FEATURES: FLORISTS IN A BATTLE TO KEEP LIFE COMING UP ROSES
Club works with developers and Historic England to preserve football links when ground is demolished
WHEN THE bulldozers move in and Bootham Crescent is turned from a football ground into a housing development, it will not just be a big part of York City’s history that disappears, but the city of York’s. Work is under way to preserve as much of that as possible.
For many, the name Bootham Crescent evokes memories of the football club that made it its home for 88 years, of famous FA Cup games against the likes of Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and Liverpool, players such as Keith
Houchen and Keith Walwyn, promotion campaigns and even David Longhurst, who died on the pitch during a 1990 match against Lincoln City.
But before the Minstermen arrived in 1932 it was home to York Cricket Club, and from 2016 the football club shared the stadium with rugby league side York City Knights, as they will the new 8,500-seater LNER Community Stadium at Monks Cross. Baseball was played at Bootham in the 1930s and American football in the 1980s.
More than that, the tunnel under the club’s Popular Stand once used to allow home and away fans to switch ends at halftime served as a Second World War air raid shelter primarily used by the nearby Shipton Street School.
The 4.2-acre site has been sold to Persimmon Homes, who plan to build 93 homes on it, but there will also be significant nods to what was there before, thanks to work between the football club, developers and Historic England.
Sections of the Popular Stand terrace and tunnel plus the boundary wall will be retained, a memorial garden built, the old centre circle marked in a public open space and a request has been submitted to the City of York Council to name six places within the development after club legends, including Longhurst, whom the Shipton End terrace was named after following his death. There has even been 3D mapping of the site to facilitate future projects.
“It is very upsetting to be leaving Bootham Crescent but there is a legacy,” promised York City chairman and lifelong fan Jason McGill. “We’ve all worked together hard to leave a lasting tribute. It will show there was a football ground there and I think that’s vitally important. “We are trying to do something a little bit different and I think in a more meaningful way than a lot of developments where housing has been built on old football grounds.
“Although it will be disappointing to see it go, there will be things supporters can visit and enjoy their memories.”
The plan is to move existing memorials, caskets and ashes to the new memorial garden, subject to the wishes of the families, although five plaques to commemorate players who died in the Second World War will go to the new ground.
For many years a club flag was lowered from the south-east corner to indicate the match would end in five minutes, and a recreated flagpole with replica flag is planned.
We’ve all worked together hard to leave a lasting tribute. Jason McGill, chairman of York City football club.