Edwardian Micklegate: plus 5 other great postcards from York's past

As we explained last week, Peggy recently moved into a care home in Kexby.

Her daughter Patricia Emmett was clearing out her mum’s house, and came across a collection of dozens of old postcards of York and North Yorkshire, which seem to date from the early 1900s.

We have a great one today (top) showing Edwardian Micklegate, complete with horse-drawn carts and carriages and two women in magnificent black hats.

Other cards, which all seem to date from about the same period, show:

Two schoolboys, dressed in what looks like Edwardian school costume, sitting on the wooden railings that surround The Green, Acomb

Acomb Green. From the Peggy Sterriker collection

Skeldergate Bridge

Skeldergate Bridge. From the Peggy Sterriker collection

Shambles - with a little boy holding his even littler sister’s hand as they walk down the middle of the street, watched by some of the resident butchers

Shambles. From the Peggy Sterriker collection

The yew garden at Heslington hall, in the days long before this became the HQ of York University

Heslington Hall. From the Peggy Sterriker collection

A Military Sunday parade. We’re not even sure where this photograph was taken. Does anyone know? If so, we’d love to hear from you...

Military Sunday Parade, York. From the Peggy Sterriker collection

UPDATE ON ST HELEN'S SQUARE

ONE of the postcards from Peggy Sterriker’s collection which we reproduced last week showed St Helen’s Square, York, in July 1904. 
The square was clearly much narrower then than it is now, and we asked if any readers could shed light on what the building to the right of the photograph was.

St Helen's Square in July 1904. From the Peggy Sterriker collection

Reader and local historian Peter Stanhope has kindly done just that.

He consulted his copy of the late and much-missed historian Hugh Murray’s book Dr Evelyn’s York. St Helen’s Square before 1929, he found, was a narrow street widening to a ‘small triangular area in front of the church at the beginning of Davygate. The Lord Mayor’s view of the church from the Mansion House was almost entirely obscured by a range of buildings at the end of Coney Street, set back a few feet from the rest of the buildings on that street and projecting into a much narrower square than today’. 

Facing the Mansion House in Dr Evelyn’s day, Peter says, were the premises of Walter Winspear, a Fancy Goods Dealer, who sold among other things perfumes, toys and Titterton’s celebrated hair and toilet brushes.

Around the corner in the area facing the church and entry to Davgate was Harker’s Hotel, named after the landlord Christopher Harker, which was a large hotel popular with the ‘carriaged’ classes (presumably those who could afford a carriage of their own). Modern Harker’s Bar, on the opposite side of the square, is named after this hotel, although it was never a hotel itself - it was, for many decades, the HQ of the Yorkshire Insurance Company, Peter says. 

Harker’s Hotel was demolished in the widening of St Helen’s Square - but Peter has kindly sent us a photograph of it (below). “In its place rose a neo-Georgian building by TP Bennett, which now houses Betty’s, the Edinburgh Wool Shop and the building now occupied by Black’s, which was previously a bank,” Peter says.
Many thanks, Peter.

Harker's Hotel, St Helen's Square. Photo: Peter Stanhope