AS York and North Yorkshire welcomes 2007, we look back at New Year celebrations from days gone by.

Our first picture, taken outside the Minster at midnight on December 31, 1929, shows the Archbishop and the Dean welcoming in the new year, no doubt full of hope for 1930.

Celebrations of a different kind had taken place a year earlier, when Harker's Hotel, in St Helen's Square, had been demolished on New Year's Eve. In our next picture, workmen share a joke as they spend New Year's Day 1962 shovelling snow in Davygate, while the couple in the background enjoy a refreshing new year stroll.

On New Year's Eve 1970, the whole city prepared to welcome in York's 1,900th year.

Many kicked off the celebrations at the new year ball in the Assembly Rooms where girls dressed as vestal virgins lit an eternal flame in a Roman ceremony.

A midnight procession by York Gild of Freemen took place too, and Freemen wearing full regalia carried a replica of a Roman lamp from their court in St William's College to Minster Gates, where it was to be kept burning in the window of The Potter's Wheel throughout 1971.

Seven years later, on December 31, 1977, twinkling lights illuminated York Minster and the city walls.

No doubt many hundreds of revellers would have made their way past them on their way to celebrate outside the Minster.

January 1, 1881, was also a memorable day in York's history, as it was the day Skeldergate Bridge opened. It was finally declared free from tolls in 1914.