ONE of the key sights of spring in York has long been that of "daffodils dancing on the city moats" but keeping the Bar Walls pristine is a major task, as our pictures from the past prove.

Our main image, from 1985, shows the finished product that resulted from many hours of work, from spring cleaning to bulb planting.

But our oldest picture shows us the beginning of the process. The image takes us back nearly 30 years, though the method used by two York Corporation workmen, Les Nicholson and Bill Acomb, could come from a much earlier era.

Though they were shown using scythes to cut the grass, by 1972 motorised cutters did the bulk of the work, with only inaccessible areas being cut by hand.

Indeed, Mr Nicholson was pictured again, in 1978, this time showing the difficulty of using a lawnmower on some of the steeper embankments.

But even when the tidying up was over, there was still work to be done. In 1981 city council gardeners were busy planting bulbs on the grassy slopes below the walls, so that the following spring would see a blaze of colour, thus leading back to the blooms of our main picture.

Updated: 16:49 Thursday, March 28, 2002