Romans and Vikings and Normans, Oh My! (York Part 1)

About 200 miles north of London is the city of York which, not surprisingly, is in Yorkshire. (Actually, the Shire got the name from the city, so I guess one should really say that Yorkshire is around York.) We’ve been there three times, and we plan to go again. Why, you ask? Because York is a fabulous place to explore for so many reasons, that’s why!

York was founded by the Romans in 71 A.D. as Eboracum. (That name means, roughly, “yew tree place, which to me means the Romans must have found a lot of yew trees there.) One of the surprising things is that many Roman emperors visited the town. Hadrian apparently visited around 122 A.D. on his way to plan the building of the famous Hadrian’s Wall.  Septimus Severus visited in 208 A.D. and actually stayed there, establishing the imperial court  until his death in 211. Finally, Contantius Chlorus (The emperor of the West and father of Constantine the Great) came to Eboracum to re-establish authority after unrest broke out in Britain in the late 290’s. He died there in Eboracum in 306.

Why mention all that Roman history? Because there is a great wall around York that was built by all those Romans which survives to this day! One can actually walk along the top of the wall, where the soldiers would have patrolled. To get the best view we recommend taking a hop-on/hop-off tourist bus that takes you on a trip all the way around the old walled city. It’s well worth the time to do that!

After the Romans left in about 400 A.D., the area was disputed. Eventually the Danes, as Vikings, occupied the city in 867 A.D. The Danes found the Roman walls in poor condition, so they destroyed the gates the Romans built and restored the walls. The gates to the city the Danes built are called “bars” and there are four major ones. These bars were used to throttle traffic in and out of the city and to collect tolls from those passing through. The city was a capital in the 10^thcentury, under the Danes. The Danes stayed there until 1068, when the Normans, having defeated the English at Hastings in 1066, moved north and pushed out the Danes. The Danes returned in 1069 but were defeated and expelled for the final time. The Normans rebuilt the castle that the Danes had destroyed and built a lookout and keep (jail) on a high mound in the castle.

Plaque at Clifford’s Tower memorializing the death of Jews on the site.

The decision to participate in the Third Crusade fired up religious fervor in the area that resulted in anti-Jewish violence. The Jews in the area took refuge in the castle keep. But the citizenry of York surrounded the tower and demanded that the Jews convert to Christianity and be baptized. Rather than complying, the Jews chose to commit suicide and at the end of the killings, the wooden tower was set on fire. The few survivors were killed by the mob. At least 150 Jews died there. At the foot of the current tower is a plaque in English and Hebrew lamenting the event.

Clifford’s Tower today.

Between 1245 and 1270, Henry III rebuilt the castle again, known during his time as the King’s Tower and presently known as Clifford’s Tower. Built on the site of the old castle keep (or jail), the tower was used as a jail for many decades. In 1684 the tower was demolished by an explosion in the magazine that basically destroyed everything but the outer walls. This explosion was most likely deliberate, as no one died and the garrison members had removed beforehand their personal possessions from the facility. However, officially, the explosion was an accident stemming from a gun salute that had been rendered from the roof that set fire to the woodwork and eventually spread to the magazine. Notwithstanding that the tower had been gutted, the keep was still used as a prison all the way to 1929, when it was finally closed.

The top photo shows part of the Roman walls, with a Viking bar and in the background the towers of Yorkminster.