YORK author Paul Chrystal has reached the 1970s in his series of books about decades that changed York.

And what better way to begin than with a photograph of York in ... the 1960s.

To be fair to Paul, his photo of a mini-skirted girl on the platform of York railway station in 1969 is the perfect curtain-raiser, ushering out the Sixties and preparing the way for the decade to come.

A lovely photo it is too, fusing swinging Sixties style with the Victorian grandeur of the station’s curving, vaulted roof.

Paul doesn’t waste too much time on the Sixties, however - he covered them in his previous book.

York in the 1970s focuses on the decade that followed. It’s a decade that’s often unfairly looked back on with disdain, he writes in the introduction - remembered as ‘the decade in which the lights went out, or the decade that fashion forgot’.

“Why would you want to remember the bombs of the IRA, endless strikes, Austin Allegros, flares and loons and space-hoppers,” he asks.

The answer? You probably wouldn’t, Paul admits.

York Press:

Dury service: a policeman buying tickets for an Ian Dury concert at the University of York. Photo: University of York

Nevertheless, he says there was much to be admired about the Seventies. “Foreign package holidays, a Blue Nun cooling in the fridge, David Bowie on the record player, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on the colour TV, Star Wars on at the pictures, and Concorde flying rich people to Bahrain and New York...”

For York, Paul says, the Seventies was a decade of famous anniversaries (1,900 years since the founding of Roman York, York Minster’s 500th birthday and 50 years since the death of Joseph Rowntree) and a period of consolidation and conservation following the Esher Report.

Stonegate was pedestrianised, crucial restoration work at York Minster completed, York Archaeological Trust got to work methodically excavating the city’s Viking heritage, and the National Railway Museum opened.

York Press:

Demolition of St George's Hall in Castlegate

“Indeed, the 1970s was a decade that defines York,” he writes.

In his new book, he takes the decade a year at a time, chapter by chapter. As usual with Paul’s books, York in the 1970s is beautifully illustrated with old photographs - many of them, this time, from The Press’s own archive. It is, as Paul writes, a book that should be of interest to ‘anyone who has whiled their early life away listening to Dark Side Of The Moon, Band On The Run or Tubular Bells on repeat, who has been scared witless by The Exorcist or who lived it up in Magaluf.’ And who grew up in York while all this was going on, of course...

  • York in the 1970s by Paul Chrystal is published by Amberley, priced £14.99.

York Press: