This May we’re tracing back our steps to see what York’s historic residents were up to, and up against, in years and centuries past.
April 29, 1942 – York suffers its worst air raid of the Second World War. Beginning at 2.30am, the city endured 90 minutes of relentless bombardment, leaving 92 people dead and hundreds more injured. As well as civilian streets, houses, and schools, the iconic Guildhall buildings and St Martin-le-Grand Church on Coney Street were targeted and left to burn out.
2 May, 1916 – A German airship is spotted over the city at about 10.30pm. For the next ten minutes it dropped 18 bombs, destroying houses, killing nine people, and injuring 40 more.
4 May, 1471 – The Battle of Tewkesbury. A clash many consider to be the very last battle of the Wars of the Roses – the historical events that inspired George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones! The Yorkist King Edward IV put a Lancastrian rebellion to bed by defeating and killing Edward, Prince of Wales.
20 May, 1604- The first meeting between York-born Guy Fawkes and his fellow gunpowder plotters. Alone in a private room at the Duck and Drake Inn, just off the Strand in London, the five plotters swore an oath of secrecy on a prayer book.
26 May, 1838- The death of Jonathan Martin. Martin had made his name a decade earlier when he set fire to York Minster. The blaze took all day to die down, taking 66 choir stalls, the galleries, the organ, the pulpit and the archbishop’s throne with it. Martin was tried for arson but was acquitted on grounds of “insanity” so was sent to an asylum in Lambeth, London where he died.
Historical dates and information were gathered from the archives at www.historyofyork.org.uk.
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