Day 10: New Times in Old Yorke!

Main Page > 2023 Roman da North in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles ! >

While Mike and Bone love New York, they hadn’t been to old York! (or the original York!) But as with anything with the history of Rome in Britian, the name York is complicated!

The history of York, England, as a city dates to the beginning of the first millennium AD but archaeological evidence for the presence of people in the region of York dates back much further to between 8000 and 7000 BC. As York was a town in Roman times, its Celtic name is recorded in Roman sources was Eboracum. As the Northern most Roman Town, it only made sense to check out the Town that crowned Constantine emperor! So, the bleary-headed Boys (way too many British beers!) jumped on a 8:00 AM Train from London’s Kings Cross up to the North!

"Go North Young Men!"

Arriving in York, you arrive just outside the famous walled city, Mike and Bone went to drop off their gear in a very swanky 5 star hotel, the Grand Hotel?!

Mike & Bone's 5 Star Digs, the Grand Hotel!

No, the Boys didn’t miss the mark and ended up on Mackinaw Island! York has a very nice (an inexpensive!) 5 star hotel, that is equally Grand! Dropping their gear, Mike and Bone headed out in the now cool fall weather to discover Roman Eboracum!

Oggling the River Ouse!

Heading into Town from the Hotel, the Boys crossed the famous Ouse River, which is the whole reason Mike and Bone were walking over this medieval stone bridge towards “Roman Eboracum.” This location on the Ouse Riveris a short distance from where the river goes out into the North Sea, which makes it a very strategic spot to control the whole northern part of Britian.

in fact there is archaeological evidence that suggests that people were settled in the region of York between 8000 and 7000 BC, although it is not known if these were permanent or temporary settlements. Polished stone axes indicate the presence of people during the Neolithic period in the area where the city of York is now, especially on the south-west bank of the River Ouse, just outside the city center near where Scarborough Bridge that the Boys were walking on! Once over the bridge, their Roman objective was in sight!

Roman Eborcum's Stout Defensive's Fence, the Multiangular Tower

The reality today is that much of the Roman Town and Fort of Eboracorum is underneath the York Minister, the Roman wall and the west corner tower (the Multangular Tower) of the Roman legionary fort at York, with medieval additions above. A telltale layer of red Roman bricks can be seen at about head height in the picture above. Mike and Bone checked it out before heading to the Roman Museum.

The Not Open Roman Museum!

Only to find it CLOSED! Fortunately, Bone had been there once before and had some pictures to share before they went over to check out the very interesting Multangular Wall! The Roman Yorkshire Museum has a huge floor map shows the extent of the Empire, images of mosaics and frescoes decorate the walls and a mighty statue of Mars, the God of War, dominates the space.

York was founded in 71 AD when Cerialis and the Ninth Legion constructed a military fortress (castra) on flat ground above the River Ouse near its junction with the River Foss. The fortress was later rebuilt in stone, covered an area of 50 acres, and was inhabited by 6,000 soldiers. The earliest known mention of Eburacum by name is from a wooden stylus tablet from the Roman fortress of Vindolanda along Hadrian's Wall, dated to c. 95–104 AD, where it is called Eburaci. As mentioned earlier, much of the Roman fortress lies under the foundations of York Minster, and excavations in the Minster's undercroft have revealed some of the original walls.

At some time between 109 AD and 122 AD the garrison of the Ninth Legion was replaced by the Sixth Legion. There is no documented trace of the Ninth Legion after 117 AD, and various theories have been proposed as to what happened to it. The Sixth Legion remained in York until the end of Roman occupation about 400 AD. The Emperors Hadrian, Septimius Severus and Constantius I all held court in York during their various campaigns. During his stay, the Emperor Severus proclaimed York capital of the province of Britannia Inferior, and it is likely that it was he who granted York the privileges of a colonia or city.

Constantius I died during his stay in York, and his son Constantine the Great was proclaimed Emperor by the troops based in the fortress.

By 400 AD York's fortunes had changed for the worse. The town was undergoing periodic winter floods from the rivers Ouse and Foss, its wharf-side facilities were buried under several feet of silt and the primary Roman bridge connecting the town with the fortress may have become derelict.

Despite the disappointment, the Boys moved on to check out the Wrath of Henry!?!

Remnants of Henry the VIII's Wrath!

When Henry VIII decided he was going to be the leader of the Church vs. the Pope, he decided to also consolidate all the churches wealth as well. St Mary's Abbey was the largest and richest Benedictine establishment in the north of England and one of the largest landholders in Yorkshire which is right next to the Museum. On 26 November 1539 the Abbey surrendered all it is money and monks to Henry and was then destroyed with the remnants still reminding everyone of the tolerance of religion! Gotta love it! Now back to Rome!

Inside the Multangular Wall!

Mike and Bone next went into the Multiangular Tower. The tower with the very interesting name is the west corner of the legionary fortress. It was one of the two corner-towers of the huge stone wall that looked down onto the river. The small stones in the lower half are Roman whereas the upper half was reconstructed in the medieval period. The red line in the earlier picture it is a clear to see the older Roman work vs. the later Viking structures. The tower probably dates from the early third century, though it may have been built later. Its style, protruding from the fortress wall rather than sitting behind it, was a development designed to enable defenders to fire down on anyone attacking the wall itself. In practice, the Roman occupiers probably never expected an attack on Eboracum. The fortress was mainly a base from which to control the region. It is cool to see how the defenders to look out to the broader river area for defensive purposes. Inside, Mike and Bone got a visceral view of "layers" of history!

Changes in Lattitudes, changes in Ownership Attitudes !?!

They say the history is in layers, and York is a great example of this. In the Multangular Tower, there is a wall with cuts into the ground that demonstrate the Roman period of York, the Anglia period, and the Viking Period! Or 20 feet of two thousand years of History! With York being such an iconic town, Mike and Bone with the Roman objective checked off, there was a lot more to seen in York so the decided to check out the Viking version of York, or as they called it Jorvik!

Cobbling the layer of History in CopperGate!

The history of York from the outside makes it seem it went from Roman to Viking,where the Vikings chased the Romans out. Not exactly what happened. In fact, Rome wasn’t chased out they simply abandoned the area. There is little written evidence about York in the centuries following the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410 AD, a pattern repeated throughout Roman Britain.

There is archaeological evidence for continued settlement at York near the Ouse in the 5th century, and private Roman houses, especially suburban villas, remained occupied after the Roman withdrawal.

The next “wave” and inhabitants were the Angles, who gave the Eboracum its current name! Angles coming in from northern Germany, who took over the area and adapted the name by folk etymology to Old English Eoforwīc or Eoforīc, which means "wild-boar town" or "rich in wild-boar". The Vikings, who took over the area later, in turn adapted the name by folk etymology to Norse Jórvík, which became York!

Eventually those Angles, with the Saxons, and Jutes, overran the native Briton's to create the Anglo-Saxon culture and provide the name Angle-Land or England! But in between at least in York, was the Danish Vikings!

The Jorvik Experience?

The CopperGate Archeological Dig

In 866 long after the Romans left Britan, different groups of Vikings formed a great army in what is now Denmark. They crossed the Channel, fought their way through England and finally came to York. After they took over the Anglo-Saxon town and decided to stay there. The Viking invasion was led by Ivar the Boneless who along with King Halfden conquered and renamed the city to "Jorvik."

The Vikings who settled in York were mainly a peaceful bunch despite what has been said about their bloody campaigns. They farmed the land and were great craftsmen, traders, artists, engineers and ship builders. Over the one hundred years that York was under Viking rule the city prospered greatly.

Today the Viking heritage is still celebrated in the city, through the Scandinavian name for a road, ‘Gata’, which appears in street names such as Stonegate, and Petergate and the Neighborhood known as CopperGate.

With that background Mike and Bone headed to CopperGate which was the site of the core Viking Settlement. Today it is an archeological tourist site with a very interesting demonstration of Viking life in “Jorvik”!

The Jorvik Viking Centre is a major tourist attraction sitting on top of the CopperGate archeological site. In addition to showing the dig itself (under the glass floor), the Centre also provides an amusement park ride experience with the sights, sounds and of course, smells, of the Viking Age!

The ride took Mike and Bone through an reconstruction of 10th-century York, that shows how the Villiage looked and worse smelled in CopperGate back in the Danish day!

Next, while Johnny Cash walked a line, Mike and Bone walked a wall!

"All in All, it's Mike and Bone on the WALL!"

Pink Floyd

York is world famous for being a walled city. The Romans started the walls in 71 AD, by the time that the Danes took the city over, they were in bad shape (except for the Multangular Tower), they rebuilt them in medieval times. Today most of the walls can be walked which Mike and Bone thought would be a cool way to check out the city!

The Boys, in a Tower on the York Walls!

The Amazing Minister from the York Wall!

Walking the walls the Boys got a great 360 view of the whole darn town, it is also thirsty work, the Boys were ready for a beer!

"Beer Break!" Mike and Bone

Fortunately, York is loaded with lovely little pubs pretty much everywhere! Mike and Bone stopped at the first one off the Wall, and enjoyed a couple of frothy, cask conditioned ale's that absolutely soothed the soul. Sated, Mike and Bone headed into the town square to check out where the headquarters of the Romans once stood, in a now iconic cathedral, the Minster!

Mustering the Minster!

The York Minster, formally known as the "Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Saint Peter in York", is an Anglican cathedral, a classic medieval church similar to Notre Dame. The Minster is still the seat of the archbishop of York, the third-highest office of the Church of England.

The first record of a church on the site dates to 627; the title "minster" also dates to the Anglo-Saxon period, originally denoting a missionary teaching church and now an honorific. The Minster undercroft contains re-used fabric of c. 1160, but the bulk of the building was constructed between 1220 and 1472. It consists of Early English Gothic north and south transepts, a Decorated Gothic nave and chapter house, and a Perpendicular Gothic eastern arm and central tower.

The minster retains most of its medieval stained glass, a significant survival among European churches. The east window, which depicts the Last Judgment, is the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world. The north transept contains the Five Sisters window, which consists of five lancets, each over 53 feet high, filled with grisaille glass.

The Minster's Famed Stained Glass

The first record of a church on the site dates to 627 ironically built over the main hall of the Roman Military Headquarters; the name "minster" also dates to the Anglo-Saxon period, originally denoting a missionary teaching church and now an honorific. The Minster undercroft contains re-used fabric of c. 1160, but the bulk of the building was constructed between 1220 and 1472. It consists of Early English Gothic north and south transepts, a Decorated Gothic nave and chapter house, and a Perpendicular Gothic eastern arm and central tower.

The Finding the Romans!

Right outside the Minster, was a note detailing how York is working on rediscovering its Roman roots! In fact right outside the Minster is a Roman Column!

A Roman Column Found!

Mike and Bone checked out the Roman column which stands in Minster Yard. Originally built around the first century, by the soldiers of Legio IX Hispana, it was reused by Legion VI in the 4th century. It is believed to have been part of a group of sixteen freestanding columns, supporting the walls of an earlier church on the site.

The column was discovered beneath York Minster during a 1969 excavation, and was given to the City of York three years later to mark the 1900th anniversary of the city's founding. This column is right next to where aa momentous work event happened!

Crowning Constantine the Great!

Constantius Chlorus rose from relative obscurity to become the Emperor of the western Roman empire. He was a soldier who had worked his way up through the ranks but his real political break came when in 289 he married Theodora, the stepdaughter of the emperor Maximian. By this time Constantius had already fathered a son called Constantine by another woman, Helena. Both Constantine and Helena went on to earn great renown in their own right.

In 293 the Roman Empire became a 'tetrarchy', meaning it was ruled by four different people. Constantius Chlorus was chosen by Maximian to be one of them - he became Caesar (junior emperor) of the northwest. This was a tricky assignment because much of the territory was in the hands of a break-away empire led by naval commander Carausius and his allies the Franks. That summer Constantius led a military campaign and regained control of Gaul, northern France. In 296 he did the same in Britain.

There followed nine years of relative peace which only came to an end in 305 when the Picts attacked the northern reaches of the empire in Britain. As so often in its history, York became an important strategic center in a battle for the north of England.

Constantius was by now Augustus, the senior emperor of the west. He called for his son Constantine to join him in Gaul and together they headed to York. They enjoyed a series of victories over the Picts (the future Scots!) but then, on 25 July 306, Constantius became the second emperor to die in York, obviously a tough place!

Then his son Constantine was crowned by the Legionary forces, who went on to become Constantine the Great, who adopted Christianity in the Roman Empire and moved the Capital to his city New Rome, better known as Constantinople! Which all started in little ole' York! After paying homage to the Emperor, Mike and Bone shambled off to the . . . . . . . . .

Where the Day Turned into the Shambles!

The Shambles is right out of a Charles Dickens book, Mike and Bone shuffled into the “Shambles!’” The Shambles is a York Neighborhood of a maze of twisting, narrow lanes which make York so charming. At its heart is the lane actually called the Shambles, arguably the best preserved medieval street in the world. It was mentioned in the Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror in 1086. Many of the buildings on the street today date back to the late fourteenth and fifteenth century (around 1350-1475.)

Why ‘Shambles’?

The name is thought to derive from ‘Shammel’, an anglo-saxon word for the shelves which were a prominent feature of the open shop-fronts, in this case open shop fronts advertising meat!

The Shambles was a street of butchers’ shops and houses, many complete with a slaughterhouse at the back of the premises, ensuring a ready supply of fresh meat. The meat was hung up outside the shops and laid out for sale on what are now the shop window-bottoms. It is still possible to see some of the original butcher’s meat-hooks attached to the shop fronts.

Lacking modern-day sanitation facilities, there was a constant problem of how to dispose of the waste produced by the slaughter of animals in the city. The pavements are raised either side of the cobbled street to form a channel where the butchers would wash away their poop and blood (only!?) twice a week.

In some sections of the Shambles it is possible to touch both sides of the street with your arms outstretched. The architecture which now appears so quaint had a very practical purpose. The overhanging timber-framed fronts of the buildings are deliberately close-set so as to give shelter to the ‘wattle and daub’ walls below. This would also have protected the meat from any direct sunshine.

Next, Mike and Bone found out that William was both a Conqueror, and a rotten Bastard!

William's Whipping Post: Clifford's Tower

As explained earlier, 1066 William a Norman duke in France claimed the throne of England. Being illegimate, he was called William the Bastard. This may be why he was such a mean and angry guy. He fought (litterally) to change his last name from "Bastard" to "Conqueror." The "Harrowing" convinced most in Northern England he really was a bastard! The Harrying of the North was a series of military campaigns waged by William the Conqueror in the winter of 1069–1070 to subjugate Northern England, where the presence of the last Wessex claimant, Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian, Anglo-Scandinavian and Danish rebellions. William paid the Danes to go home, but the remaining rebels refused to meet him in battle, and he decided to starve them out by laying waste to the Northern shires using scorched earth tactics, especially in the historic county of Yorkshire[a] and the city of York, before relieving the English aristocracy of their positions, and installing Norman aristocrats throughout the region.

Contemporary chronicles vividly record the savagery of the campaign, the huge scale of the destruction and the widespread famine caused by looting, burning and slaughtering. Some present-day scholars have labelled the campaigns a genocide, although others doubt whether William could have assembled enough troops to inflict so much damage and have suggested that the records may have been exaggerated or misinterpreted. Records from the Domesday Book of 1086 suggest that as much as 100,000 or 75% of the people died. The impacts were similar to a natural disaster. Human corpses were decaying in the street, swarming with worms. There was no one to bury the bodies, they were either dead themselves or had fled. William created a real mess in the Yorkshire region.

The Norman Fireplace

The Harrowing explains Mike and Bone's next target, Clifford's Tower. This strategic hilltop Fortress was a part of William's plan to keep the North in submission after the Harrowing. The Tower has been a royal mint, a medieval stronghold and a Civil War garrison.

The Norman motte-and-bailey castle saw several violent incidents during its earliest years, including further revolts and an attack by Danish invaders. As the political situation settled down in the 1070s, however, the damage of these early years was repaired, and the castle, built largely of earth and timber, probably survived relatively unaltered through most of the 12th century.

Clifford’s Tower has a grisly history, in 1190 Cliiford’s Tower experienced a mass suicide and massacre of York’s Jewish community. Tensions between Christians and Jews had been increasing throughout England during the 12th century, partly because many people were in debt to Jewish moneylenders and partly because much crusading propaganda was directed not only against Muslims but also against Jews. Anti-Jewish riots in several cities followed the coronation of the crusader king Richard I in 1189, and a rumor (untrue) was put about that he had ordered a massacre of the Jews.

In 1190, as described by William of Newburgh and other contemporary chroniclers, about 150 people from the Jewish community were given protective custody in the royal castle, probably the site of Clifford’s Tower.

Somehow, though, trust between the royal officials and the Jews broke down. The officials, finding themselves shut out from the tower, summoned reinforcements to recapture it. These troops were joined by a large mob, which soon ran out of control, incited by both anti-Jewish preachers and local gentry eager to escape their debts.

On 16 March, the eve of the Sabbath before Passover, when the Jews realized that there would be no safe way out for them, a rabbi urged his fellow-inmates in the tower to commit suicide rather than fall into the hands of their persecutors. Heads of households killed their own families before killing themselves, and the wooden tower itself was set on fire.

According to several accounts a number of Jews did survive and came out of the tower under an amnesty, only to be murdered by the attackers. This Tower, has seen some really bad things.

Mike and Bone checked out the Tower and its awful history along with the amazing view of York and its local palaces.

The York Palace's from the Top of Cliffords Tower

Mike and Bone checked out the Tower and its awful history along with the amazing view of York and its local palaces. After climbing to the top, they decided to check out the rest of the Tower on their way down when they uncovered a nasty secret!

Royal Shitter

The Boys had a bit of a potty party when they came across the kings (literal!) poop shute! In its history, the Tower was used by many kings, in fact King John (of Magna Carta fame) used the tower quite a bit. The reality of the royal delusion of their "divine right of kings" was shattered when the commoners learned to their nasal dismay that their king's poop did stink! As evidenced by the royal pooper room!

Grounded back on the Main Floor

After that crappy experience, the Boys completed their tour of the Tower on the Main floor and headed back into Town As evening approarch the Mike and Bone had checked out quite a bit in their short stay in York! Time for another Pub Stop!

Pubbing the Ouse River!

Mike and Bone walking back towards the Grand Hotel from Cliffords Tower, they had to cross the mighty Ouse River again. The site of the river, gave the Boys the excuse that they were thirsty and needed to stop for a few thirst-quenching brews!! In the Pub, they got a grand view of the River and Town from Pub, and after a few rounds, they headed back to close out the day in grand fashion, with old fashions, in a Grand Bar in the Grand Hotel!

Old Guys Drinkin' Old Fashions in a Grand old Bar!

The Oak Room in New York City has nothing on the Lounge in the Grand Hotel! Mike and Bone sat by the fire in the massively cool bar and drank old fashions from a black tied waiter, in splendid fashion as they reflected on the very productive day! from Rome, to Danish Vikings, and Middle Aged streets with oppressive Norman castles, York is a true microcosm of the whole English experience!

Boys put in around 10:00 with plans to head up to Scotland early the next day!