Pigs, worms and dukes

Jonathan Pickles of the Lord Mayor's Office. One of the few victims of the cholera outbreak to actually get a gravestone commemorating them.

This particular cholera outbreak was not the first of the city's deadly epidemics to break out in Hagworm's Nest. In 1604 there was a bout of plague that began in the area. It truly was an area of long standing but dubious reputation.

The aforementioned Buckingham Street runs up from Skeldergate to the slightly raised ground of Bishophill. Being that bit up and away from the filthy water, this was a much more desirable address. Buckingham Street itself wasn't there in 1604, or even in 1832. What there was instead was a large 17th Century house that had at one time been owned by the Fairfax family and later by the Duke of Buckingham (hence the names of the streets in the area.) This house had been home to Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, most famous as the Commander-in-Chief of the New Model Army which had won their Civil Wars against forces loyal to King Charles I in the 1640s. On his death, his houses and lands went to his daughter Mary who was married the Duke of Buckingham and who in turn gave his name to the house. Buckingham was not some down on his luck Duke with a title but nothing else, this Duke was at the absolute height of his power and influence. Raised as if a member of the Royal Family he became the B of the CABAL, who were the five advisors to the restored King Charles II, who effectively ran the country and whose initials formed that unfortunate acronym. The interesting contrast in political positions between father-in-law and son-in-law is not for here but could fill several blogs in it's own right.

When you read stories (fiction or non-fiction) set in historic cities like York, it can be very easy to imagine each area of the city as separate villages or suburbs of a decent size and with healthy buffer zones between rich and poor areas. It is always surprising to visit a city like York, London or Edinburgh and discover that the individual areas of the city are generally much smaller than you might imagine and much closer together. It's only because I know York that I no longer make the same mistakes when reading about this place. I know from experience how close the site of the Duke's grand house on Bishophill is to the flooded slums of Skeldergate. I've been there. I've stood there. I could (in theory) throw a stone from one to the other. I'm talking about my theoretical throwing skills only of course in case anyone was thinking of asking my to prove my prowess.

This surprising intermingling of poor and rich living cheek by jowl was far from unique. Across town and around a century later, another distantly related branch of the Fairfax family were paying famed architect John Carr to remodel their house on Castlegate. You can still visit Fairfax House which describes itself as "England's Finest Georgian Townhouse". Over the road from the Fairfaxes, John Carr also designed another fine townhouse now called Castlegate House. York Castle, that gives Castlegate it's name, had fallen out of use as a defensive structure by then but had already begun it's next life as the County Goal. There may well have been walls separating the debtors and criminals from fine Georgian Townhouses but, as elsewhere, a well aimed stone's throw could join them together with ease. I'm not saying I definitely could hit Fairfax House with a stone from the top of the Clifford's Tower, but I would be willing to give it a go.

Fairfax House as viewed from Clifford's Tower. Picture from Wikicommons.

Going further back to the Middle Ages, the real poor of York didn't even get the luxury of being allowed into the city to begin with. Outside each of the major entrances to the city along Monkbridge, Walmgate Bar (Without), Micklegate Bar (Without), Gillygate and Bootham were shanty towns, leper hospitals and institutions to tend the spiritual and material needs of the destitute and disabled. Gillygate gets its name from the church of St. Giles that was found there and Giles, himself a sufferer of leprosy, is a common saint that people of the time appealed to in order to help those in society with the very least.

In the 1290s the state of Gillygate was so bad, particularly the number of pigs that were allowed to roam freely in the streets and make a mess, that a petition was raised to clean it up. A petition that went all the way up to the attention King Edward I. The poor and the destitute of Gillygate living in this appalling shanty town had been barred entry from the salubrious parts of the city by the erection of high walls. And what was immediately behind those walls? Well at one end of the street, at the junction of Gillygate and Bootham, one set of walls separated the mess of the shanty town from the house of the Abbott of St. Mary's. And running alongside Gillygate were the City Walls of York where if you did a quick hop over those you'd have found a literal palace. A palace that was home to none other than the The Archbishop of York. The big man himself.

So when the locals complained about the stench of the pigs on Gillygate, that complaint came right from the top. There they were, England's 2nd highest ranking clergyman and one of the highest ranking monks in the country, breathing the same air and smelling the same smells as those people not even deemed worthy enough to enter the city. (Here is not the place to uneven discuss wealth distributions and how to ensure that there aren't destitute people to begin with, although such a discussion could equally be applied to pretty much any time period in history.)

Gillygate is a much more desirable place nowadays of course and the prisoners have long since moved on from the castle. But what about Hagworm's Nest? One of the few photos that survive of The Nest shows a Wesleyan Mission service taking place there c. 1900. The court has clearly been cleaned up and improved by then so that it all looks quite bland and unremarkable. Subsequently, slum clearances and other improvements swept The Nest away to be replaced by other structures. At one time there was a car park there and now there are flats that (naturally) cost a pretty penny to live in. So a mere 400 years after the plague outbreak, the place has been gentrified and the threat of disease neutralised. Which proves that York is a city that deals with its problems. Eventually.