UK Trip: York for two days

York has a lot to recommend it. It used to be Britain's "second city", like London in the north but after the English civil war and the siege of York (1644) where York picked the wrong side, it dropped in importance. 

Industrialization left it behind, which is what has let it keep its charming air, no pressure to further alter the core of the town. 

York has remnants from all of the societies that were in it prior. Mesolithic, Roman, Anglian, Viking, Norman, Medieval, Tudor, Georgian (most of what you see now). 

It has almost-complete and walkable city walls (and they're taller than in Wissembourg, FR). 

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Digging in: 

York impressions:

Full day #1:

Walked around

Yorkshire Museum

Full day #2: 

Walking tour 

Jorvik Viking experience (and archaeology site)

Going to write about York broadly, mixing info from the tour, the museum, and our wandering around. 

[[York museum:]]

Mesolithic : 

Nearby in Star Carr was a really amazing Mesolithic (stone age?) find. 30+ antler headdresses (more than found at any similar site elsewhere in Europe).

Roman:

York started in 71 CE as Roman "Eboracum". Constantine was born there and declared emperor there in 306.

Collage of Roman stuff in the museum: 

UL: A mosiac you were allowed to walk on if you took off your shoes. 

UR; The funerary carving where the husband's arm is around his wife. This kind of display of affection was not common in these sculptures, so this dude really loved his wife.

Mid right: Constantine! Kind of a broad face.

LL: Mars statue. Next to it was the story or what led to York switching from a kind of client status to a  Roman town. A Celtic couple were ruling and the husband was conspiring against the wife. She asked for help, so in came Rome.

Mid lower: Celtic Sun gods looked liked Gorgons. 

LR: Common to have cremation, weird that here there were a wide array of different kinds of burial, including plaster poured in 9

Post Roman: 

Writing? Records? No time, barbarians.

For 400 years. 

Viking stuff (effectively a teaser for the Jorvik Viking experience) 

UL: 1000 y/o leather box! 

UR: 1000 y/o entire leather shoes & the wooden thing you use to turn them rightside out after making them

LL: Viking ice skates from bone 

LMid: Anglian helmet, whose findin kicked off the Jorvik dog

BottomR: Norman fortress (Clifford) - hint at why the Viking stuff was so well preserved

Some Church History:

The York Minster (Cathedral) had a tiny wooden church on it in 624. The modern gothic beast took 100 years to finish and started 1225. If you want to know more, like size etc, see here.1

Walking tour misc: 

UL: Multangular tower. The red brick level was still Roman. Helped with stabilization of the stone.

UR: Abbey. Old, started building mid-build Minster. Giant. In ruins due to the whole Henry 8 "we need money and now I'm head of the church, so.." 

LL: Minster

LR: wall with example of how everyone reused older stones to rebuild. 

One highlight of the walking tour was walking through a decommisioned and very interesting church of Holy Trinity of Goodramgate. 

Decommissioned since Henry 8. All this church rampage in his time resulted in destruction of a LOT of medieval stained glass, but the guy responsible for this in York told his soldiers not to, so York has the most medieval stained glass of anywhere in England.  

The church had these box-pew things families could buy, more wealthy ones closer to the front. The hagioscope (lower right of collage) was so the tiny semi-private chapel priest and the main priest could coordinate the timing of the elevation of the host. 

Lower right in the collage was a plaque to Anne Lister. She is featured in some historic show. Openly Lesbian, took sacrament at this church in 1800's to cosecrate her marriage to her partner.

The church is hard to find, down a tiny side street, effectively blocked in all sides by other buildings but with a nice green quiet courtyard and some of the only public benches in York. Great place for lunch. 

Gate is street (Gasse, German).

Bar is Gate ("Mickelgate Bar")

Advice: book your tickets to Jorvik before you get to town. We almost missed it as there were only two slots left. 

Jorvik Viking Experience started as a tiny excavation site. They found the famous helmet a few collages up, in/under the chimney of a former factory they were digging up to build a shopping center, which let them apply for more time to dig and got it extended from 6 months to about 10 years.

The Vikings, instead of laying siege, broke through the wall -- then realized they need a wall to live there after conquering the locals (anglo saxons). So the town walls have kind of bubble there. Underneath this pure Viking settlement was Anglo-Saxon rubbish heap and below that Roman graveyard, which means this was not within the Roman walls (Romans were good enough at hygiene to not ever put their dead inside town (looking at Haworth/Bronte Parsonage and Georgian-era idiocy)). 

The Normans (William the Conquerer) conquered, then there was an uprising and William got pissedd andthus resulted "the harrying of the North". Circa 70% of the people in this neck of Britain slaughtered, and he dammed up the local rivers (there's two), burying all this under water and mud, which is what kept everything well preserved. Including 6 latrines, which smelled as fully nasty as they had the day they'd been drowned. The biggest pic in the collage is of fossilized human poop. 

I was impressed by the fully-preserved wood (they figured out how to submerge it in a bath of a wax solution for a year to slowly replace the water) and the red dye still staining the stones today. 

The dig got turned into a tourist experience, including a super slow ride through recreated Viking settlement, atop said dig. 

UL: fossil poop

UR: latrine dig pic 

Mid R: from the ride

LL: dye 

Low Mid: wood wall

Low Right: Kiev-Rus style jewelry found here

Wattle & daub walls were kind of woven branches with animal dung as filler. People lived in 4x7 ft tiny huts that were also where they worked. 

They figued out that the skates were skates (they had circa 40 pair) when one of the team went on vacation somewhere up north and saw people using them to skate with (did they visit the Sami???). 

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York in general: lots to see. Pedestrian-only main town. Definitely recommend. Very comfortable, direct and fast train ride back to London.