IT is often said that to fully appreciate York’s quirky beauty, you have to raise your eyes above street level when walking around.

It is only then you begin to notice the details that make this such a special city - the gargoyles, grotesques, coats of arms, clocks, sundials, lanterns and weather vanes that adorn the Georgian and Victorian buildings.

They’re often not easy to spot at first. But once you get your eye in, you’ll start to see more. And more...

Retired seamstress Catherine Sotheran has decided to give you a helping hand. The 57-year-old, who was born and bred in York, has always liked taking photographs in a casual sort of way.

After joining the York Past & Present Facebook group, she began photographing buildings in York. But hers aren’t wide-angle, landscape-style photos that show the whole building. Instead, she likes to zoom in on those oddball details.

She began by photographing rainwater hoppers – the junctions at the top of metal rainwater gutters. Often, she says, they’ll have marks which identify when they were made or who made them, or will have the initials of the householder stamped on them. You only have to look to see.

From there, she moved on to clocks, and sundials, and cats and carved figures.

She began posting her photos on the York Past & Present group page.

“People seemed to like them, and a few suggested that I do a book,” she says.

So she did. The result is York In Close Up – a collection of more than a thousand photographs focusing in on all the details that make York’s buildings so special.

York Press:

Catherine Sotheran

They’re organised by theme. So there are almost 30 cats; a selection of eccentric milestones and boundary markers; a great collection of clocks and sundials; and no fewer than six pages of photographs of heraldry and coats of arms.

There’s a section on doors; one devoted to fire insurance marks; another dedicated to lamps and lanterns; and two pages depicting a wonderful menagerie of animals, from brass pigs (in Swinegate, naturally) and a carved unicorn (symbol of justice) above the crown court to a wonderful elephant’s-head doorknocker on Petergate that comes complete with a mahout perched between its ears.

Perhaps best of all are the pages devoted to the carvings of figures. ‘Permanent Residents’, Catherine has called this section of the book. It features the characters from Shakespeare’s plays carved on to the frontage of York Theatre Royal; countless imps and sprites and gargoyles; and the poignant image of a nurse carved on to the Boer War memorial in Duncombe Place, her face drawn into an expression of profound compassion.

The aim of the photos, Catherine says, is to get people walking about the city, and looking.

When people saw her photos on the Past & Present Facebook page, she says, they used to say things like, “I walk past that building every day but I never noticed that.” You’ll say exactly the same about this book.

To make things a bit easier for you, Catherine uses a key to label each of her photos, and at the back of the book there are maps indicating where you should look.

But she doesn’t want to make it too easy. She’s included street names to help you find things – but not the precise locations. “Some may take a bit of searching for,” she warns. “For me, that’s part of the pleasure, finding things in slightly less obvious places.”

York In Close Up by Catherine Sotheran is available, priced £14.95, from walker.yorkie@gmail.com or via Catherine Sotheran’s Facebook page. Catherine will also be selling her book from a stall at the Clifton Library craft fair on April 1 from 10am-1pm.

TEST YOURSELF: look at our gallery of photographs, and see how many you can recognise.

The answers are below...

QUIZ ANSWERS:

1 Carved face in Coney Street;

2 Lamp outside the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall;

3 Weathervane in Bishopthorpe Road;

4 Carved unicorm above York Crown Court;

5 Coat of arms at Fishergate School;

6 Lamp in King Street;

7 Pigs at Swinegate;

8 Elephant’s-head doorknocker on Petergate;

9 Clock in the window at St Saviour’s, St Saviourgate;

10 Nurse carved on the war memorial at Duncombe Place;

11 Carved figure in Guildhall Yard;

12 Rainwater hopper at Low Petergate;