York Central Heritage Forum
Connecting pasts with futures – Linking communities of now with the communities to come – Developing local economies where tourism builds community wealth
Co-owning heritage
York Central and its linked neighbourhoods in the Leeman Rd, Poppleton Rd and wider Holgate area are rich in heritage - from neolithic settlements and roman burials to the Holgate Windmill to the buildings, landscapes, housing and shops that grew up around the railways.
As new archaeological insights arise from the York Central development, York Central Heritage Forum will explore the area’s histories, pooling local knowledge and research, sharing archives, photos and memories and organising walks and visits.
Throughout we will work together to enrich the heritage statements developed for the York Central Planning Application and ask:
How can we collaboratively enrich our understandings of the area’s history and heritage?
How can heritage of the area shape York Central’s future?
How can communities that already live become connected to the communities to come?
How might York’s heritage – and the tourism it attracts – generate community wealth in ways which support thriving, inclusive neighbourhoods (new and old)?
Our first phase - running in 2023 - is to orgainise events.
What archives and collections are held about the area? Who are the people and groups who are shaping the heritage of the area today?
York Central Heritage Forum Launch - York Central Before the Railways
25th February 2023
Andrew Morrison (York Civic Trust) open up the pre-railway history of the York Central, Leeman Rd and Holgate areas from the impact of the glacial moraine, to the evidence of neolithic trading and settlements to roman burials and pre-railway cricket pitches.
Holgate Windmill
25th March 2023
Holgate Windmill sits with views over the York Central site, sited on the hill created by the glacial moraine that defines the area.
The Holgate Windmill Preservation Trust and their volunteers talked us through how they restored the windmill to working order and produce traditional stone-ground flour to sell, creating an economic model to make the windmill sustainable long term.
What’s in the city archives?
29th March 2023
What different types of archives might shed light on the history of the Leeman Road, Poppleton Road and Holgate Road areas?
Holly Waughman, from the City Archives, helped us explore a number of different routes into the history of area from maps and plans, photographs, the Poor Relief records and even a Pawn Shop receipts book.
The Local Histories of the National Railway Museum
29th April 2023
Andrew McLean the National Railway Museum’s Assistant Director and Head Curator opened up the local histories of the National Railway Museum – including the changing uses of buildings from a good stores, a mineral office and a canteen and the trains that were built and maintained on the site. Along the way wea also heard about a stunning survival on the night of the 1942 Bedecker raids and how British Rail were intimately involved in design the museum we see now.
Christine Waddington – A Shop On Every Corner
16th September 2023
Christine and her husband Duncan used to run the Post Office in Leeman Road. Over the years, they’d heard many snippets of stories about Leeman Road from how the neighbourhood developed in the early 1900s to dealing with second world war bombing to the more recent closure of many of the areas shops. One day Christine and Duncan stuck up a poster in the Post Office window making an explicit call for memories.
A sustainable future for our railway heritage – and an AGM!
Monday 4th December saw an evening which combined a fascinating exploration of railway heritage brought back to life with YoCo’s 2024 AGM – one of those facts of life of being a constituted body, in YoCo’s case a Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG).
AGMs rarely get the pulse racing, but we made ours a celebration of a fascinating year and paired it with an illustrated talk by Tim Hedley-Jones, Director of the Railway Heritage Trust (and a York resident). The Trust has almost forty years’ experience of supporting organisations to restore and re-use our railway heritage from waiting rooms to water towers.