ONE thing York has never been short of is pubs.

A good few have been lost in recent years - often to be converted into flats. But most people in the city are still never far from a good local.

We’ve been trawling through the digital archive library kept by Explore York Libraries and Archives for old photos of York pubs because ... well, because we wanted to. And here we bring you a great selection of the city’s finest.

Some of those we feature are long gone now, and all but forgotten. Others - like the Black Swan on Peaseholme Green - still very much survive, though perhaps looking rather different today to the way they did in these photographs.

York Press:

York Press:

We have photos of the Black Swan, for example, both with and without its supporting timbers picked out in black (above).

One of the joys of searching through the Explore York archive is the way you can stumble across things you never knew before. The caption to one of the Black Swan photos reveals how Peaseholme Green got its name: it was once a water meadow where peas were grown.

The Full Moon Inn, which once stood at 29 Walmgate, meanwhile, dated from at least 1795, when it was known as the Barleycorn. “In 1838 the new landlord Thomas Moon renamed it,” the caption to the photo records.

He was clearly a man with a large opinion of himself. Sadly, the pub closed in May 1939, and the licence was transferred to the Bridge Hotel on Huntington Road. Not that Walmgate was short of pubs. At the turn of the last century, it is thought to have had as many as 20...

Other pubs featured here include the Britannia in Heworth; the Magpie in Penley’s Grove Street, the Star and Garter on the corner of King Street and Nessgate and the long-vanished Unicorn Inn, which once stood on Lord Mayor’s Walk.

More pubs to follow tomorrow...

York Press:

The Unicorn Inn on Lord Mayor’s Walk in the 1930s. The licence was surrendered in 1956 and the building was demolished soon after. Picture: Explore York Libraries and Archives