‘They won’t risk York Central with rusty containers’

Nowhere is allocated a shipping container complex for the consumption of alcohol and food.

Developers carrying out a high quality scheme are not going to jeopardise selling or renting magnificent new buildings by introducing rusty containers with a record of nuisance to neighbours.

They certainly wouldn’t lease prime real estate to accommodate them for the paltry sum currently received by York Council at 17-21 Piccadilly. This raises very serious questions over the veracity of claims made by Spark Directors they are planning a move to York Central.

On one hand Messrs Leach and McKenzie at Spark claim they have spent thousands on architectural drawings to indicate how their complex will look at York Central. On the other hand we have Messrs Gilman, Cook, Guyett and Hind from organisations actually carrying out York Central who make no mention of Spark and have no shipping containers in their formal application.

These two positions are contradictory and only one of them can be correct, so who should we believe?

Moreover, does this mean Spark will be back again to demand yet another approval to stay longer at Piccadilly? Their fifth “temporary” permission! They were only ever supposed to be there for three years.

At the original planning meeting it was asserted permission was being granted only because it was a fixed period, after which the site would be cleared and handed back. Every undertaking has been reneged. Every promise broken.

This fiasco has gone on far too long.

Citizens have every right to seek a full independent inquiry by an outside authority into exactly what has been going on here and who is responsible for it.

Matthew Laverack B.A.,B.Arch.

Architect

Lord Mayors Walk

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York Pageants and bazaars…

I THOROUGHLY enjoyed David Wilson’s look at the York Pageant of 1909 in last Wednesday’s Press, pages 22 and 23 of the Nostalgia ‘department’. Written with a light touch, the event was well captured and some of its background explained.

I loved the organiser’s name. The ‘ringmaster’ was Louis Napoleon Parker. I had to resist the temptation to come to attention and belt out the Marseillaise! What a moniker and why couldn’t I have one like that?

Another smile I failed to smother resulted from David’s reference to the closing tableau of the Pageant including St Peter’s School boys marching with a banner and singing in Latin, even though the school was founded just over two centuries after the Roman withdrawal.

I can’t think why this image reminded me of a particular episode in the Michael Palin ‘Ripping Yarns’ TV series. I understand the tradition has been discontinued.

On a far smaller scale, in the preceding year of 1908 a ‘Great Liberal Bazaar, Exhibition and Fete’ was held in the Exhibition Buildings (Exhibition Square). It was a four-day event held in March on the theme ‘Greater Britain’.

One of the delights of old guide books and programmes is the adverts that can tell the reader a lot. Looking through a copy of the official guide book for the 1908 event, just a few firms ring a bell now and as far as I can see, only one is still in business today; turning to the back cover the page is given over to George Barnett & Co., Wholesale and Retail Ironmongers, Colliergate, York.

Thank you for such informative entertainment!

Derek Reed

Address supplied

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