Taking a closer look at the history of Selby, North Yorkshire

MOST people have their favourite or least favourite spots in Selby. For me, the best parts include the leafy park, where the old swimming baths and rusty swings of my youth have long since been cleared away, and the Market Place, where we would eat chips at pub closing time.

I don’t have to mention my least favourite spots – they probably speak for themselves.

But there is more to Selby than meets the eye, more than even the most dedicated Selebians see on their regular ambles around town. And one man is on a mission to change this.

David Lewis, the hidden heritage education officer for Selby, has spent months peering into the town’s history and heritage and has compiled five walks around buildings and landmarks.

Now published in leaflets, these include an amble around Ousegate by the old Toll Bridge, the medieval Abbot’s Staithe, carriage archways and Selby’s first railway station, and a look at shop-front signs, where heritage reveals itself in the plaques and carvings etched in Selby’s walls and shops.

David, who works for environmental charity Groundwork, has also devised a walk along Selby Canal towpath and a tour of Selby in the 20th century, which shows off the town’s modern architecture.

These walks will change perceptions about Selby, promises David. As he leads off from the yellow-brick Civic Centre with its odd dome-shaped lights, I see what he means.

This building is loved by few and hated by many. It was built in 1977 in the modernist style of French architect Le Corbusier and represents a huge pride in the town, according to David.

“It was actually very brave and forward-thinking of the architects to think ‘We are so proud of our town that we are going to build something big and very modern’, something without all the curvy decorative effects the Victorians had and which doesn’t fit in with all these other buildings’,” he said.

And those lights?

“They were inspired by the first landing on the moon 40 years ago. They are fantastic. At night when they are lit up, they are like full moons shining against the night sky.”

David’s enthusiasm is infectious. As we walk past the playing field where Pink Floyd performed in 1969, he tells stories about every path we tread, and I feel a surge of pride for my home town.

We pass the Abbey Vaults pub, the site where the old tithe barn once stood. It stored the grain farmed by residents to sell and donate to Selby Abbey, explains David. It was demolished in 1896, but there is a plaque to commemorate it now, by the door of the pub.

Then we walk through the Market Cross development; a small walkway of shops with angular, jagged top floors overhanging the pavement.

“Remind you of anywhere in York?” he asks.

“To me, it resembles Shambles. Obviously, it’s not really like Shambles, but it was based on the same idea as a medieval market place.”

From there, we look down the long stretch of main street Gowthorpe, to spot the grandeur behind the roadworks.

The large bay windows built into the shops, and an archway leading towards Sainsbury’s, are remnants of the George Hotel and Grey Horse inns, which had both closed by 1985.

“In their day, they were very grand buildings, where you would go for important meetings or celebrations,” says David.

We walk along narrow Finkle Street, packed with pubs, clothes and charity shops, and home to the Blackamoor Head, one of Selby’s most controversially named pubs.

No one would get away with calling it that today, says David, because of its reference to North African slavery, but it has been the Blackamoor Head for 200 years.

Next door, a plaque marks the birth place of scientist Smithson Tennant, who discovered two elements of the Periodic Table You might not know what osmium and iridium are, says David, but they are two of the strongest elements in the world and have been combined to form an alloy called osmiridium, which is often found in pen nibs.

Walking towards Micklegate, David points out some ornate semi-circle carvings above The former Co-Operative building.

“The spirit of the Co-Operative was to work together,” says David. “Bees always work together too, and the carvings are actually of bee hives, to represent that.”

Around the corner, in the car park behind the library, there is another plaque, marking the birth place of perhaps Selby’s most famous son, King Henry I, who was thought to have been born here in 1068 while his father, William the Conqueror, was busy invading the north.

The walks do not really cover Selby Abbey, grand as it is, because they are intended to take in hidden heritage, rather than what is blindingly obvious, says David. However, he can’t help telling me one quick snippet.

“The Washington family’s coat of arms is in a stained glass window in Selby Abbey,” he says. “As we know, George Washington was the first president in the US and the Stars and Stripes was created around the same time as the Declaration of Independence, leading some people to think the coat of arms and the Stars and Stripes might be linked.

“It is quite contentious though, people have very different theories.”

We walk up towards the River Ouse, and Ousegate, where David points out the carriage archways linking the wharf-side warehouses such as Liversidge’s and Tyson’s Ironworks.

We also pass the town’s first railway station, which celebrates its 175th birthday this year, where old train wheels have now sunk into the pavement, and carriage archways where my friends and I would, as teenagers, stagger underneath to reach the nightclub, with no thought to the history behind them.

“Did I fulfil my mission to show Selby in a different light?” asks David, as we head back towards the civic centre Bursting to tell my friends and family about the other side of Selby that I have discovered within the hour, I have to agree that yes, he has.

The free leaflets will be available from Selby Library, town and district council offices, Groundwork and other public outlets in and around Selby.