Looking Back
It’s a common topic , up there with the ‘five guests - alive or living - you’d invite to a dinner party’ debate, and often provokes responses of monumental moments in time, grand occasions when history was made - instances in which one could declare “I was there” to anyone who would listen. Yet my own answer to the cliched discussion isn’t a period or stage you’d necessarily find in the history books, and is perhaps somewhat unambitious, but rather than be in the crowd of Live Aid or on the terraces of Wembley stadium in the summer of 1966, my preference is somewhat closer to home.
‘If you could visit any moment in time, where/when would it be?”. Well there’s no place like home, and given the rich heritage of Jorvik, there wouldn't be an absence to see and do. They say that the history of York is the history of England, and whilst it would be fascinating to travel back centuries to experience the Romans, Viking and Victorians, to see what once stood where we do now, my own preference dates back just a few decades, more specifically - to when ‘I were a lad”.
In my twenties I’d be in town most days - either through work or pleasure, and thus would be instantly attentive to any changes, be they a new restaurant, pub or shop, or the demise of any for that matter. Nowadays my ventures into the City centre will be fortunate to reach double digits in a calendar year, and so each visit is abound with new ventures, businesses and endeavours. The occupants of a retail space will likely have changed numerous times before I’ve had the opportunity to even notice, such is the diminished lifespan of a tenant on York’s High Street nowadays.
From around the age of six - the startpoint for this piece - we lived on Burton Stone Lane and would approach the City Centre from Bootham, I’d consider ‘town’ to begin at the Theatre Royal, and so our walk into yesteryear will begin just down the road.
It was the age of the ‘Arcade’ and to my knowledge, York had two; Davygate Arcade and Stonegate Walk (previously Arcade). I remember little of Stonegate other than the decaying glass roof and the prominence of ‘Crackpots’ at the front on Blake Street - the kind of retailer I’d refer to as a ‘nonsense shop’ nowadays, but as a child was a utopia of novelty tat - a cascade of flashing, dinging oddities you most certainly didn’t need but were sought regardless - think dancing Coke cans, strobe Yo Yos and giant Casio Watch wall clocks. Tat.
As I grew older I remember thinking it a shame that the majority of the units on the Walk were unoccupied given the aesthetic of the area was actually quite charming - maybe its glory days were just before my time. Davygate too appeared to have seen better days - of the striplights that were lit, the majority flicked, gloomy illuminating the very few outlets actually still trading in there. I only recall three - a video games store, a knitting supplier and, at the end - the bright lights of Wimpy. I have zero recollection of ever eating in the fast-food chain, but have vivid memories of an unfortunate Mr Wimpy, the burger mascot, being knocked over and rolled past the Woolwich Building Society and down Parliament Street by merciless teenagers.
We had savings accounts at the Woolwich, and would actually physically go into the branch to make deposits. You heard that right - in an act seemingly inconceivable in the modern day, Banks and Building Societies would open, six days a week, for more than a few hours at a time. Mind-blowing. I once innocently asked the cashier “how much money is in this bank” to which he replied “lots, but not enough to buy all the Pick & Mix in Woolworths round the corner”.
He probably wasn’t wrong. The P&M section in Woolies was so vast it could have commanded its own postcode - a gargantuan array of kaleidoscopic sugar lighting up the windows like some form of confectionary coliseum. They surpassed themselves as Candy Kings one Easter when, surrounded by an army of regular-proportioned chocolate eggs, a giant Cadbury’s Cream Egg, a metre high with the actual white fondant filling, went on sale at £200. I often wonder if it ever sold.
There are fewer things fonder in the heart of a youngster than sweets, but ask them their deepest affection and they’ll tell you, distinctly unsentimental, of another; toys.
As a child I naturally gravitated towards Toy shops and would attempt to cajole my mum into either Londons (a trek out of town), Toymaster (ace selection of Subbuteo) or Hamleys (in it’s very brief spell on Coney Street), but the highlight was always a trip down Coppergate. The Toy department in the basement of Fenwicks was a wonder to behold and still gifts fond memories despite my falling down the escalator (from top to bottom) and the occasion I was denied a long-desired Donetello figure as hordes descended upon the unboxing of a shipment of the elusive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys - a 4ft victim of grown adults in a frenzied scrum, bulldozing the hapless shop assistant to rip open the cardboard packaging of the years ‘must have’ present.
Yet the sentiments of pain (both emotionally and literally) were surpassed by the sense of confusion and perplexion on the day that Father Christmas appeared both in the Fenwicks grotto, and again at another venue across the river just thirty minutes later. My mother’s explanation - “he must have a boat”.
And where was that second Santa site? The jewel in York’s Christmas crown of course - the Winter Wonderland at Victoria House. The Co-Op experience was unrivalled, revolutionary even - folk had never seen anything like it, the spectacle becoming somewhat of a rite-of-passage for the City’s children to an extent that we still discuss it with endearment all these years later. The sleigh ride, and the snow-strewn walkthrough ‘village’ set the scene before the headline act - St Nicholas himself, and is still cherished by York’s 40-somethings today.
Was it that we were just kids? And would it appear a little naff when up against modern-day technology? Perhaps, but such was its enchantment it still provides a perpetual point of comparison even now. Now having children of my own, and thus visited many Santa ‘spectacles’ over the years, not even the best come close to the Yuletide phenomenon on Bridge Street.
York played host to a wealth of small independent shops; Burgins perfumery and Huxtables to name two, but at seven years old I didn’t really appreciate what they had to offer - the majority of my memories being of the bigger, now extinct (at least in York) brands. We’d often visit British Home Stores for their canteen-style cafe and I was fascinated by their range of Global Hypercolour attire, though looking back I’m unsure of the appeal of a collection of garments - ranging from T-shirts to underwear, that changed colour when exposed to different temperatures. Cue patrons sporting luminous pink underarms on an otherwise green sweatshirt.
My sister worked at Etam for a while so that was on the radar, as was electronics giant Rumbelows on Market Street, though I don’t recall ever stepping inside - my interest in the store being solely based upon their sponsorship of the football League Cup. Yet it was the arrival of Argos on Ouse Bridge that brought the greatest fanfare as curiosity in the new-fangled catalogue concept of shopping gripped the city.
The process of rifling through the brochure, manually completing the little order slip and your purchase appearing from a concealed Aladdins cave was so captivating that we, at Kingsway Junior, had a school trip there just days after its grand opening. Another retailer, though smaller, also deploying a multi-step purchase method was Newitts on Kings Square, where the entire sporting stock was under lock and key behind glass cabinets and thus merely browsing an article required the assistance of an employee. I assume it to have been a security initiative but I remember the whole procedure to have been needlessly convoluted when all you were seeking was a pair of socks. In reality, the shopping experience of Newitts was probably the less arduous of the two, but the wanting of ‘novelty value’ made it perceptively inferior to Argos.
We grew older and trips into the centre saw the shift focus from toys to other avenues to spend (squander) pocket money. Having ousted Wimpy from it’s Davygate home, we’d dine in Burger King before pursuing the Eclipse Jeans in Precinct, scan the pre-owned pleasures of Bulmers, be sensually assaulted by abstruse aromas when passing Forever Changes, and laugh when someone had - yet again - poured bubblebath in the Fountain on Parliament Street. We were never too old for sweets in Woolies though.
A few years later jaunts into town were no less frequent but, as we came of age, a number of doors - previously prohibited - began to open, and behind each one was the overbearing scent of stale cigs and Carlsberg export. Brubakers and Edwards bookended Micklegate, the Brewers Arms was a multi-floor marvel and the walk to the Old Orleans toilets was a distance event in itself. I was never a big fan of Nightclubs but would frequent the Lowther to obtain a ‘PubToClub’ voucher for discounted entry into The Gallery, visited purely because it was the only place to get a drink after 10.30pm on a Sunday. I’d touch upon The Willow but this article would double in size to do justice to the stuff that went on in there.
It’s famously said that York once had a pub for every day of the year. If it were to include ‘licensed premises’ then the quantity of places to get a drink would now be substantially more given the growing ‘cafe culture; within the city. A sign of the times perhaps. The same can be said for the sheer volume of people within the City Centre - in the days before extended opening, late licences and Sunday trading there were ‘quieter times’ to visit town, but nowadays it seems such an occasion has ceased to exist.
Readers will each have their own memories of York from days gone by and I’d imagine those older than myself are able to offer an even greater insight into the past. Youth, perspective, and the odd pair of rose-tinted glasses all influence how we remember a time and place - were things actually as we remember?
They say that one should always look forwards, but with a past so rich as the city we call home, it doesn’t hurt to take a look back.
