LAST week in Yesterday Once More we carried a photograph of the old St George's Cinema next to Fairfax House in Castlegate.

We return to the same scene this week: this time with an extraordinary photograph from our archives dated June 19, 1970, which shows St George's Hall in the process of being demolished. "The hall, which closed as a cinema in 1965, is being pulled down to make way for a car park extension," notes the caption.

Inspired by this picture, we've decided to take demolition and change in York as a bit of a theme this week, with a group of photographs from The Press archive.

First up: a picture taken in May 1962, showing the old Botterills horse and carriage depository in the process of being pulled down. The building, next to what is now The Maltings pub, is described in the caption as a 'well known city landmark'. It was pulled down at the same time as most of the old houses in Rougier Street. Rougier Street itself, a bit of research reveals, had been laid out in 1841 as part of the new approaches to the old Railway Station (now the Grand Hotel) and was mostly built by 1843. It was named after the Rougier family, proprietors of a large comb-making factory.

Sadly we don't have much information about Botterills itself, although presumably it was used as stabling for horses in the days of horse drawn carriages. We do love the adverts visible on the far wall, including one for Day, Son and Hewitt, the 'veterans of veterinary fame', one of whose specialisms was 'Kossolian blood tonic gaseous fluid for horses'.

Spurriergate, next, and a series of photographs showing the changes that took place there in the late 1950s and early 1960s. One photo shows the street on a wet December day in 1957, before the major demolition work which was soon to take place. Fast forward to March 1959, and a second photo shows recently-demolished properties on one side of the street. "Passers-by in Peter Lane get this view of the shops in Spurriergate and St Michaels' church," the captions says. Fast forward again, this time to January 1961, and we have a photo which shows "one of the big constructional jobs to be completed shortly...this block of shops in Spurriergate."

York Press:

St Helen's Square at the turn of the nineteenth century

To finish, we head up to St Helen's Square. We have two photographs separated widely by time, but both looking from the direction of the Mansion House towards St Helen's Church. One appears to have been taken at the turn of the last century - or perhaps even earlier - when the surface of the square appears to have been either cobbled or covered in wood blocks. Magean's Irish linen warehouse is on the right of the picture. The second seems, judging by the cars, to date from the 1960s or early 1970s. Keep Left, says a bollard in the centre of the square: an instruction to motorists, presumably, rather than political advice aimed at councillors coming out of the Guildhall...

York Press: This photograph of St Helen’s Square is believed to date from the 1960s or 1970s. Do you know when it was taken?

St Helen's Square in the 1960s or early 1970s