Dwarfed by its larger neighbour St Michael le Belfry sits in the shadow of York Minster. This church holds the baptism records of Guy Fawkes one of the gunpowder plotters. It is sometimes joked that he was one of the few men to enter Parliament with honest intentions.
3 comments:
Looks like your town has done a very good job to preserve old buildings. They look in very good condition. Sad to say, in Spore, there is very little appreciation of old buildings.
But I notice that there is practically no greenery in the streets. Why is that so?
Recently, I saw this movie, Miss Potter. The English countryside is really beautiful. How blessed the English people are. Is it far from your place?
Hi Chun See,
York is a particularly fine example of preserving our antiquity. Some of the buildings date back to 12tha nad 13th centuries. I think as a nation we have had a make do and mend attitude that has helpedd to preserve our old buildings. Building in solid materials like stone, brick and concrete helps whereas timber buildings in a tropical climate like Singapore tend to rot and dissappear. We had a spate in the 1960s of clearing away old buildings and putting up modern tower blocks in their place. Fortunately York Civic Society has been a moderating influence on this type of behaviour in York.
Ther is greenery in the city but not much. I will try and include some photos with greenery in them for you. within the walled area of the city it would have been high density housing in mediaeval times with very few green spaces. Outside of the city though was the extensive forest of Galtres which has largley been cut down to form very rich arable and grazing land in what is now known as the Vale of York.
York is a fairly small city population 100,000 people and from the city centre you can be in open countryside after a very short drive of a few minutes. If you look on the google maps and zoom out from any of the photo locations you will see that York is surrounded by a ring road north and south. This runs through open countryside mainly and you can see sheep and cattle grazing, horses, wheat, barley and oats and the yellow fields of rape seed grown for vegetable oil, similarly the occasional blue of linseed oil but it is not so coomon. Maize is increasingly grown around York and one farmer has even created a maize maze tourist attraction next to the ring road. Sugar beet used to be common around York but the processing factory shut down this year and so none has been grown this year. Some farms are now turning to growing willow coppices as biomass fuel for the power stations.
Post a Comment