Santa to get new home in York’s city centre

The weather may currently be warm and sunny but a nursery is already drawing up plans to give children a suitably special visit to Father Christmas during the festive season.

Vanessa Warn, owner of Little Green Rascals, a private Organic Children’s Day Nursery, says the winter wonderland will be based in the church hall alongside Central Methodist Church in St Saviourgate, where the nursery has been running a cafe play room through the summer holidays, called Rascals in the City.

She said that with assistance from York artist Gerard Hobson, she aimed to create a magical festive world for children to wander through on their way to the grotto, decorated with fairy lights, fake snow and polar bears.

“We have a huge space and a room off it so it seems ideal to create a grotto,” she said.

“When we heard we could have the hall for the play room in the three weeks up to Christmas, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.”

She said she aimed to open the grotto on December 5 and would probably continue with it up until Christmas Eve, and was looking at a likely admission price of £5 per child.

“Parents will be able to relax and have a coffee before taking their children into the grotto to see Santa.”

Santa has had a chequered history in York city centre since Yorkshire Cooperative’s Victoria House department store in Micklegate - where he had a spectacular grotto including a simulated reindeer and sleigh ride - closed down in 1997.

The Press saved the dreams of thousands of children that year by creating a grotto on the patio at York Theatre Royal, helped by businesses, organisations and individuals, including the army, who put up a hospital field tent to host the grotto.

In 2006, a church stepped into the breach by organised a special winter wonderland at the Rock-plex Centre, situated at the back of the Rock Church in Priory Street, off Micklegate.

In 2011, staff at a commercial grotto in Exhibition Square tickets were verbally abused by some parents, who claimed that a discount website had incorrectly said it featured a train ride, and police were later called in to investigate a row with unhappy elves who claimed they had not been paid fully.

Last year, Santa got a new city centre home when York’s Chocolate Story created a log cabin grotto in Kings Square as part of the city’s St Nicholas Fayre.

Families were asked to design their own chocolate bar and post their design to the chocolate room at the North Pole to be judged by a ‘confectionery elf’ called Joseph Pinetree.