Directions to Multangular Tower

York’s City Walls were considered by Nikolaus Pevsner, the foremost authority writing in the twentieth century on architecture in England, to be the best conserved of all those surrounding cities in Britain (1972: 31). It is certainly true that walking the city’s walls today offers glimpses into the city’s different pasts, with points of connection into the Roman city, the Medieval city, the Georgian city, the Victorian city, the Twentieth Century city, and the contemporary city too. The Walls, as we understand them today, were built as defensive structures during the Medieval period, incorporating some remains of the earlier fortress constructed around the Roman city, named Eboracum. The spread of the Walls during the Medieval period was significant, taking the walls over both sides of the River Ouse, and including the building of the various defensive buildings that punctuate the Walls, such as Bootham Bar, Monk Bar, Micklegate Bar and Walmgate Bar. 

There is history all around and, indeed, the very fact that we can walk the walls is down to a historical dispute between York’s City Corporation and the city’s residents in the early 1800s: at that time, the Corporation wished to demolish the walls on grounds of public health and economic progress, but their plans were overturned by residents who wished to retain and restore the Walls to create a public promenade and tourist attraction. The more things change, the more they stay the same: this was an early example of the tensions the city still faces today, in terms of balancing respect for its built heritage against arguments for economic development, all wrapped within the imperatives of a thriving tourist industry.

In a sense, then, the Walls offer a portal to other times that reveal themselves as you wind your way around the perimeter, whichever route you take. In this podcast, you are encouraged to pick your own part of the walls to access and explore. Whilst individual buildings and parts of the city will be mentioned, we will take this opportunity to consider the Walls in a more general sense, how they reveal particular perspectives on York, and position you – as a tourist, resident, or even researcher – with respect to particular ways of understanding the city. In the podcast, we will reflect on these issues, alongside others – such as the dangers of losing sense of the everyday life of the city because of the attention we give to its extraordinary buildings. Overall, we will trace the inevitable intersections of history and geography, time and place, and the global and the local, through the Walls as they stand today.

Listen to the podcast below to learn more!