Waching daily Jul 28 2017

You have a bit of everything here. You have the Romans. You've got this

Viking part of the city. You've got the Normans who build this

enormous castle on the site. You then have that swept aware over the

years. A prison is built within part of the castle precinct. That is swept away again

and in the 20th century, part of the site becomes a

car park so when you take Piccadilly and you take your castle, the car park area,

you've actually got a little bit of everything of York's archaeology and

urban history represented on this site. So it's really exciting in that respect.

But I think what that actually demonstrates is that York has developed

through these periods of intense activity. So you have this agrarian

landscape, before the Romans arrived. I like to think of it you know the cows

drinking out of the river. The trees growing, the fields full of of

crops, little farmsteads scattered around. And then the Romans arrived and

everything changes. The Romans may have chosen this spot for a particular reason.

They may have decided that, or they may have found out that, this area which we

now call York was already a significant place for these Iron Age tribes.

Now such is the depth of deposit over the top of where those deposits might survive.

Such is the degree of later disturbance that we have no idea what prehistoric

deposits underlie the Romans, but the Romans

change everything. That's when you can start to talk about York as an urban

centre. It sort of reaches this sort of stasis and then the Vikings arrive and

again everything changes. They lay the place out according to, they divide

the street frontages up into neat tenement plots and they remain traceable

in the townscape down to the to this day. So if you walk along Fossgate and

Walmgate you will see these narrow tenement plots and they all have their

origins in that period when the Vikings arrived in the late 9th or 10th century

and start laying out and dividing up land in the city. When the Normans arrive

you have this this this further period of transformation between 1066 and 1100.

Two castles are built. The Minster is is rebuilt as a Norman Cathedral, St. Mary's

Abbey is established this Domus Regus which lies underneath West Offices is

built, we don't know what that is what form it took, but you have these huge

significant new builds in the townscape. They build a dam across the River Foss,

flood the Foss valley to provide the water defenses for the castle in the inn

in doing so they creates this huge fish pool, the King's Fishpool which dominates

the whole east side of the city so again another transformational episode.

And then the city accommodates all of these changes, people get used to what's going

on bits of pieces are filled in and then you know, with the dissolution of the

monasteries, which does affect this area to some extent because the outer bailey

of York Castle in the 13th century was given to the Augustinian friars and they

built their friary on this site that becomes a major element of the medieval

town. In the 1530s, of course, that's what wrapped up, the land sold off and so

you start to get 16th century houses which in the 17th century you see

the emergence of these rather grand houses in this area Cumberland House

down on King's Staith, Fairfax House behind us here the other

John Carr mansion, a Masonic Lodge in Castlegate and then

now lost mansion which stood on the site of the car park which included, can you

believe, the Motte and Clifford's Tower in its garden as this monumental folly.

Fancy having that in your back garden, staggering. Anyway that that that rolls on and then you

have the construction of the prison in the 19th century in the car park and that

19th century development is all tied up with the coming of the railways

another of these transformational episodes in the

development of York and the railway as we still are, I think, coming to grips

with what mass transport means in terms of living in urban places and I think

the city is still assimilating you know the outcomes from that episode of

the railways transforming large parts of the city between 1830 and 1880

The interesting thing about all of this is that, of course, when you start to

look at redevelopment in a place like the Castle Gateway, where Piccadilly

Castle car park, this area behind me you've got to try and sort of assimilate

and think well what does all that mean in terms of what we can do in this space.

How do you build that into your decision-making process what what

do you give valued, what has more value than something else and I think that's

an interesting conversation that that you know needs to be brought out as

part of this process.