As the decade draws to a close, newspapers everywhere are looking back at how The Noughties changed things.

That’s a little too close to home for Yesterday Once More. We prefer to look a little further back in time. A hundred years back, in fact.

So here’s our review, in pictures, of the year 1909.

We are obviously a little limited as to choice of photographs – there weren’t quite as many photographers around back then as there are now. But a trawl through the City of York Council’s Imagine York archive suggests there were two major events that were recorded for posterity on camera that year.

One was the passing of York’s horse-drawn trams. Our photo, taken on September 7, 1909 in The Mount, York, shows one of the very last trams in its final few days of operation.

“Epps’s Cocoa, the Very One You Want” says the advertising legend. If you are thinking the horses look a little miserable, you are probably right. “Towards the end, the horses were badly neglected,” notes the caption to this photograph.

The horse-drawn trams made way for electric trams. Our next photo, also taken in 1909, shows engineers and council inspectors viewing the new electric tram lines being laid in Station Avenue. Things would never be quite the same again.

The other major event in York in 1909 – at least judging by the surviving photographic archives – was the great pageant in Museum Gardens.

For six days in July the city’s people watched a re-enactment of more than 2,000 years of history. Some 2,500 actors were used, as well as dancers, schoolchildren and soldiers.

The many scenes re-enacted included the mythical founding of York by Greek soldiers in 800BC (which, if true, would make this city older than Rome) and the surrender of Saxon York to William the Conqueror.

The one we reproduce shows the ‘glory of the Emperor Constantine’ – the great emperor of Rome proclaimed in York, who went on to convert the whole empire to Christianity.

Not everything went quite so smoothly, though. The 2,500 performers were all unpaid, records the caption to another photo showing a rehearsal in Museum Gardens – “much to the annoyance of some of the working class members who struggled to manage the time from work to attend rehearsals”.

The centrepiece of the pageant, from which many of the spectators observed the proceedings, was a 100 foot long stand constructed specially in Museum Gardens. It was designed by the city surveyor, Mr FW Spurr, and took two weeks to complete.

And in our last photo, stepping forward into the limelight after 100 years, are some of the 40 men – employees of the Hungate Saw Mills – who built it. Hat’s off to them.

• Photographs courtesy of the City of York Council’s Imagine York website, imagineyork.co.uk