreds of years.

The Minster School and York Minster Conference and Banqueting Centre

We passed The Snickleway Inn which is said to be the most haunted pub in England. We didn't go in which was a shame because I love ghost stories! There are apparently five spirits haunting the inn and they even have the ghost of a small girl! How exciting (this from a girl who is still scared of the dark and who is, in reality, terrified of ghosts!)

The part my mum-in-law was most looking forward to was the Shambles. This is a tiny little street that looks almost like an alley way. The buildings almost touch!!

I promise we didn't actually know the couple who were posing so nicely in the middle of that picture! What a pretty, quaint little street.

The River Ouse and The Merchant Adventurer's Hall

That beautiful building is the "finest surviving medieval guild hall in Great Britain". I think it was so pretty - click on the picture to see a bigger resolution.

Would you believe this photo was only taken at 2pm?? It looks like the sun was about to set. Thank goodness summer is on the way! Clifford's Tower is part of all that remains of York Castle.

The last stop in our grand tour of York was awesome York Castle Museum. This is a mammoth museum complex and like many of the museums and places we visited on our road trip, it really does deserve a whole day dedicated to it!

Retro, Victorian Village, Fashion Museum, Toy Museum and The Sixties

The museum had a retro section that went through appliances from the past 60 years and it also had model living rooms and kitchens dating back over 200 years. It was fabulous! There was a full Victorian village complete with sweet shops, a police station and chemist. There was the most amazing fashion museum with shoes and clothing dating back hundreds of years. The lighting was very muted in that section of the museum to protect the aging fabrics. There was a section the famous highwayman Dick Turpin and the cells he was kept in (unfortunately, I didn't get any decent photos there). Finally, there was a great Sixties section and I loved that so much as I love all things sixties.

And so our whirlwind trip of York was over and that was also the last major stop on our road trip. We saw so many incredible things but in the end it was nice to get back home. There is no place like home!

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Road Trip (North): York - Minster and surrounds

Part 1 - Churches

Alongside Cologne Cathedral, York Minster is the largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe (some say it is the biggest).  While it is known that earlier versions of the Minster existed, there is no longer an archaeological evidence for these.  The building in its current form dates back to 1100 though, which is pretty old! 

York really was a festive little town and I loved the atmosphere in many of the places we visited on our road trip.  Many times in York, Warwick and Bath there was an air of festivity with live music and stalls and fun fairs.

This man was playing "Hallelujah" on his piano.  I couldn't really say whether it was the Leonard Cohen or Alexandra Burke version but seeing as I spent tons of money voting for Alex to win, I'll just say it was hers.

There was a memorial to those lost fighting the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa between 1899 and 1902.  Even though I am of English decent, I took a moment to remember the many Afrikaans people who perished both in the fighting and in the concentration camps too.  It is an often overlooked fact that the British invented concentration camps.

War memorials are very sad to me actually.  I think war is such a senseless thing and there is rarely a true right or wrong side, just thousands of needless casualties.

I'd better steer off the politics before I lose all of my readers!  (Or the ones Blogger and Google Connect did not drop, that is).

Right across the road from York Minster is another church, St Michael Le Belfry.

St Michael's is an Anglican church and was built between 1525 and 1537 during King Henry VIII's break with Rome.  How does one describe Henry's architecture in the way that we describe "Elizabethan", "Victorian" or "Georgian" styles?  This style is not my favourite, anyway.

On our way back into the town, we spotted this bridal party making their way into the York Minster.  Can you imagine getting married in such a place???  Hardly the outdoor, poolside, South African bush experience I had!  

They must have been freezing.  As it was, we were too cold to stick around and wait for the bride!!

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Road Trip (North): York - Churches

The final destination on our road trip around England was York.  We were staying a couple of days at my friend Nina's house in Bolton and so we were able to spend almost a whole day in York without the worry of checking into and out of hotels and spending hours travelling between cities.

Incidentally, we were meant to go to St Albans on the way home to London when we left the next day.  Unfortunately, Mandy only managed to make it out of bed after 10am that day so that idea fell by the wayside.

I knew nothing at all about York before we went but it was the one destination that my mum-in-law had requested before they came over from South Africa.  York is an absolutely charming and pretty little town located four hours north of London.  It has a really rich history dating back to Roman and Viking times and it is a walled city.

York is full of churches.  This old gem dates back to the 14th century and is named Church of All Saints Pavement because it stands on on of the earliest paved streets in York.

I really loved this red brick building but I couldn't find any details about it online.  This is an exquisite exam of Victorian red brick architecture - look at that detail!

St Helens Church is an incredibly old church.  From their website, "the oldest datable feature in the church is the mid twelfth century font, and it is likely that the church was rebuilt in stone at that time or earlier".

This spectacular example of Victorian architecture is St Wilfrid's Catholic Church which was completed in 1864.  How beautiful is it?

I loved the terraced housing in the picture above.  It reminded me of all of the romantic notions I had about Victorian England and the world of Peter Pan and Mary Poppins.

That is York Minster you can see in the distance there but that deserves its own post!

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