Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

We are pleased to offer YPS members and their guests this extra summer event.

Chris Shepherd will present her stunning record of a year in the life of Museum Gardens. Peter Hogarth will then talk about the History of Museum Gardens Book Project to mark the Society’s 200th Anniversary.

Guests welcome. Admission free. Donations invited from non Members.

No advance booking necessary.

Member’s report

This extra lecture evening opened with a slideshow of beautiful photographs of the Museum Gardens at different seasons. A colourful revelation of familiar and unfamiliar parts of the garden, it was also a confirmation of how very much improved the planting has been in recent years – a huge change from municipal flower beds. Imaginative planting now also encourages birds, beetles, butterflies and bees.

Dr Hogarth then talked about a history of the Gardens to be published as part of the celebrations of the forthcoming YPS bicentenary. That the gardens continue to exist in the city centre is evidently down to luck and the 19th-century old-boy-network. YPS negotiations to purchase the lease from the Office of Woods and Forests were conducted on both sides by men of standing who knew each other. We can only be grateful: it is a significant site historically and botanically.

The old Manor Shore was crossed by a very ancient route, still in existence. Beneath the abbey site are Roman remains – possibly including the Roman amphitheatre. After the dissolution, the abbey precinct passed to the Crown, the buildings were quarried for stone, and the land used for pasture. It was briefly overrun by Parliamentarians in 1644, and many of the abbey records were lost and the Roman wall damaged. Since 1829, when it passed to the YPS, it has been a pleasure garden with botanical aspirations. Owned by the City since 1961, it continues under the aegis of the York Museums Trust.

Carole Smith