from Princeton to Oxford: Day in York

7 July 2018, Saturday

We had just one day to spend in York, but it was chock-full of neat sights and interesting history.

Like much of Britain, there is archaeological evidence of humans in the area back to prehistoric times, perhaps back to 8000 B.C. In the first century A.D., when the Roman Empire expanded to include Britannia, the site of present-day York was the Roman city of Eboracum. The city was an important Roman fort for four centuries, and Emperor Constantine the Great was crowned here in A.D. 306.

Anglicans settled the city after the decline of the Roman Empire and habited the area for the next 400 years. In 866, Vikings took over the town, and it became Jorvik. The Vikings stayed until William the Conquerer took over in 1066. For the next 1,000 years, York went through periods of prosperity and decline as a fort and merchant town. We tried to absorb as much history as possible!

We started on the historic street of Coppergate. We visited the Jorvik Viking Centre, an interesting museum/attraction with a lot of Viking artifacts that were discovered in downtown York in the 1970s. There was a fun ride that took us through a reconstructed and very realistic 10th century Viking street. The Vikings primarily used wood in their construction, and only a few petrified remains give clues about how they lived.

Next we strolled through The Shambles, a medieval street with old English timber-framed buildings from the 1300s. It was historically the street of butchers, and we could see old iron hooks for hanging up meat for sale, and wide display windowsills. We passed through a "snickleway" (alley) and perused a weekend market.

We walked around the impressive York Minster, but didn't go inside. Construction of the current stone structures began in 1066, after the Conquest. We saw the stonemasons' lodge outside the church, where stone workers have been updating (and more recently restoring) stone fixtures since the 1200s.

C took a snooze in the stroller, and we had some lunch at the Lamb & Lion Inn, just inside the Bootham Bar (gate - in York, a bar is a gate, and a gate is a street). Then we went to the Yorkshire Museum for more history and artifacts!

We finished our tour of York with a walk along the medieval city wall. We went from Bootham Bar to Monks Bar, which took us around the northern corner of the city. We saw and heard festivities after England beat Sweden in the World Cup quarterfinals. Then we stopped for dinner at La Piazza, an Italian restaurant with a great half-timbered building and nice courtyard seating.

Busy day - we all slept well that night!