Not the Swinging Sixties of the Beatles and Mary Quant, but the rather less colourful (though still fascinating) Sixties of everyday life in York.

All our photos today come from an online gallery of 164 York Press photos from the 1960s that you can find on our website here 

They give a real glimpse of a city that is both the same as the York of today - and yet utterly different.

The York that emerges from the photos appears more free and less regulated than the city of today (there were fewer traffic lights, for a start), but also undeniably more chaotic.

Coney Street is choked with traffic in one photo; St Sampson’s Square is being used as a car park; and cars driving past the old archway at the junction of St Leonard’s Place and Bootham don’t seem to be following any discernible kind of traffic rules at all.

The cars themselves are at least rather beautiful, in that Sixties way - all curved outlines and classic radiator grilles.

There’s a great photo from 1962 of a steam locomotive passing under the ‘new’ footbridge at Grosvenor Terrace, with the remains of the old ‘glass bridge’ alongside. And there are images of demolition work at St Saviourgate ahead of the building of Stonebow House; and of a policeman (in traditional hat) using a police call box near Bootham Bar.

‘Police telephone: free for use of public’ says a note on the door. And there’s not a Dalek in sight...

There are also a couple of photos of buildings which have long since been demolished. One, from 1962, shows the old Botterill’s horse and carriage depositary in Rougier Street in the process of being torn down. Another, from the same year, shows the Salem Chapel at the end of St Saviourgate, shortly before it, too, was demolished.