Marygate, Micklegate, Ousegate
In our continuing alphabetical exploration of the history of York through its streets and buildings we head to Marygate, Micklegate, Minster Gates, Monkgate, Ogleforth and Ousegate. We will begin at Marygate, once a focal point for the Earls of Northumbria, a street that borders the walls of the eminent St Mary’s Abbey.
Heading across to the other side of the river we then turn to Micklegate that still lives up to its name of being the ‘big’ or ‘great’ street. It is home to Micklegate Bar, historically the most important of York’s great gateways.
Back across the river, other featured streets beginning with ‘M’ include the little Minster Gates in the shadow of York Minster itself and Monkgate, which like Micklegate, gives its name to one of York’s great gateways.
We end at Ousegate (High and Low Ousegate), the historic street leading down to Ouse Bridge across the River Ouse but also include some lesser-known streets like Nessgate, Ogleforth and North Street.
Marygate and St Mary’s Abbey
Marygate runs alongside the walls of St Mary’s Abbey that now enclose the Museum Gardens forming the grounds of the Yorkshire Museum.
Although St Mary’s Abbey lay just outside the city walls it had walls all of its very own that can still seen running alongside the streets of Marygate to the west and Bootham to the north.
The wall of the abbey runs along the whole eastern flank of Marygate from St Mary’s Tower near Bootham to ‘Water Tower’ alongside the River Ouse.
The city walls provided a boundary for the eastern side of the abbey lands and the River Ouse protected the southern edge.
The remains of the abbey that we see today are mainly of the thirteenth century and can be seen in the grounds of the Yorkshire Museum.
These grounds possibly stand within the site of a walled annexe of the Roman fortress of earlier times but this is conjectural. St Mary’s Abbey fell into gradual ruin following King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s.
The Marygate entrance to the monastery grounds stands alongside St Olave’s Church. This church was founded by Siward, the Anglo-Scandinavian Earl of Northumbria about 1055 and is named from St Olaf, a Norwegian saint.
At the time of its foundation by Siward, the location of the new church was called Galmanhowe. Interestingly, Marygate, first recorded as ‘vico Sancte Marie’ in the 1160s, is thought to have originally been called Earlesburgh and may have been the residence of the Earls of Northumbria before the Norman Conquest.
St Olave’s church was rebuilt after the Norman Conquest. During the Civil War in the 1640s, it suffered damage when its tower was used as a gun platform.
In the churchyard of St Olave we find the prominent tomb of the York-born artist William Etty (1787-1849), whose statue can be seen outside York Art Gallery in Exhibition Square. Apprenticed as a young boy to a printer in Hull, he later moved to London where he studied art and became a member of the Royal Academy.
Etty was principally famed for his painting of nudes. He retained a deep interest in his home city and was one of the key figures in preserving the city walls. He was a prominent campaigner for their protection when demolition of the walls was proposed in the 1830s. Etty retired to York due to ill health and died in the city on November 13, 1849.
The dedication of Marygate’s church to St Olave is a reminder of the Scandinavian influence in the former Viking city of York that continued right up to the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, if not beyond.
Following the Norman Conquest the church of St Olave passed to Alan, the Earl of Brittany, who was otherwise known as Alan the Red, Earl of Richmond from the lands that he acquired in Yorkshire.
Alan gave the church and its surrounding land to Stephen, a monk from Whitby to establish the monastery that would later become York’s St Mary’s Abbey.
The site was possibly the location of an earlier Anglo-Saxon monastery. Stephen’s abbey was re-founded by King William Rufus (William II) in 1088-89 and granted further lands. A new abbey church was built and dedicated to St Mary and monks were settled here from Lastingham in Ryedale.
In the early 1130s there were disagreements between rival factions of monks at St Mary’s Abbey, with some factions wishing for a more austere regime. This resulted in a breakaway group of monks from the abbey establishing a new monastery in the valley of the River Skell, near Ripon, encouraged by Thurstan, the Archbishop of York. The new abbey was named Fountains Abbey from the springs of water that existed there.
The Yorkshire Museum, situated in part of the former grounds (now the Museum Gardens) of St Mary’s Abbey was built 1827-30 as the home of the York Philosophical Society by the architect William Wilkins.
It includes biological, geological and astronomy-related items but is best-known for its historic artefacts. They include items from prehistoric, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Medieval hoards, mostly from Yorkshire.
Star attractions in the museum include the Coppergate Helmet, a beautifully-preserved Anglo-Saxon helmet discovered during the archaeological dig at Coppergate in 1982 where most of the finds were connected to the later Viking age.
Another famous feature on display at the museum is the wonderful fifteenth century gold pendant called the Middleham Jewel, unearthed near Middleham Castle in lower Wensleydale in 1985.
Other highlights of the museum (and there are several) include the Ormside Bowl, an Anglo-Saxon bowl of gold, silver and bronze uncovered in 1823 at Ormside in Westmorland, buried close to a Viking warrior. An impressive Anglo-Saxon sword discovered by a school-boy in the Yorkshire village of Gilling West in 1975 is another important item of note.
Within the Museum Gardens is an observatory built 1832-33 that houses some of the museum’s astronomy related artefacts. The Museum Gardens were the creation of the botanist Henry Baines (1793-1878) who is commemorated by a blue plaque.
At the south end of the Museum Gardens close to the River Ouse is the medieval Hospitium which was once the guest house of St Mary’s Abbey (the place of hospitality).
The lower part, a stone ground floor, dates from around 1310 and above is a timber-framed floor of about 1420. Over the years it has been subjected to much rebuilding and restoration including a new roof that was added in 1930.
The Ouse river front just below the Hospitium, stretching from Lendal Bridge westward to the Scarborough Rail Bridge is called Dame Judi Dench Walk and is named from the renowned York-born actress who was born in the Heworth area of the city in 1934.
The Scarborough Rail Bridge carries the railway line to Malton and Scarborough across the River Ouse from York railway station. Close by, along Dame Audi Dench Walk, as we head back towards the Hospitium is a defensive tower called the ‘Water Tower’, where the walls of St Mary’s Abbey reach the River Ouse.
Micklegate and Micklegate Bar
Micklegate has been described by the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘without any doubt the most rewarding street in York’. Micklegate means the ‘great street’ and is still the major historic street in York over on the western side of the River Ouse. Several of the best and biggest houses in the street are of Georgian origin.
Micklegate stretches westward from Bridge Street, at the Ouse Bridge end of the street and then begins to bend slightly south-westward towards Micklegate Bar at the edge of the city wall. Here it passes through the gateway of the bar to become Blossom Street beyond.
Several of the buildings in Micklegate are of Georgian origin, but from the medieval era we have the city walls, Micklegate Bar and three medieval churches.
Micklegate’s three medieval churches are St John the Evangelist; Holy Trinity and St Martin-cum-Gregory. Approaching from the city centre and crossing Ouse Bridge from Bridge Street into Micklegate, the first church we encounter is St John the Evangelist.
Situated on the corner of Micklegate and North Street, near the Ouse Bridge, the church fell redundant in 1934 and has been used for several purposes since. At the time of writing it is a bar called ‘Jalou’.
The church includes Norman features and Perpendicular architecture of the later medieval period. Its most unusual external feature is the short, squat brick and timber-framed tower that dates from 1684.
Southward from North Street, the street of Skeldergate over on the opposite side of Micklegate heads southward following the higher ground on the western bank of the River Ouse. Micklegate, however heads westward from the church.
A little further along, Micklegate is joined on its north side by George Hudson Street which heads out towards the railway station area. From here Micklegate begins to grow in character.
Next, we encounter the narrow St Martin’s Lane joining Micklegate on its south side. It is at this point that Micklegate begins to curve south-westward on its route towards Micklegate Bar. Set back from Micklegate, on the east side of St Martin’s Lane, is the church of St Martin-cum-Gregory.
This church was first mentioned in the Domesday Book and was also mentioned again in 1175, nearly a century later. Parts of the present church date from the thirteenth century with later additions in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Its distinct brick tower dates from 1844, but the church is no longer used for services.
A little further along Micklegate from St Martin’s Lane are two large fine Georgian town houses more or less facing each other. On the north side, one of these has a plaque noting that it was once St Margaret’s School for girls. The house opposite, currently a bar, is a particularly fine Georgian house with a twin entrance door flanked by three columns.
Continuing along Micklegate, the street is joined on its north side by Barker Lane that leads towards the old York railway station site in Toft Green. On the south side of Micklegate, opposite Barker Lane, Micklegate is joined by another lane on the south side. This is Trinity Lane and like St Martin’s Lane is named from a nearby church.
Trinity Lane continues south to join the streets of Bishophill Junior, Bishophill Senior, Fetter Lane (the felters’ lane) and the south end of St Martin’s Lane. Fetter Lane is an offshoot of Skeldergate.
An interesting feature of Trinity Lane is Jacob’s Well close to the Micklegate end of the lane. It is one of York’s more notable medieval timber-framed houses and is of fifteenth or sixteenth century origin.
The curious canopy above the door of the house was a later addition acquired from a house in Pavement. Close by and still in Trinity Lane just north of Jacobs’s Well towards Micklegate is a stone entrance way headed ‘Holy Trinity Rectory’.
The church of Holy Trinity itself is just to the east, set back from Micklegate and sandwiched between Trinity Lane and Priory Street which is the next street to join Micklegate, again on the south side. Priory Street is home to York Baptist church; the Priory Street Centre and St Columba’s United Reformed church.
Holy Trinity church was originally part of a Benedictine priory founded in 1089 by Ralph Pagnell as a cell of Marmoutier. A fire in 1137 damaged much of the building and it was rebuilt so there are only fragments and most of the older parts of the church we see today are of the later thirteenth century.
Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the church became parochial – a parish church. Parts of the priory that surrounded the church remained standing until demolition in 1856.
In legend Holy Trinity churchyard is said to be haunted by the ghost of a mother who died, heartbroken, after her husband was killed in an accident and her child killed by plague. Because the child was a plague victim it was buried separately, away from the city walls. It is said the mother constantly searches the churchyard seeking her child in the hope that her family can be reunited once again.
Back in Micklegate and facing the street opposite Holy Trinity church are a group of three prominent Georgian houses. The first is called Bathurst and situated next to Barker Lane. It can be seen in the photograph below and is of the early eighteenth century.
Next door and the largest of the three houses is Micklegate House, built by the renowned York-based architect John Carr. A plaque on the exterior notes that it was built for John Bourchier (1710-1759), whose ancestor, Sir John Bourchier, was one of the signatories for the execution off King Charles I. The house is now a hotel.
Next along from Micklegate House as we continue south west towards Micklegate Bar is a smaller house with a plaque on the exterior. This is a blue plaque commemorating James Backhouse of York (1794-1869) ‘Botanist, Nurseryman and Quaker Missionary’ who resided here with his brother Thomas (1792-1845).
Continuing along Micklegate but on the opposite side of the street is a row of timber-framed houses of three storeys with shop fronts at ground level. The row dates from around 1600 and has two sets of overhangs, the first above the shop fronts and the second above the first floor.
Finally, at the far south western end of Micklegate we have the great medieval culmination of the street at Micklegate Bar. The southern gateway into York’s city walls, Micklegate Bar was first mentioned in the twelfth century.
The archway of Micklegate Bar is of Norman origin but the bartizans (little towers) were added in the fourteenth century. Micklegate Bar was the most important of the gateways into York as explained by the plaque shown above.
Sadly, the medieval barbican was removed from the bar in the 1820s. The street of Micklegate leads out of the city wall through Micklegate Bar where it becomes Blossom Street.
Unlike Bootham Bar, Micklegate Bar was possibly not situated on the site of an earlier Roman gateway but there was a Roman gateway very close by, perhaps just metres away to the west, facing the edge of Bar Lane. This lane or street joins Micklegate on the north east side near Micklegate Bar and leads towards Toft Green in the old railway station area.
Minster Gates
Continuing our exploration of York streets beginning with ‘M’, Minster Gates is a short northern extension of the street of Stonegate. This is the point at which Stonegate approaches York Minster after intersecting with Petergate and is a very short street. Historically, the street was called (or at least situated near) ‘Bookbinders Alley’ otherwise called ‘Bookbinders Lane’ and before that was known as ‘Book Lane’.
This area had long been associated with the making and selling of books, which may account for the old name.
However, there has been a suggestion that the name comes from the Anglo-Saxon ‘boc-land’ meaning ‘land held by a Royal Charter’. The figure of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom leaning on a pile of books, accompanied by an owl, appears alongside the street sign.
Monkgate and Monk Bar
At 63 feet, Monk Bar is the tallest of York’s bars and is the north-eastern gateway to York’s city walls. It lies at the northern end of Goodramgate, a street that becomes Monkgate on the other side of the gateway. It is not known who the monks were who gave Monkgate and Monk Bar their name.
Monk Bar has four storeys. The first three floors are fourteenth century and the upper floor is fifteenth century. Each floor could be defended like an independent fort, even when the other floors had been captured. In the sixteenth century the bar was used as a freeman’s prison. In more recent times the bar had served as a small museum dedicated to King Richard III. Monk Bar’s barbican was removed from the gateway in 1825.
An interesting brick-built ice house dating from 1800 can be found near the city walls not far from Monk Bar. It was used for storing ice collected in winter, which could later be used in summer time for various purposes. The street of Monkgate has mainly Georgian buildings but the old County Hospital here dates from 1851.
Nessgate
Nessgate leads from Coney Street and Ousegate to Castlegate and the site of York Castle (see Cliffords Tower). The castle stands on a ‘ness’, a Viking and Anglo-Saxon word for a triangular headland.
The street approaches Clifford Street and Cliffords Tower that are situated within the triangular peninsula or ‘ness’ formed from the junction of the River Foss and River Ouse. It forms the well-defended site on which York Castle was built.
‘Ness’ is essentially a ‘nose’ which is why we have several headlands around the British coast that include the word ‘ness’ such as Dungeness, and Caithness.
North Street
North Street over on the western side of York across the Ouse was first mentioned in 1090 when it was called ‘Nordstreta’ and the church of All Saints Church is also first mentioned at this time. The present church dates from the twelfth to fifteenth century. It has a 120 ft spire and a hammer-beam roof. A reconstructed fifteenth century anchorage can be seen in the south-west corner of the church.
North Street is a continuation of Skeldergate and runs parallel to the western bank of the River Ouse. The North Street Postern also known as Barker Tower (see Lendal Bridge) stands at the western end of the street.
There was once a lane connected to North Street of uncertain location called ‘Divlinstones’, recorded as ‘Dyvelinstaynes’ in 1256. The first part of this name comes from the Viking name for Dublin (Dyflinn) and is thought to be associated with Norse-Gael Vikings from Ireland. Dublin, like York, was a major Viking settled city.
Ogleforth
Ogleforth is a narrow old street on the route from Monk Bar to York Minster. It reaches the York Minster area at Chapter House Street and at its southern end, near Monk Bar, it meets Goodramgate opposite Aldwark.
The street-name Ogleforth is thought to be a Scandinavian name which means the ford haunted by an owl. Alternatively, and more likely, it may have belonged to someone called Ugel.
The ‘forth’ part of the name refers to a ford of some kind. What this ford crossed is an interesting question, perhaps a waterlogged ditch of some kind. There are some pleasant Georgian buildings in the street and a notable brick building of the seventeenth century with interesting gables. It was rebuilt using old material in 1960.
The nearby Old Brewery site was the premises of the brewer W.H Thackwray & Co, established in 1805. Later acquired by the brewer John Smiths of Tadcaster in 1929, it ceased brewing in 1940.
Ouse Bridge
Ouse Bridge or ‘Ponte Use’ was recorded at York at the end of the twelfth century but the present Ouse Bridge was built in 1810-20 by Peter Atkinson Junior. The bridge has three eliptical arches, with niches in the piers.
Ouse Bridge stands on the site of a medieval bridge that crossed the River Ouse here. It is the central bridge of three great road bridges over the Ouse at the heart of York and is crossed by Bridge Street, linking Micklegate on the west side of the Ouse with Ousegate over on the east side. The other two bridges are Lendal Bridge to the north and Skeldergate Bridge to the south which were both built by Thomas Page.
In medieval times a chapel dedicated to St William, the saint of York, stood on the north side of Ouse Bridge at the Micklegate end. St William himself is associated with a miracle connected to the bridge.
William was an Archbishop of York who served from 1141 until 1147 when the Pope deposed him. He was later restored in 1153 when a large crowd gathered on the bridge to greet him as he re-entered the city, causing the bridge to collapse. Remarkably, no one was hurt and this was hailed a miracle.
In Roman times, a bridge linked the fortress of Eboracum with the Roman Colonia on the west side of the river. This Roman bridge was situated north of the present Ouse Bridge and was in fact a little nearer to where we now find Lendal Bridge. The Roman bridge roughly aligned with the present day street of Stonegate that partly follows the course of a Roman street called the Via Praetoria on the east side of the Ouse.
Ousegate : High and Low Ousegate
Ousegate, the street leading to the crossing of the River Ouse via Ouse Bridge, was recorded as ‘Usagata’ and ‘Usegate’ in the 1120s and 1130s. There are two parts to this street, namely High Ousegate and Low Ousegate.
Low Ousegate is the shorter western end of the street that approaches Ouse Bridge. The street sign ‘Low Ousegate’ appears on the outside of the old church of St Michael, Spurriergate which can be seen in the photo above.
Church Lane, off the north side of Low Ousegate runs along the west side of St Michael’s church and leads to a secluded courtyard that is also linked to Spurriergate.
Up the bank from the river to the east, Low Ousegate becomes High Ousegate, after meeting with the junction of the neighbouring streets of Nessgate to the south and Spurriergate to the north.
High Ousegate, a longer street than Low Ousegate, eventually terminates at its meeting with Parliament Street, Coppergate, Piccadilly and Pavement. These streets all meet near the church of All Saints in the Pavement.
Ouse, incidentally, is a river-name of Celtic origin that is thought to simply mean ‘water’. It may be related to the Sanskrit word Udso. In its uppermost course the Ouse is called the River Ure where it forms the valley of Wensleydale up in the Pennines. The Ure is joined by the River Swale at Myton-on-Swale near Boroughbridge and a little to the south of here the Ure then changes its name to the Ouse near the villages of Great Ouseburn and Aldwark.
- A-B : Aldwark to Bootham
- C-E : Castlegate, Coppergate, Exhibition Square
- F-J : Fossgate, Fishergate, Goodramgate
- K-L : King Street, King’s Square, Lord Mayor’s Walk
- M-O : Marygate, the abbey, Micklegate, Ousegate
- P : Patrick Pool, Pavement, High and Low Petergate
- S-W : Shambles, Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate
- Y : York City Walls | York Minster | York Origins
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