Beautiful as they are, they’ve not always been so highly treasured by the city. Two hundred years ago, they were very much under threat.
It reminds us to think about whether we make the most of our walls – or do we perhaps take them for granted? And if so, what more might be done with them?
In 1800, a series of petitions were made by York Corporation to the House of Lords. They appealed for permission to remove the city walls, posterns, the bars and their barbicans. The petitions were refused, fortunately.
Shocking as this sounds today, it highlights challenges York was facing at the time … and with some resonance today.
Our modern thinking that grand medieval walls are amazing heritage, which leads to tourism and income, was still a century away in 1800. Instead, the walls were seen as a financial burden on York and its citizens.
Other British cities with medieval walls, such as Edinburgh and Newcastle, had by 1800 recently pulled them down, making it more tempting for York to follow.
York was hoping to sell off the materials of the walls and the rampart land to pay for other city improvements – practical ones, such as desperately-needed repairs at Ouse and Foss Bridges.
By the 1800s, York’s walls had fallen into great disrepair. They were largely still shattered by cannon fire and tunnelling that had occurred in the Civil War siege of the city in 1644. They then suffered a century of theft of stone and illegal encroachment on the ramparts from buildings and gardens – with some of the latter still evident today.
The budget for annual repairs had been £20 in 1721 – or £3,600 in today’s money. But this was evidently insufficient; by 1827, a report suggested that £5,000 (nearly £500,000 today) was required to repair the walls – a huge sum given how cheap the cost of labour was then.
Is the council’s current budget sufficient to sustain our walls? Despite a dedicated team of stonemasons, erosion, cracks, and sagging is evidently taking its toll on some of the walls.
It’s a controversial idea for some, but international cities charge tourists to access their city walls (€29 in Dubrovnik). Could the income be ring-fenced for the maintenance of York’s walls and other monuments?
Another reason for the 1800 petitions was because the walls physically constrained the city. The width of the barbicans was too narrow for the volume of horse-drawn traffic, creating bottlenecks, and there were no separate gates for pedestrian access – all passed under portcullis. (And we think our city’s traffic problems are bad!)
For the city to function in the emerging industrial age, it simply wanted to break free of its walls.
The arrival of the railways in the 1830s and 40s also led architect G.T. Andrews to insert 70ft wide railway arches in the walls near Queen Street, and narrower ones on Station Road and near Tanner’s Moat. The arches allowed access to the original railway station, part of which survives as the Council’s West Offices, and for the railway coal depot at Tanner’s Moat.
If there was a clue our mediaeval walls were largely rebuilt by the Victorians, it is these arches!
Attitudes to conservation have evidently changed greatly since the 1840s. But it is interesting to ask under what conditions, with what public gains, would a new 70ft arch in the city walls be allowed today?
York as a tourist destination developed from the late-nineteenth century onwards. The appeal of its walls was fundamental. Chester aside, York is a unique English city for its medieval walls.
Think how prominent the walls are in historic photos or postcards of the city – many with that iconic view looking along the walls, over Lendal Bridge, and with the Minster standing majestically beyond, or those vibrant, vintage railway posters advertising trips to York.
The walls also give the city a clear sense of definition – within the historic core, and without; perfect for tourists to find their bearings.
How different might York have been had the walls been demolished in the early nineteenth century? It’s impossible to say, but with so many people in York employed in the tourist sector, would we still be attracting 10m visitors annually without our city walls?
Dr Duncan Marks is York Civic Trust’s civic society manager
