AS we reported on Saturday, councillors have approved plans for 425 new homes on the former Nestlé Cocoa West site off Wigginton Road. The first residents are expected to move in by 2022.
The perfect time, then, to dig out this astonishing aerial photograph from the 1920s showing the Rowntree Cocoa Works in the 1920s.
The photograph comes from Explore York's wonderful Imagine York photo archive (www.imagineyork.co.uk). Haxby Road is in the foreground, with Wigginton Road and the railway line behind. The land where today you have Burton Green and Crichton Avenue was all fields when the photograph was taken.
On the far right you can see the open air Yearsley pool, with what is presumably the dining block and White Cross Villa a bit further down the road (the Joseph Rowntree Theatre hadn't been built when the photo was taken). The green playing fields bordering Haxby Road show just how concerned Rowntree bosses were for the health and well-being of their staff.
Haxby Road itself is crowded with people, many of whom seem to be on foot. Were they on their way to work? Or was there some kind of aerial display going on that they were keen to see? The biplane top right suggests the latter. That might also explain how the photo came to be taken...
Stephen Lewis
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