Crafting The Past

Our main conclusion is that this is a project that will never be finished.

From our initial query our project has developed into a fuller picture of the street and it’s inhabitants. However some information is very sketchy. It is likely that we have found as much information about our property as we are likely to, although we will continue to dig and will continue to add info to the site as we find it.

One of the unexpected outcomes of the project was it feeding into the the dialogue of the future of the High Street, and it has been interesting to see Towns with Heritage Action Zone funding now looking at similar projects. It is also interesting to see the street as a much more neighbourly entity than it is today. Many of the families, both the owners and tenants, lived  and worked there prior to the end of the 19thc, playing, marrying and growing the generations. We also found lots of links to a number of the great families of Yorkshire, as well as mayors, aldermen and those who shaped York into a growing city

The rapid booking of the classes we held also shows that there is a lot of interest in Heritage Crafts, so we will look at developing these much more, especially the metalwork ones

Pre covid we had meetings with the Merchant Taylor’s archivist, Merchants Adventurers staff, Mansion House, York BID, Head of York Civic Trust and the Georgian Society, all of who were very interested in our findings, and happy to share any information they had.  These are all relationships we plan to pick up again.

We will also be running an event for Heritage Open Week from the 18th-20th September discussing our research