The Chart Show: Mapping 2,000 years of York's history

The man who's been called 'Mr Jorvik' leads me to the end of the smart York street where he lives. 'This is a good example of the layers of history we have in York,' he says. 'We're on the edge of a Roman road, above a Roman cemetery; there are multiple Romans six or eight feet down over there. Over to the right is the site of a cock-fighting pit, and here's the birthplace of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, the great industrialist and social reformer. Look...'
Dr Peter Addyman at his home in  YorkDr Peter Addyman at his home in  York
Dr Peter Addyman at his home in York

As we turn right into Bootham, he hands me a very unusual new map of York. It’s part of an atlas that has taken more than 40 years to get published, then sold out in eight days and has been reprinted. And that’s at £70 a throw.

Dr Peter Addyman is editor of the newly published York volume of the British Historic Towns Atlas. The title is a bit misleading, as it’s actually a hefty portfolio of two dozen maps tracing the city’s growth over 2,000 years to the start of the railway age. During much of the period the atlas covers, York was arguably Britain’s second most important city. “In mapping terms,” says Addyman, “you’re seeing the flow of history.”

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At the atlas’s core is a version of the fascinating colour-coded map he has just handed me. It shows, in remarkable detail, how the city would have looked around 1850. Familiar buildings are there – the Minster, the castle, the Treasurer’s House, the Theatre Royal – but there are also buildings that no longer existed then (and, obviously, don’t now).

York by John Speed, completed in 1610.York by John Speed, completed in 1610.
York by John Speed, completed in 1610.

St Peter-le-Willows church, for instance, in Walmgate; the 15th century Cordwainers’ Hall; almshouses; and any number of friaries. There was a Carmelite one, a Franciscan one (“I can tell you where it wasn’t, but I can’t tell you where it was”) and, most intriguingly, an Augustinian one.

“It was where Richard III stayed when he came to York, near the Guildhall,” says Addyman, and off we go map-in-hand down Bootham, building-spotting. Somewhere in the city, he adds, are the remains of an Anglo-Saxon cathedral.

Few people can know more about York’s buildings than Addyman. He’s president of York Civic Trust and, back in 1972, became founder director of York Archaeological Trust, which famously undertook the late-Seventies Viking dig in Coppergate. It led to what’s been called “the biggest discovery in Viking history”, including five tons of animal bones and 250,000 pieces of pottery.

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Addyman became the driving force behind the creation of the Jorvik centre – and the rest is Viking (and tourism) history. Hence the “Mr Jorvik” tag when he retired in 2002.

York by John Speed, completed in 1610.York by John Speed, completed in 1610.
York by John Speed, completed in 1610.

The trust is promised many more years of potential excavation. Less than two per cent of Roman York, for instance, has been excavated. With comparatively little recent redevelopment in the city, there have been few opportunities to carry it out.

Back on Bootham, we head for the city centre past endless queues of traffic. We pass elegant Georgian and early Victorian townhouses and pop into Janette Ray’s delightful bookshop to climb a spiral staircase and inspect the medieval roof beams – and a few remaining copies of the atlas’s second edition. “When we did the first edition, we didn’t think many people would buy it, so we printed 500 and they sold in eight days,” says Addyman. “We’ve now printed another 500 and have sold all but 150 of them. We expect them to go by Christmas.”

Authoritative essays, illustrations and aerial views all add to its appeal. “People have said to me: ‘I’ve really enjoyed it; I’ve got it spread out on the dining room table.’ They find it fun.”

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You can understand why. The main map is based on an 1852 Ordnance Survey map of York with the astonishing scale of five feet to the mile. It took a microscope to the city’s streets. “It shows absolutely everything in York; every seat in every church and most bollards in the streets,” says Addyman. “The thing that staggers me is that they surveyed every garden and included every tree.”

He has been involved with the Historic Towns Atlas project since 1972. The aim was to compile histories of important British towns and cities based on maps. Progress was neither fast nor particularly logical. Banbury, Caernarvon, Gloucester, Glasgow, Hereford, Nottingham, Reading, Salisbury, Bristol, Cambridge, Coventry, Norwich and London were in the bag by 1989, but another 26 years passed before Windsor and Eton joined them.

Until the York volume, there’s been no town from the north of England, so he has now suggested a Yorkshire collection perhaps taking in Hull, Leeds, Pontefract, Richmond, Scarborough, Knaresborough, Skipton, Wakefield and possibly Whitby. Future volumes may reflect changes in publishing technology. Already, the atlas comes with a CD of maps, but there’s a chance that it could be, as he says, “fully digitised, possibly interactive and even three-dimensional”.

Research on the York volume began at a time when the city was planning two ring roads and various multi-storey car parks, creating a need for archaeological reports on sites that might be threatened (“rescue archaeology” as it’s called).

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The outer ring road was built, but not the inner one, which Addyman says would have been “very destructive – across four or five Roman cemeteries”. We see the happy result of the inner ring road being abandoned as we reach Gillygate. “When I first came to York, Gillygate was derelict and due to be demolished. And now...” Stylish refurbishment from one end to the other.

“What an incredible series of layers of York history we’ve seen in just 200 or 300 yards,” he says. “And you could do this in any street in York. Shall we have a coffee?”

He leads me into the recently opened Croque-Monsieur coffee house next to Bootham Bar and, like a magician finishing his trick with a flourish, points to a glass panel in the floor. Underneath are sturdy fragments of masonry.

”Part of the gates of the legionary Roman fortress,” he says. “They go down 15 feet and were found in the 19th century. They had a gents public toilet over them for most of the last century. Completely restored this year. It’s a very new piece of ancient York.”

• British Historic Towns Atlas, Volume 5 : York (Oxbow Books, £70) is available through booksellers or online at historictownsatlas.org.uk.

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