Building’s rebirth written in the stars
City observatory hidden away in Museum Gardens celebrates anniversary as a full-time tourist venue
People would see this tiny building and not give it a second look. Fiona Burton, volunteer manager for the York Observatory.
NESTLED BENEATH the trees in the Museum Gardens, it could easily be mistaken for a tool hut or a public lavatory, and for a while it was in danger of becoming one.
Yet the unusual, stone-built octagon within sight of Lendal Bridge is the oldest working observatory in Yorkshire.
It has been there, on and off, since 1831, yet many appear not to know of its existence.
“People are always telling us that they’ve been walking through the gardens for years and they didn’t know about it,” said Fiona Burton, who manages the volunteers who now keep it open.
“There’s a very small sign outside, but that’s all. You would never know what it was.”
The low profile of York Observatory may be partly ascribed to the fact that even after it was rebuilt in 1981 following a £50,000 fundraising effort by its founders, the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, it opened only occasionally.
Today, however, it celebrates its 10th anniversary as a fulltime tourist attraction, run by volunteers from the York Museums Trust.
Its history dates back much further, to a time when York was at the centre of interplanetary discovery. Its telescope was hand-built by a local maker of scientific instruments named Thomas Cooke, who is credited with turning out what was then the largest refracting telescope in the world.
The observatory, a fraction the size of most and with no dome on top, is distinguished by a conical roof mounted on bearings, which can be rotated by hand.
The roof panels conceal a series of hatches through which the telescope can be pointed.
The building also houses a clock from 1811 which tells the time based on observations of the positions of stars. Before Greenwich Mean Time, it was the timepiece by which all others in York were set, and for a fee of sixpence, visitors could check their pocketwatches against it.
It still sets its time by the stars and is permanently four minutes and 20 seconds behind GMT.
The observatory was built at a time of great scientific experiment in York. Five decades earlier, from an observatory in Bootham, the wealthy local astronomers John Goodricke and Edward Pigott had discovered the principles of variable stars, whose brightness changes over time. It was a discovery that helped later scientists measure the size of the universe, but Goodricke did not live to see their research. Born in Holland to an aristocratic family with a stately pile near Knaresbrough, he was completely deaf, and dead of pneumonia at 21. Despite his legacy, the future of York’s observatory was not written in the stars and after the Second World War, it fell into disrepair.
By the 1970s, the building was derelict and but for the fundraising push, would have been demolished.
“Even after it was rebuilt, it still wasn’t available to the public,” Ms Burton said. “It ran to very occasional evening openings.
“We took over in 2002, and at that time most York people would walk through the Museum Gardens, see this tiny building with its closed door and not give it a second look.”
It was in 2007 that a volunteer project was launched, with helpers coming forward to open the building at daytime.
“It’s great that people can now come and learn about the history of the building and the significance of York in the history of astronomy,” Ms Burton said.