TWO commemorative plaques will be unveiled in the city this week to honour York’s famous citizens.

James Bond music composer John Barry, 77, the winner of five Academy Awards for film scores and songs - will have a plaque unveiled outside of the Pavilion Hotel, in Fulford, at 12.30pm tomorrow, by York Civic Trust.

Real name John Barry Prendergast, he was the son of Jack Prendergast; the entrepreneur who ran the Rialto, the iconic York cinema/ concert venue.

York Press:

The family – Mr Prendergast senior; his wife Doris, a classically trained pianist; and three children, eldest brother Pat, June, and Barry – lived in a semi-detached house in Hull Road, until John was 14. They then moved to Fulford to what is now The Pavilion Hotel.

Barry, who died in 2011, attended the Bar Convent school and then St Peter’s and was a music lover from an early age.

He first found success in the 1950s with his own band The John Barry Seven, which was made up of members all from York, Scarborough or Leeds.

Their first performance was at the Rialto in 1957 and his career took off from there.

He had early hits with The John Barry Seven such as Hit And Miss and found fame on the famous 007 franchise when he was asked to spruce up the James Bond theme tune for Dr No.

The second plaque will be unveiled on Thursday outside 30 Clifton - the former home of Edna Annie Crichton - the city’s first woman Lord Mayor from 1941 to 1942.

The ceremony will be carried out by the current Lord Mayor of York, Cllr Barbara Boyce.

Edna Crichton was born on May 8, 1876 to the Quaker family of Joseph Marshall Sturge and his wife Anne or Annie, née Burke, who had met on the West Indian island of Monserrat.

Her year in office was to be the most dramatic in the modern history of York.

In April 1942 York was bombed in the so-called ‘Baedeker’ raids.

Up to a third of homes were destroyed or badly damaged, as many as 90 people were killed and about 200 injured.

The fifteenth century Guildhall was hit with Edna living next door in The Mansion House, but she carried out her duties unperturbed and went from bombed home to bombed home, setting a “magnificent example”.

In September 1955 she was awarded the honorary freedom of the City of York, only the second woman to be honoured, and her retirement was spent in York where she died in a nursing home at the age of 93 in March 1970.

A room in the West Offices is named The Crichton Room and a street in York, Crichton Avenue, is named after her.