TRANSPORT is one of the most controversial issues facing York today.

The city's long-suffering residents have by and large got used to traffic jams, congested streets and polluted air - although these can still cause tempers to flare, especially when the interests of motorists come into conflict with those of cyclists. Attempts to do something about it - by introducing more cycle lanes, trying to persuade people to travel by bus rather than car, or simply closing so-called 'rat runs' such as The Groves - seldom meet with universal approval. To put it mildly

So it's nice to look back at a time before cars became kings of the road.

Until just over 100 years ago, horses were everywhere in York. Elegant gentlemen rode them. They pulled fashionable carriages for the rich, horse-drawn trams for the less rich, and carts for the common workman, who used them to haul goods to market, or bring fresh-killed sides of beef and pork to Shambles butchers.

York Press:

Horses and carts in High Petergate in about 1890. Picture: Explore York

York even had a 'horse repository' near the railway station: effectively the equivalent of a multi-storey parking place for horses.

Nothing comes without a cost, however. The sheer number of horses in the city generated its own problems: problems graphically described by Ben Johnson in an article for Historic UK entitled 'The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894'. "By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were drowning in horse manure," Johnson wrote.

Horse manure attracted huge numbers of flies,which could then spread typhoid fever and other diseases. There were other problems, too. "Each horse also produced around two pints of urine per day and to make things worse, the average life expectancy for a working horse was only around three years," Johnson wrote. "Horse carcasses therefore also had to be removed."

York Press:

A horse-drawn carriage outside the Mansion House in about 1910. Picture: Explore York

It must have seemed an intractable problem. Until the horseless carriage - aka the motor car - came along, creating a whole new raft of problems. Still, it's nice to daydream about how pleasant the city must have been in the days before the car - even if they are just daydreams.

All our photos today come from Explore York’s digital archive. You can browse it yourself at images.exploreyork.org.uk/