York Civic Trust Plaques

Norman House

Location of plaque: 48/50 Stonegate

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about Our Lady's Row, the medieval houses all-in-a-row which present such a lovely, wavering face to Goodramgate. Our Lady's Row is often described as the oldest row of houses in York: which may well be the case.

There is a house which is even older, however: the 'Norman House' at 48/50 Stonegate. This is, says a Civic Trust plaque on the wall of the house which faces into a courtyard behind Stonegate, 'without doubt the oldest dwelling house of which any substantial remains still stand... in the city.'

Only two walls, of dressed Norman limestone, remain: and even these are extensively infilled by brick. But it is remarkable enough to have even these. Very few ordinary houses remain from the 1100s, when this is thought to have been built.

The house - or, rather, the walls - were discovered during demolition work in 1939. This revealed the Norman stonework hidden behind Nos 48 and 50 Stonegate.

The visible face of the walls we can see today would have been the inside of the original house, which was set back about 45 feet from the shopfronts on Stonegate. There was an undercroft for storage and, above, a first-floor hall lit by distinctively Norman windows: two arched lights divided by a shaft with a moulded base. Excavations in 1939 also revealed the foundations of three central columns, which would have supported the timber floor of the upper hall.

The fact that the house was built from stone rather than being timber-framed suggests it must have belonged to someone very wealthy: only the richest citizens in Norman times could afford to build in stone. Some of the richest men in England at the time were Jewish financiers: so it may possibly have been built for one of the wealthy Jewish families who lived in York in the years before the notorious 'massacre of the Jews' at Clifford's Tower in 1190. Wealthy Jewish families in York would have had the money to build a house like this: and may also have wanted to build in stone rather than timber for added protection against anti-Semitic attacks or robbery.

There are no records of the house before 1376, so we don't know for sure. What we do know is that by 1376 the house was the home of the Prebend of Ampleforth, one of 36 prebends (canons supported from revenue from a specific church estate) of York Minster.

The house continued to be used by clergy attached to York Minster for centuries. But it was gradually surrounded by later development and, by the eighteenth century, had mostly disappeared, only for the surviving walls to be rediscovered in 1939.

Stephen Lewis

For the stories behind more Civic Trust plaques, visit www.yorkcivictrust.co.uk