12th October 2025

Micklegate book launched this week

At last we’re launching our new book about Micklegate on Wednesday evening (15th October). Over the last year our team of researchers have been working hard on Micklegate: the Great Street of York, investigating each building on this fascinating street. Our focus has been on who lived and traded there from early times to the modern day, and the book, our largest to date, is packed full of facts, stories, photos and memories.

Micklegate today is an intriguing mixture of grand Georgian houses, independent businesses, top quality cafes and restaurants, well-known pubs and intriguing doorways.

Its grand houses have seen many changes of use over the centuries. But there are so many other houses, shops and businesses of great interest. One building hosted a leading group of artists, antiquarians, architects and philosophers, the York Virtuosi, in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Famous York historian Dr William Evelyn lived on Micklegate, as did the 19th century organ builder John Ward, and the Backhouse nursery family.

Walter Ward was famous for his pot shop on the corner of Bar Lane, and Buckles Bakery on the corner of Priory Street was in a building which had housed bakers for nearly 200 years.

Advertisement for Walter Ward’s shop at 148-50 Micklegate, in the Yorkshire Evening Press in 1905

Priory Cafe on the corner of Micklegate and Priory St, ca 1950 (Stephen Barrett)

Horse trams in Micklegate, with the trace horse. Adelphi Hotel in the background ca 1900 (Mike Pollard)

We read about the horse trams hauling their passengers up Micklegate Hill, with an extra horse for that tricky bit. Diarist Anne Lister of Gentleman Jack fame visited Micklegate often in the early 19th century, and there was a doomed love affair in the 18th century at the Falcon Inn with Lady Vavasour.

Charles Dickens is reputed to have based his Wilkins Micawber character on an infamous chappy working at a railway company office on Micklegate.

One of the pubs, known as the railwaymen’s pub, played a key role in the birth of the National Union of Railwaymen.

Mr Micawber 1889 Dickens’ David Copperfield character by Kyd (Joseph Clayton Clarke), reputedly based on Richard Chicken.

Two well-known restaurants in the 1980s and 1990s in Micklegate, later Jinnah (Digby Thornton)

People have many memories, especially of the pubs, nightclubs and restaurants along Micklegate, and the notorious Micklegate Run. They also look back very fondly on Christmas sleigh rides at the Coop store, and shopping and working at Boyes store on Ouse Bridge.

Christmas at the Co-op in the 1980s (York Press)

The book, the sixth in our series of popular and award-winning publications, has 184 pages with 160 illustrations (colour and black and white), and will be on sale from 16 October, price £15, at Waterstones in Coney St and at Monks Cross, Explore York Library, the Amnesty Bookshop on Micklegate, and Pextons Hardware and Frankie and Johnny’s Cookshop on Bishy Road.