8 historic pictures of York's Colliergate and King's Square

There are a number of photographs still around these days of Christ Church/ Holy Trinity Church, which stood in King's Square until 1937.

Few are as good as the one we reproduce today from Van's book, however. It was taken in about 1900 - and it is the bustling crowds in their late Victorian clothes that make the photograph.

Holy Trinity is first mentioned in 1268. In 1861, however, the remains of the church were demolished and it was replaced with a 'new' church, Christ Church. Because of its position at the head of Shambles, the church was known locally as the 'butchers' church'.

Towards the end of its life, Van writes, it was used as a pen for cattle and sheep waiting to go to the slaughterhouses. A rather profane use for a church, some might think.

Christ Church was demolished in 1937. But Joyce Douglas, an interview with whom appears in Van's book, remembers it well.

"They say Christ Church was used to house sheep at one time," she recalls.

"Once we had the keys to go in, all I remember was a lot of cobwebs and high pews...But the clock was kept up somehow because it used to strike the quarter hours. I learned to tell the time by that clock.

"My cousin remembers sunlight streaming in through the windows...he said the colours were marvellous."

On Colliergate for many years was an ice cream parlour named Questa's. It was opened in about 1925 by Signor and Signorina Giovanni Questa, who came to York from their native village of Santa Maria del Taro in Italy's Parma province. The couple had eight children.

Their grandson Tony Questa remembers how, during the war, his grandmother was technically an enemy alien. "She used to go to Roundhay Park and to the races. She had to get permission to go two miles out of the city."

Questa's ice cream was made in Spen Lane. As a child, Tony used to help wrapping the ices. "My father John made the ice cream. My Uncle Ernie made ice lollies, Auntie Mary ran the household and did the cooking and washing, Auntie Hilda ran the sweet shop, and Auntie Rita used to sell the ice cream at St Sampson's Square (from a small Questa van). There were other aunties, but they married and moved away."

The ice cream was made in big vats that the mixture was boiled in. "These huge 50 gallon vats, there'd be a tiny amount of vanilla and such a strong taste. It used to be piped up and come through this cooling, corrugated thing, it had to come out at exactly the right temperature...It looked like a milky substance, then it went into the freezers, then it went into a hardening room....and it would become ice cream in blocks."

Tony's father stopped making ice cream in the 1960s when the lease ran out on the factory in Spen Lane. The family kept the shop on. But "my dad always said that it never tasted quite the same after that," Tony recalls.

Another business on Colliergate was Bleasedale's Manufacturing Chemist. The business was founded in 1780 by John Dales, who was alderman, sheriff and twice Lord Mayor of York. William Bleasedale acquired shares in the mid 1800s and when he died in 1888 was sole proprietor.

The firm had special facilities for milling, mixing and sifting roots and seeds, and grinding fine drugs. Early recipes from Bleasedale catalogues included the chest mixture acetum scillae ("Take 60 lbs of squills - a bulbous seashore plant - macerate for seven days with occasional stirring"); and cataplasm of mustard, a cure for typuhus fever, apoplexy and coma ('half pound linseed, half pound mustard seed, boiling vinegar. Mix, then spread on soles of feet.")

The company continued to do well until the National Health Service came into being in 1948. After this, it gradually ran down the manufacturing side of the business and concentrated on wholesaling. In 1982, it moved from Colliergate to a warehouse at Birch Park, Huntington Road.

Whip-ma-Whop-ma-Gate is famously the shortest street with the longest name in York. It was first mentioned in 1505, Val writes, when it was called "Whitnourwhatnourgate". It was later also known as Whitney Whatneygate. The name has nothing to do with wife-beating, Val writes.

Instead, it is thought to mean something like 'neither one thing or the other' - a reference to the fact it is so short it barely even qualifies as a lane.

We started with a lost church, so we'll finish with one too - St Crux, with its wonderful Italianate tower, which once stood on the corner of Pavement and Shambles. The church of the 'saint of the holy cross' was actually mentioned in the Domesday Book, Val writes.

It was here that that body of Thomas Percy, the 7th Earl of Northumberland, was buried in an unmarked grave after he was beheaded in York for leading a failed uprising against Queen Elizabeth 1. His head was put on a spike at Micklegate Bar.

The etching or drawing of St Crux reproduced on these pages comes from the York Oral History Society - but we have Christine Kyriacou to thank for the extraordinary photograph of the church being demolished in 1887.

Both images, like all those on these pages today, appear in Val's book. And why was the church demolished? There were widespread protests from York people at the time, Val writes - but the church seems to have been regarded as unsafe. Dynamite was used in the demolition.

Butchers, Bakers And Candlestick Makers: The Shambles and Colliergate by Van Wilson is published by York Archaeological Trust, priced £9.99

St Crux being demolished in 1887. Picture: Christine Kyriacou

The Questa van in St Sampson’s Square, with Auntie Bena on left and Auntie Rita. (Pic: Andy and Dorothy Brodie)