York: A city of history and so much more.

A day in York

By Blake Mills

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York's ancient cathedral, called the Minster, first opened its doors in 627 AD

"The history of York is the history of England"
King George VI

And like that, my childhood dreams had been fulfilled. There I was standing at the door to the wizarding world. I have been to Harry Potter World at Warner Bro’s Studios upwards of five times, but this was different. This was actually real. I found myself in Diagon Alley.

The sign for the mediaeval street Shambles, rumoured to be the inspiration for Diagon Alley.

The sign for the mediaeval street Shambles, rumoured to be the inspiration for Diagon Alley.

Several hours earlier, I was approaching York station. After a stressful morning which included slept through alarms and missed trains, I was still confident that I had arrived in Yorkshire early enough to make the most out of the Roman city.

This was only my second time visiting York, the first was a family trip when I was ten. And with my earliest booking not until the afternoon, I felt a little lost walking through the train station, wondering how easy it would be to find something to do.

As a history enthusiast, which as it turns out is a great thing to consider yourself when visiting York, my first port of call hit me as soon as I left the station. Almost the very first thing you are met with upon exit, just past the bus stops and the busy road that you would expect from any modern city, are the ancient city walls.

“When the Normans arrived in 1066, they built the city walls for defence, the city would have had walls completely surrounding it. There are cities with walls around them all over Europe, and York’s are the most complete set in the country,” explained John Gallery, a voluntary guide of York. He is part of the 80 strong team of the Association of Voluntary Guides to the City of York, who offer free walking tours of the city.

“Much of the already existing Roman fortress walls,” John continued, “were used by the Normans to build the city walls. There is one section on the tour where the Roman ruined walls were left exposed, and you can actually see how the Normans used the Roman walls.

“There is one tower in particular, called Multangular Tower, where the bottom half is Roman, and the other half is Norman.”

Sign, forbidding dogs from entering the walls.

Sign, forbidding dogs from entering the walls.

Steps that help to navigate the city walls.

Turrets on top of a tower on York's city walls

Benches atop the city wall.

A pathway along York's city walls with the green of tree leaves surrounding the ancient stone

A section of York's city walls.

Cars and busses are seen juxtaposing the ancient walls behind them

York's ancient city walls are the first thing you see as you leave the train station.

Turrets on a tower of the city walls, with green leaves in the background

City walls with the green back drop of trees.

Sheltered steps with banister leading the ancient walls down to street level

Steps, connect the walls with the street below.

Tracing the ancient walls was not an easy task in a day that I would go on to take 33,000 steps. As I began to feel hungry, I ventured towards the Shambles Food Court. I am of the (somewhat silly) opinion that a city can contain as many restaurants with Michelin stars or top marks on TripAdvisor as it likes, but it cannot and should not be considered a culinary city if it does not have top quality street food.

I have no reason to bare this opinion other than the fact I love good quality, tasty food from all over the world, but for a whole lot cheaper than a flight, or a five-course meal in a fancy restaurant. And while the UK as a whole is not necessarily known for its street food (or its food in general if we are honest), I was hopeful.

As someone who actively seeks street food wherever I go, I know that this country can produce some gems. From the world-famous Camden Market in London to lesser-known markets like Quayside in Newcastle or Gloucester Green in Oxford, street food is an essential for a city to receive the Blake Mills seal of approval (perhaps the world’s least sought-after accolade).

Despite the pressure of a successful trip laying on its shoulders, the food did not disappoint. I perused the various stalls that offered food from many cultures, and while usually I would have been persuaded by the smells of Thailand or India, I felt myself craving the halloumi and falafel wrap from Moroccan vendor: Los Moros.

At £9, the grilled halloumi and falafel in a wrap with lettuce, Moroccan salad, pickled slaw, chermoula mayo and Yorkshire honey, could not be considered cheap, but it was worth every penny. A delicious filling meal that set me up for an afternoon of exploring.

Wrap purchased from the Shambles Food Court, served in green and white checked paper

I was excited to try my wrap from Los Moros.

Eating the wrap reveals bright pinks and greens filling the wrap

The colourful filling of the wrap.

I cannot recommend this wrap enough.

The food on offer could well conquer any craving that you may have, and in a place such as York, with history packed into every street corner, I could not help but wonder how the city’s residence of the past, long forgotten by time, would react to such a choice of food, how the diets of modern Yorkies differed from that of the old.

“A lot of what we know about what people were eating in York in the past comes from the ‘Lloyds Bank turd,’” John explains, “when a new building is being built in the City, and an old one has to be taken down, there is a rule that there has to be six weeks given for archaeologists to excavate, and if they find something, they extend the time.

“And when the new Lloyds building was being built in the 1970s, they found this ‘turd’ as it had ended up in a bed of peat so it had been very well preserved so they could analyse it and its contents.

“Diets would have largely been centred on locally produced fruits and vegetables, they would be grown on rented slices of land, called burgages, and would be taken to market, and those who could afford meat would go to the butchers, but this was more of a luxury.”

Lloyd Bank, 2 Pavement, York City Centre

The building of Lloyds bank in the city centre revealed some information on the diets of ancient inhabitants of the city.

With a full belly, I ventured to the street that the food court gains its name from. This was perhaps my most anticipated activity of my visit to York. I am not even slightly exaggerating (nor embarrassed) when I say that I have seen the first three Harry Potter films at least 100 times - if anything this is a slightly conservative guess.

The Shambles, rumoured to be one of two inspirations for Diagon Alley, lived almost wholly up to the anticipation. My only (and admittedly unrealistic) wish is that akin to the series, the street continued as far as the eye could see and was lined with magical stores with witches and wizards going about their normal day.

All jokes aside, the Shambles really is an essential visit for history and Harry Potter fanatics alike. Perhaps the busiest 120m in the whole of York, it is rammed with camera phones, their owners routed to the middle of the narrow street.

Unsurprisingly, the Shambles did not start its life as a tourist hotspot filled with people wishing to be a part of a fictional wizarding world (or perhaps this was just me), mentioned as early as the 1086 Doomsday book of William the Conqueror, many of the buildings were built as early as 1350.

“The correct name, is actually just Shambles, which comes from the Norse word for shelf, which is ‘shammel.’ The street housed all of the butchers, they would hang the meat on hooks out of the window and there would be shelves with trays on underneath to catch the dripping blood,” John explained.

“So that’s where it gets its name from. The word shammel just eventually became distorted and changed into what we now know it as.

“Words throughout history do change like we see in the name York itself. The Roman name for it was Eboracum. During the Anglo-Saxon period this was changed to Eoforwīc,” which is pronounced eethor, “then when the Vikings arrive, they call it Jórvík. Finally, when the Norman’s arrive it becomes York.”

As evening approached, I decided to sample a popular activity for tourists intent on enjoying the history of the city, by joining one of the many ghost tours on offer. I joined The Deathly Dark Ghost Tour of York, the 2022 winner of the Visit York Award.

The tour cost only a very reasonable £10 for 90-minutes, during which I hoped to be scared out of my wits and despite not believing in any afterlife, see some ghosts. In all honesty, there was not so much of a whisper of a ghost, and excluding the occasions where our tour guide, Dorian Deathly, gleefully made us jump, I would not have considered myself particularly scared.

In spite of this however, I was not left feeling disappointed. Dorian was funny, knowledgeable, and passionate. Telling us true historical stories about the city, even if they were slightly embellished to include themes of the supernatural.

In a particularly morbid passage, Dorian provided background information to an event that led to the death of a small girl from starvation. Not before however, she watched her whole family die of the plague, trapped inside what had once been the safety of their family home. The girl, Dorian said, still haunts the house to this day.

Explaining how poor medical understanding at the time could lead to such a horrific story, Dorian told us with enthusiasm, outside the famous York Minster: “when people had septicaemic plague, not a single person would survive. So, a few doctors came up with the idea of cleansing and purifying the blood.

“This was very difficult to do when it was still in you, so they would remove just enough until you were a little brown under the eyeballs, a little grey in the skin.

“Then, they would quickly take the blood,” he continued, “put it in a big metal basin and heat it up over an open flame until it was bubbling. Next, they would take the blood and they would put it back in you. They would let it cool off first, they weren’t just shovelling boiling hot blood into people. But of course, those people still died.”

Dorian’s passion for the stories he told, and the history behind them was evident. However, after the tour had ended, Dorian explained to me that this passion was ignited only after he started the job.

“A friend of mine who was working in London for a company called the Ghost Bus Tours, got into contact with me and said that they were launching one in York. And I went and met the guy in the Golden Fleece,” he told me.

“I had an audition, and we had a chat, and I got the job. I was not really into history at the time, but now I am very much a bit obsessed. It was really strange, I discovered it in my mid-thirties, and I was buying more and more books, and I was learning more about Yorkshire history.

“Outside of Yorkshire I have not got a clue about much that is going on at all. I just enjoy sharing York with people really. It is such a great city, and you have got to do a ghost tour when you come to York. It is just mint that so many people come and do ours. There are much worse things to do for a living really.”

Dorian Deathly stands high above his tour group. Set against the blue sky as a background, next to York's Minster

Tour guide Dorian Deathly animatedly tells us creepy ghost story outside of the York Minster.

Despite being a York tour guide for 10 years, Dorian, originally from Scarborough, a town on the Yorkshire coast an hour north of York, has been working for his current tour company since it first began providing tours, in August 2020.

“This company was supposed to start in February 2020, and then as you know something happened in March. It’s been a weird ride. We went online and did a lot of virtual stuff. We had a bit of a viral explosion of it all,” he said.

“We would end up with like tens of thousands of people watching online, which gave us a really good foundation to launch the tour. There’s around a dozen in York but we are the newest one and we have very quickly become one of the most popular.”

York really has it all. This article has barely scraped the surface of things to do in this city. Of course, it has the historical sites and the stories to go with it. But it also has a huge student population, and the vibrant pubs, clubs, and nightlife to accommodate them.

There are coffee shops, bridges, and architecture from every period. Independent shops and restaurants, and almost any chain that you may require too. York is known for its beauty and history, and do not get me wrong, it has these in abundance.

But while these common themes are what I have focused on, I am sure that those who may not be interested, will find something they enjoy in this city. Yes, it is the city of history, but also it is a city for everyone.