IN Georgian times, Micklegate was truly one of York's great streets: a wealthy, fashionable district, where many rich and important citizens lived.

You can still see elements of that in our first photograph today. Taken in 1905, it shows several fashionable women promenading down one side of the street, hats primly in place. On the opposite side, although admittedly a little grainy, you can see more well-dressed women looking in a shop window.

It is the two horse-drawn vehicles that really draw the eye, however. One looks as though it could be a grocer's cart - it is pulling out from what is presumably, these days, George Hudson Street, on the corner of which is family grocer G Britton - while the other is much more elegant: heading directly towards the camera, the driver with a long whip in hand.

The whole scene is leisurely and dignified, in a way that suits the beautiful Georgian buildings on this often overlooked street.

The Micklegate photo comes from our own archives here at The Press: as do our next few images. One shows Kings Staith. There is no date, unfortunately, but it is clearly from a time when this was very much a working wharf, as the boats drawn up at the water's edge reveal. We would hazard a guess that this photo may well have been taken in Victorian times.

There's certainly an appearance of almost Dickensian squalor and even danger about the scene: you wouldn't want to walk alone at night down one of the alleyways leading to the river-front.

Fast forward to 1958, and the re-laying of cobbles at Kings Staith. It's an entirely different scene: the gentrification of this part of York is clearly well under way.

And finally, two more photos from our archives. One shows the Reklaw barge gliding under Layerthorpe Bridge as it reaches its journey's end on the River Foss; the second, taken a few years later, is a wonderful, high-angle look along Lendal.

The date is April 13, 1960: and if you look carefully you can see, half way along the street on the left hand side as you look at it (so just past what even then was the Post oOfice) the old Rowntree shop.