Sundries of York

Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all tings, hath yet spared these minor Monuments.

- Urne Buriall, Sir Thomas Browne

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower
- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

Since York is such a marvellous place in many respects there are many great pictures to be taken and many amusing motives to be found. Several of these, sadly, I missed despite my many excursions, but a number of them have been presented on this blog already and some will be presented in future posts. In this particular blogpost, however, I aim to compile certain photographs who just don't fit in anywhere else, or which I have forgotten to include in previous arrays. This, and the fact that the pictures were taken in York, are the only over-arching themes uniting them. Aside from that they have very little in common, and I think that is part of the fun. I have used "sundries" partly because it is very apt, but mainly because I like word; it is for instance used as a collective term for the minor courses on the menu at York Arms. 

York is a city very proud of its history, and that is partly why being a history student in York was so much fun. Throughout the city you will come upon plaques dedicated to the memory of persons or places worthy of commemoration, some of which are familiar to outsiders, some of which are known primarily within York. In other words, it seems that regardless of the geographical extent of one's fame, the city of York will honour your legacy somehow if you have an affinity to the place. I am myself very flattered that there is a street called Hope Street, and I'm sure if I return to York often enough there will be a couple of buildings named after me as well. Christ once said that nobody becomes a prophet in his own country, but if you are from York or connected to York you will at least achieve some degree of fame, even if your sole material legacy is a plaque on a wall. 

Marygate Tower, situated at the junction of Marygate and Bootham. It was damaged during the Siege of York (1644), when Parlamentarian forces tried to take the Royalist city.

If Silvio Berlusconi ever visits York he can not walk on the city walls.

The below picture, which I believe is from the 17th century, is situated in York Castle Museum, and it mesmerised me from the first time I saw it. The image is a splendid portrayal of the post-Renaissance melancholia and the preoccupation with the brevity of life, frailty of man and fickleness of fame that is found to such great extent in works of Spenser, Donne and Browne.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

- Death be not proud, John Donne

This sign marks the direction to a particular exhibition in York Castle Museum:

In ages past when spells were cast
In a time of men in steel
Where a man was taught no special thing
It was all done by feel

- Listen learn read on, Deep Purple

Tea, among the greater part of those who use it most, is drunk in no great quantity. As it neither exhilarates the heart, nor stimulates the palate, it is commonly an entertainment merely nominal, a pretence for assembling to prattle, for interrupting business, or diversifying idleness. They, who drink one cup, and, who drink twenty, are equally punctual in preparing or partaking it; and, indeed, there are few but discover, by their indifference about it, that they are brought together not by the tea, but the teatable.

- Review of "A Journal of Eight Days' Journey", Samuel Johnson

I was told that glass and other sharp materials were embedded in the brick walls to prevent pigeons from perching there. The pigeons are a pest in York, but fortunately their number has now attracted falcons who hunt them for food. As long as people do not pay attention to the "don't feed the pigeon" signs, this is a solution I approve.

The white building in front of St. Wilfrid's Church is the De Grey Rooms, a 19th centry building where the Yorkshire Hussars had their officers mess. It is now the main tourist information centre in York.

A little bit behind this section of the wall is King's Manor where the Centre for Medieval Studies is situated.

A flower-bed meant to symbolise the city's emblem: the white rose of York.

Memorial for those who fell in what the British call the Second South African War, but which is more commonly known as the Boer War.

While the dealers they get together

And they decide who gets the breaks
And who's going to be in the gallery
- In the gallery, Dire Straits

Our Banners to th'Alhambra's turrets bear;
Then, wave our Conqu'ring Crosses in the Aire

- The Conquest of Granada, John Dryden

This 14th century timber-framed house is called the Bowes Morrell House, and it is named after John Bowes Morrell who had a remarkable career in this city. He also was a key figure in establishing the University of York which was founded in 1963, and the main campus library is named after him as well as this beautiful Medieval house. 

 

I presume the spikes are meant to keep the pigeons off the bars, but why place the bars there in the first place?

O, you most shameless desperate ruffian, you
O, villain, villain, arrant vilest villain!
Who seized our Cerberus by the throat, and fled,
And ran, and rushed, and bolted, haling of
The dog, my charge!

- The Frogs, Aristophanes

 I have heard there is an old law that says if a Scotsman is found within the city walls of York carrying an arbalest, or any other long-range weapon presumably, he must be shot. I suspect that this society is a part of a cunning plan to lure more Scotsmen within the city walls.

Bootham Bar.

At least the Romans gave them sanitation.

Lastly, Whereas men affirm this colour was a Curse, I cannot make out the propriety of that name, it neither seeming so to them, nor reasonably unto us; for they take so much content therein, that they esteem deformity by other colours, describing the Devil, and terrible objects, white.

- Vulgar Errors, Sir Thomas Browne

This may be a coincidence. I sincerely hope it is.

This is the Centre for Medieval Studies where I spent the mornings three days a week. It is an utterly charming place, although it reeks heavily of the 1960s, and I believe this to be the only place in York where they do not have separate taps for hot and cold water.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.

His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!

You may seek him in hte basement, you may look up in the air -
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!
- Macavity the Mystery Cat, T. S. Eliot

On my way home from a trip to the Merchant Adventurers' Hall I stumbled upon this guy.

He promised that if any of his swords fell down and killed any children, he would help their mothers make new ones. Not many people laughed.

Well, God give them wisdom that have it, and those that are fools, let them use their talents.

- Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare

I really, really like this pun.

Hey, how many trees did you have to hug to get that strong?

- Bucky Katt

This commemorative plaque is located inside the Guildhall and states yet again the particular fondness the citizens of York seem to harbour for their long-dead king. I did not discover this until after my double blogpost on Richard III, but due to that post I felt compelled to put this picture up.

The fesaunt, scorner of the cok by nighte

- The Parlement of Foules, Geoffrey Chaucer

This pheasant started to hang out in our backyard a few days prior to my departure. He was the third - and last - pheasant I came across in the course of my stay.

Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?
- Homer Simpson

The expression "sleeping with the fishes" suddenly took on a new meaning.

These were all the sundries I were able to find this time around (with the exception of the last two pictures, which were taken in 2009), but please stay tuned for more blogposts concerning my English adventures. 

Season of Mists

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?

- To Autumn, John Keats

If I had been asked half a year ago what I would associate with England, one of my first answers would be mist and fog. The image of brick houses swaddled in slates of mist hovering close to the ground at midnight, dimming the streetlights and houselights, is to me synonymous with Britain in general and English towns in particular. This image was basically what met me when I looked out of the hotel window my first night in England, and it dominated the landscape all the way form London to York, sometimes less heavy, but nonetheless an almost constant presence that created an atmosphere of nostalgia. Although this was only my second trip to England it created, I think in hindsight, the fields draped in fog gave me a sense of something familiar, something that made this whole experience less strange, less alien. I might, of course, be merely conjuring this in the process of writing, but I recall that, as the train cut through the English countryside, I did not have the nerves which, given the situation, would have been completely justified.

The first couple of days in York seemed to confirm my idea of England as a mist-covered entity, and already on the day I arrived in the town I was getting convinced that this was England's default condition. However, throughout my stay I realised that the weather was mostly sunny and pleasantly warm, even in January, and I had to adjust my view of England, at least weatherwise. Days in the sun were on the whole numerous, and even when the weather was cloudy or when there was a certain amount of rain, it rarely developed into outright nasty weather.

I was therefore not very surprised when a friend of mine told me yesterday that the weather in York is currently very warm and sunny with degrees fluctuating between 20 and 25 degrees celsius. I was of course happy on the behalf of all my friends in York, but it also underlined the very dismal weather we've had in Trondheim the last couple of weeks. In this period I have rarely seen the sun except as a white blur curtained by grey clouds, or, on moderate days, as a change of golden hue as the light dies along the wall of my room. Only occasionally there has been blue skies in my waking hours, for the most part the world has been wrapped in a foggy cloth the same colour as crows' backs.

Consequently I have decided to present some pictures from England showing the more gloomy days of my stay, in order to counterweight the current paradisiacal condition of York and to nourish the hope that after days of darkness we may walk again in sunlight. 

I try to see through the disguise,
But the clouds were there,
Blocking out the sun 

- There is an end, The Greenhornes

These pictures are taken on the main campus of the University of York. This hideous architectural monstrosity is where I had to conduct my pilgrimage whenever I needed books from the main library, and I tried to venture as seldom as I could. As mist goes these pictures are nothing compared to what a friend of mine documented, but these will have to do for now.

Dew-cloth, dream drapery,
And napkin spread by fays

- Mist, Henry David Thoreau

Let thickest mists in envy master here,

- O that no day would ever more appear, Lady Mary Wroth

Regardless of weather I find York Minster to be very evocative and awe-inspiring. Mist veiling the old structure only enhances that sense of mystery which to religious people is an intrinsic part of the church building and its symbolism. Particularly the gargoyles and the other stone carvings are given an air of something otherwordly, as if the mist made them come to life, peering with sentient eyes into our world.

Scarce seen in the twilight garden if gloom insist

- Love in a mist, Algernon Charles Swinburne

(...) in the night seasons.

- Psalm 16:7

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit

Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,

Where blood-begotten spirits come

And all complexities of fury leave,

Dying into a dance,

An agony of trance,

An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

- Byzantium, William Butler Yeats

 Season of mists
- To Autumn, John Keats

From concave stormlight a freak suggestion...
- Fantasia on Horbury, Geoffrey Hill

Fortunately the sun appeared over Durham later on in the day. The pictures above were taken around noon, but when I emerged from Durham Cathedral the sun was shining pleasantly, far too pleasantly to fit to this somber theme.

Sob, heavy world,

Sob as you spin

Mantled in mist, remote from the happy

- The Age of Anxiety, W. H. Auden