DO you recognise this street in York?

The archive photo dates from the 1950s - and the street is a lot busier today!

It is Acomb Front Street. Did you know the village is mentioned in the Domesday Book as Achum or Acum.

The name Acomb is thought to come from Old English, and to mean something like the 'place of the oaks'.

It is described in John Marius Wilson's 'Imperial Gazeteer of England and Wales' 1870-1872 as "Acomb, a township and a parish in York district, West Riding of Yorkshire.

"The township lies two miles west of York, and has a post office under that city. Acres, 1,440. Population, 897. Houses, 195. The parish includes also most of the township of Knapton and part of the township of Drinkhouses (sic), and is traversed by the North-eastern railway. Acres, 2,273. Real property, £5,361. Population, 1,034. Houses, 226. The property is much sub divided. An eminence called Sivers' hill is traditionally said to have been the place where the body of the Emperor Severus was consumed to ashes... The church is old, but good. There is a Wesleyan chapel."

At the time of the Second World War it was still a rural community.

But by the late1950s - the time of our photo today - the sawdust had been replaced by tarmac, and the charabancs by cars: though the road still bore little resemblance to the busy street of today.