This morning, I was determined to walk York’s city wall, which I can view in the distance from my hotel room window, betwixt the mechanicals on the roof of the adjoining building and the hotel’s Victorian façade.
The York City Walls date to the 13th century when they were built over the ruins of earlier Roman walls. The York Minster is in the distance.
Encompassing most of York’s medieval center, the three-mile trail is a chemin de ronde (or “round walkway” behind the parapet) from where the city’s defenders shots arrows, dropped big rocks, dumped boiling oil and eventually used firearms on attackers. A few sections bear traces of the original Roman walls, but most of what we see today dates to the 13th century. Victorians restored it to its current state in the late 19th century.
The city maintains and regulates usage of the wall system, but as with our Trails Committee and the Land Bank, “The Friends of the Wall” have been legion in promoting and supporting its continuing existence through a mix of paid and volunteer labor and ensuring the public uses it safely and responsibly. This is because the walkway is from three- to six-feet wide, and as it follows the terrain (much as Hadrian’s Wall) the drop below varies from three to 10 feet. To protect users from themselves, the city and Friends have affixed wrought iron fencing in some of the more hazardous areas, such as busy streets and parking areas, where a slip can mean instant death, or place you in traction for months.
I skipped it my last time here because with the passing years I have become so sensitive to heights that my knees knock when mounting a kitchen stool, never mind step ladders. But hey, you cannot really appreciate York’s qualities without a battlement view. That is what the Friends, brochures and websites say, anyway. And forget about walking your dog up there. Banned. I wish it also applied to trail runners. I flattened myself against the masonry several times today (leaving mortar tracks on my clothing, my butt in particular) to let them pass. But that is a rant for another time.
Micklegate Bar, the main entry into the walled city…
As with Hadrian’s Wall, the York City Walls once controlled access through four main and two ancillary fortified gates, called “bars” locally. Hikers most often access the trail via steps that march up from the bars, as well as former turret sites. Yorkers or Yorkies (the folks that live here) are quite fond of them and supremely patient with gawkers who block the sidewalk or stray into the street for the perfect shot. Today, my goal was to see the Micklegate Bar (“Great Street”), which regulated the primary route into the city and traditionally was how English monarchs entered the city—all except Henry VIII, the contrarian.
The bars also provided an excellent means of imprisoning malcontents, traitors, murderers and lunatics. My first introduction to this history was when I first entered the walled city through the Fishergate, a Roman archway about a mile from Micklegate. An adjoining interpretive wayside exhibit (which appear on all the gates) proclaims that Henry VII (1457-1509) dedicated the gate to Lord Mayor William Todd as a reward for supporting him against Richard III (the guy with scoliosis) during the War of the Roses. The prison tower that once topped it brought torment to those on the wrong side of religion or reigning monarch. One poor soul scratched for posterity:
…a little tower in a stone wall, low upon the moist ground, where venomous vermin doth breed, very dark, having no light but a little loophole in the wall.
No one recorded what the lunatics had to say, nor did they leave any messages.
The central arch was eventually bricked-in after Yorkshire men, always a fractious lot, stormed and set fire to the gate when the same beneficent Henry VII raised their taxes in 1489 to finish paying for his crown. (You can still see the scorched bricks in the archway, reopened in 1827.) Unlike the greedy mayor, the townfolk had supported Richard III, who had claimed the crown after his nephews, the rightful heirs, disappeared after he had them locked in the Tower of London. Some believe he had them murdered. But it is no matter now, as poor old Dick, after losing all at Bosworth Field, ended up under a Leicester car park.
He was only slightly better off than his dad, Richard, the Duke of York. His Lancaster enemies famously mounted his head on a spike over the Micklegate Bar. As he was also a contender for the throne, they garnished his grisly remains with a paper crown. He was not the first, nor would he be the last to suffer that fate
The people of York were never in thrall of southern authority. They rose against Tostig Godwinson, the 22-year-old Earl of Northumbria and younger brother of England’s last Saxon king, who had been forced upon them by King Edward the Confessor following the death of the venerable Siward. How could a London popinjay replace Shakespeare’s famed duke who had marched north and chased Macbeth from the throne of Scotland? Most especially, York is the hometown of Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up Parliament in 1605, and whose failure is celebrated with fireworks every November 5.
The offending prison tower over the Fishergate was torn down in the 17th century and is now a convenient pedestrian pass through. The Micklegate is now the venue for History of the Wall tours and continues as a main thoroughfare for cars and trucks.
A trail map provided online, much as is done by the Land Bank and the Snohomish Juan Trails Committee.
I descended the steps at Micklegate, but rather than continuing on the wall, I chose the adjoining path marked out by the Friends, which leads to all the same places, including Clifford’s Tower, which I broke down and paid the £8 tariff to look inside…after ascending the 55 steep steps to reach the ticket office. There isn’t much to see, but an empty shell, which was all that left of the building following a 17th century explosion.
The story of the tower is not so much that men in chain mail tramped about in it, as what happened here in March 1190. This was the eve of the Third Crusade when Richard I (“Lionheart”) was preparing to embark for the Holy Land. The usual nutballs and lunkheads were in the streets of York agitating against heretics of all orders, but especially Jews. The ruling class, in this instance, decided to get in on the deal, mainly because most of them owed money to Jewish bankers. Remember moneylending (as opposed to borrowing) was a sin to Christians. The gentry borrowed to cover debts incurred in anticipation of royal appointments. If you missed out you were in trouble. So… what better way to get out of debt than to stir up a riot and hope they kill your creditors.
Clifford’s Tower, where 150 Jews—men, women and children—were driven as heretics, and then committed mass suicide rather than convert on the eve of the Third Crusade.
The rioters drove about 150 Jews—men, women and children—to the tower, then fashioned of wood. No one came to their rescue. The Jews did heave rocks over the walls, and a lucky hit killed one of the ringleaders, later described as “The Hermit.” This incited the crowd to set the place on fire, and the Jews, rather than renounce their faith, chose suicide, very much as they did 1,000 years before at Masada.
Centuries later, the novelist Walter Scott’s noble Saxon protagonist, Wilfred of Ivanhoe, shielded Isaac of York, a moneylender, against scheming Normans. Wilfred fights in a tournament, wearing armor gifted by Isaac, and then, grievously wounded, is healed by Isaac’s daughter, the pure-hearted Rebecca. Collective guilt is washed away. It wa all the Normans’ fault.
It is an old story, still current and the people of York, through English Heritage, want you to know about it…just as they care for their wall.