In Memory of Councillor Ian Gillies, who served as Lord Mayor of York for the 2014/15 civic year.
During his term in office Ian supported many of the Friends of York Walls activities, including promoting the “Walking Guide to York’s City Walls” book.
Aged 78, he has died just over a fortnight after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Mr Gillies had been a Conservative councillor for Rural West York, for 12 years when he retired in 2019, twice serving as Conservative group leader, and also as City of York Council leader. A funeral service is set to be held on Friday, December 27 at 11.30am at All Saints’ Church in North Street in York city centre.
“The Press” article HERE
The Friends of York Walls website first went live in November 2011 as part of the early preparations for FOYW to become a recognised group supporting York’s walls and defences.
Over the (almost) 13 years since then the website has been visited many times from locations all over the world and used by people seeking information about York’ famour City Walls and the studded Walls Trail.
The City Walls Trail home page regularly receives over 300 hits per day and its URL is to be found referred to in many places.
Posted 16th October 2024 AF
Location = Fishergate Postern Tower, Piccadilly, York, North Yorkshire, YO1 9AF FREE admission and no need to book.
See inside this watch-tower on York’s City Walls. Rarely open to the public, our volunteers are on hand to show off the spiral staircase, Tudor toilet and timber roof. Find out about the history of the Walls and look out for any approaching invaders!
The Tower was built around 1505 where the City Walls ended on the banks of a swollen river Foss, with York Castle on the opposite bank. The narrow, 500 year old stairs twist to the right as you go up, making it difficult for a right-handed attacker to use a sword (or any weapon) as effectively as a defender facing him from above. The stairs take you up to the first floor room, which has a small twisted corridor off it leading to the garderobe, for human waste to drop straight into the river. The Foss had been made very broad by the building of a dam in the time of William the Conqueror, which raised the level of the river so it flooded the land between the Tower and the Castle, where the modern road called Piccadilly is.
You can see the modern lie of the land if you continue up the spiral staircase to the top floor (look out for masons’ marks on your way) and look through the windows, which were the open embrasures of battlements for the first few years of the Tower’s life. The roof beams may be older than the Tower itself: the roof was added in the late 1500s, using second hand timbers that carry obvious signs of their earlier uses.
Published 29th September 2024 AF
