Following my good friend Chun See asking about greenery in the city in the comments of the article on St. Michael le Belfrey I went out yesterday to find some of the greenery I knew existed in York. This is St. Sampsons Square with nice shady trees around the edge of the square. Restaurants use the square on fine days to seat customers outside. Today the square will also be used for the York Traditional Dance Festival with a finale this afternoon performing for the Mayor of York. The square was not always so pleasant. During the 1960s and 1970s it was marked out as a car park. The trees were planted in the late 1970s.
This black and white photo of Five Quarter Rapper dancers from Durham taken in 1975 during the Folk Festival shows the square from almost the same viewpoint, you can see the Minster central tower in the centre of both photographs. In those days the square was not very picturesque and dancing under the direct hot sun could lead to a serious thirst (it still does today but takes a few dances more to work up that thirst!)
1 comment:
I think becos of dry weather plants don't grow so easily over there.
In Spore, there is so much greenery that, nowadays, if I wanted to take a picture of a building from a distance, it is often blocked by trees. But I am not complaining. It's thanks to Lee Kuan Yew's foresight who introduced the Tree Planting Campaign decases ago that Spore is less of a concrete jungle today.
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