We save the buildings, and then put them to work
The York Conservation Trust has a varied portfolio of properties dating back 800 years – and gives them purpose in 2020s Britain. Tom Ough steps back in time
Walking around York with Jonathan Bryant is like walking around Edwardian London with the Monopoly man. “That’s ours,” he says as we walk past a handsome Georgian shopfront; “That’s ours,” he says of a half-timbered house whose second storey sags majestically over the pavement.
Bryant is the chief executive of the York Conservation Trust, which means that more than 80 properties are in his care. Those buildings span more than 800 years of architectural history, and they include an 18th-century theatre built around the remnants of a 13th-century hospital; one of the finest 18th-century townhouses in the country; and by far the most opulent Ask Italian restaurant that I’ve ever seen.
The trust celebrates its 75th birthday this year, so I’ve come to meet Bryant and learn about his team’s work. Their office is on the first floor of a Georgian townhouse on Micklegate, an ancient city-centre road that is guarded by a stone gate and studded with medieval churches. Bryant, who is smartly dressed and has the round glasses of an antiquarian, has been in charge since April 2018. He shows me around the office and takes us off for lunch, leading the way with a brisk clip. In wintry sunshine, we walk down Micklegate, across the Ouse, and towards Ask, with Bryant pointing out trust properties as we go.
The restaurant is housed in the Assembly Rooms, which, according to the trust, is probably the earliest neoclassical building in Europe. From the outside, it looks like a temple, with four ionic columns supporting a wide pediment.
The Assembly Rooms were built as a place for wealthy 18th-century racegoers to spend their evenings. Thanks to the trust, which bought the building in 2002 and has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on its renovation and upkeep, it’s still magnificent. Gleaming Corinthian columns surround the long hall in which the aristocrats used to dance. The columns support a clerestory whose windows bathe the restaurant in sunlight. Eleven Murano glass chandeliers hang from the ceiling like angelic octopuses being lowered to earth.
All this for an Ask Italian? The restaurant is a good tenant, Bryant tells me over lunch, and what’s more, using the building this way means that everyone can enjoy it. “This heritage asset should be put to work every day to earn its keep,” he says. “It shouldn’t be fossilised and put in a glass case. It shouldn’t be there for just high days and holidays. It should be there contributing to the sense of place, contributing to the economy, and contributing to the vitality of a community.”
There are simply so many fine old buildings in York, with its rich Roman,
‘These heritage assets shouldn’t be there just for high days and holidays’
There are simply so many fine buildings – they can’t all be turned into museums
Viking and Norman histories, that they can’t all be turned into museums. If they’re to survive, they must find a purpose. The trust aims to find its buildings tenants who will bring vibrancy and modernity to the properties they occupy, whether it’s the dental practice in the 19th century chapel or the contemporary art gallery in an old schoolhouse.
Bryant chuckles. “I’m going to show you a late medieval building that is flogging high-end freezers.”
Before we leave, he tells me a bit of the trust’s history. It was founded in 1945 by Dr John Bowes Morrell and his brother, Cuthbert, in the hope of preserving York’s important buildings. Its portfolio has slowly grown to its current stock of 81, despite the trust’s record of never seeking public money (though it receives some help from the council with the Theatre Royal). The point, Bryant says, “is to care for buildings and streetscapes that would otherwise not be looked after to the same standards of conservation.”
I ask him what he thinks of other cities’ conservation work. He praises Edinburgh, which abandoned plans drawn up in the Sixties to demolish swathes of its comely city centre. (I’m reminded of the Ringways plan, also from the Sixties, which nearly condemned some of the most characterful parts of London to be replaced by eight-lane motorways.) Knowing I’d been to Brighton recently, Bryant refers to the “nonsense that’s been put up on the seafront”.
We finish our meals and begin Bryant’s tour. The Theatre Royal, which is the one with the 13th-century hospital remnants, is across the road. The trust bought it from the council for £1 in 2014, overseeing a £6million restoration project in 2016, and leases it to York Citizens’ Theatre Trust.
We meet Guy Bowyer, the York Conservation Trust’s in-house architect, by the box office. He’s here to check the theatre’s ceilings, but has time to give us a tour-within-a-tour. The theatre is a strange and compelling mix of ancient (the 13th-century undercroft in which some kind of jazz band practice was taking place) and modernist (the upstairs bar has views on three sides out of four – the only view its postwar designer obscured was the view of York Minster). Bowyer shows us the theatre itself, into which the trust has to get a cherry picker once a year for an annual check of the roof. Then he takes us on to the roof, from which – finally – we can see the minster, nobly looming over higgledy-piggledy brick houses.
The minster isn’t in the trust’s portfolio, but would surely be the Koh-i-Noor of the York conservation crown; a jewel without compare. “Is that your white whale?” I ask.
Bowyer can’t think of anything worse. “We’d have so many committees to deal with!”
And the trust is busy enough as it is. We resume the macro-tour, and trot next door to the De Grey Rooms. On its second floor is a beautiful white-walled ballroom that overlooks St Leonard’s Place. It’s often used as a wedding venue. With shops, homes, a church and a registry office, the trust’s properties can accommodate every eventuality. “We’ve got everything up to an undertaker,” says Bryant.
We continue. He shows me the freezer shop, the church, the gallery, and the garlanded townhouse. Its name is Fairfax House, after Viscount Fairfax, whose wealth gave it its early splendour. For much of the 20th century, it was part of a cinema, until York Civic Trust renovated it in the Eighties. They filled it with the collection of Georgian furniture and clocks that Noel Terry, the creator of Terry’s Chocolate Orange, left in his will. The building’s upkeep was expensive, however. York Conservation Trust bought the house in 2008 and leases it back at a nominal rent to York Civic Trust, which continues to run the museum.
Bryant seems to be able to open any door in York. Hanging on to his coattails, I can go behind the scenes of what feels like every other building in the city centre. As the light fades, he shows me Herbert House, which is the sagging half-timbered house, four storeys high, that currently hosts the York Gin Shop on its ground floor. Upstairs, the house is badly in need of renovation. Bryant hopes to get support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, thus breaking the trust’s decades-long record of selfsufficiency. “We must get public access into that building because it’s such an important part of the merchant area of York, and it has such a fascinating story to tell.”
Thanks to buildings such as Herbert House, York is one of the UK’s most architecturally characterful cities. And thanks to organisations such as the Trust, that’s how it’ll stay.