York, Rowntree Park

 

Gate of peace

I thought, when I first caught site of this structure in York’s Rowntree Park, that it must have been moved here from elsewhere. It looked old, with its silvered oak timbers and melllow bricks – certainly older than the date of 1919–21, when Rowntree and Company donated the park to the city as a memorial to its workers who fell in World War I. The structure’s similarity to a church lychgate, and the fact that it does not stand at the entrance to the park but within it, added to my confusion.

Looking more closely, though, I could see that things were not quite as they seemed. Although there is a timber framework, the side walls have a much larger area of brick than in a medieval or Tudor timber-framed building – those bricks are doing much of the heavy lifting. And it turns out that this gateway was built for the park, its architect probably being Fred Rowntree or W. J. Swain, as in the nearby multi-purpose house and café building in my previous post. Material online about the park does, however, confusingly refer to it as a lychgate, the structure traditionally marking the entrance to a churchyard, where at funerals, the bearers may rest with the coffin, before proceeding on to the church (‘lych’ being an old word for corpse).

In fact it is a gateway from the outer part of the park, where the café stands, to a quieter inner area, a garden with a water feature, a statue of Mercury and an ample supply of benches, where one might rest and indeed remember those who laid down their lives in war, as the Rowntree family clearly intended. I have begun to think of it as a lychgate to a memorial garden, that garden being the horticultural equivalent of a cenotaph.

The gateway’s simple vernacular structure does this job well, aided by two further powerfully suggestive elements. Inside are two brass plaques, describing the donation of the park after World War I and the further donation of some fine wrought-iron gates after World War II. The first plaque is in retrospect very sad, expressing at it does the hope that the first conflict might be the ‘end of war’ and that the creation of the League of Nations might be the crowning post-war achievement. In the light of subsequent events, a further suggestive symbol is perhaps more powerful: in the roof of the lychgate is a dovecote – the entrances for the birds are just visible in the gable end – and white doves still flutter in and out. At least these delicate creatures endure, living symbols of peace, both peace in general and the peace of the garden that the Quaker Rowntrees shared with those of us who survive.

York, Rowntree Park

Ice cream, confectionery and books

‘The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream,’ wrote the American poet Wallace Stevens. This arresting line brought enquiries, including one from the US Amalgamated Ice Cream Association, no less, who no doubt wanted to know the poet’s precise meaning. But on a blisteringly hot afternoon in York, anyone who could sell us a good tub of the cold stuff would be high in our estimation indeed. A walk away from the crowded city centre towards Rowntree Park, in search of shade, nature and ice cream, seemed a good idea. I was sure there would be something of architectural interest along the way.

The Quaker Rowntree family, confectioners of renown, had their factory in York and were great benefactors to the city. After World War I, Jospeh Rowntree gave the 25-acre park as a memorial to the members of his staff who lost their lives in the war. He liked the idea of a place of quiet contemplation, and also of a recreational area accessible to all, and his architects set out the park with gardens, trees, a lake, large areas of lawn and places to play sports and games. It’s still popular today, even when a succession of heatwaves has dried the grass and much of the planting to a sorry crisp. In charge of the layout were two architects, Fred Rowntree and W. J. Swain. Fred Rowntree was from a branch of the family that lived in Scarborough and were cousins of the confectioners. He trained in his home town and designed numerous buildings in York as well as in London, which he later made his base.

Rowntree is said to have been the designer of the building in my photograph. It’s a multi-purpose structure. At the top is accommodation for the park keeper that looks out over the lake and gardens in the middle of the park. At the bottom are the open arches of what was originally a boat house. The middle part of the building, including the single-storey wing to the right, was designed as a café and still plays that role. It’s now the Explore Rowntree Park Reading Café. A café with books, no less, a relatively recent idea, but one that would no doubt have pleased the early Rowntrees. The whole was built just after World War I and completed in c. 1921. It’s a pleasant building, with casement windows, round-headed doorway and arches, and tall pantile roofs, that looks well amongst the surrounding trees and shrubs. It seems to evoke that moment in English architecture when traditional materials (brick, tile, render) combine with a plain, unornamented style to create something that has a hint of the old and a bit of the new too. The café also sells excellent ice cream.