The York Archaeological Trust appears on the surface to be the most successful of all the trusts. Situated in an elegant three-storey modern building near the centre of York, buoyed by the success and profits of the Jorvik Viking Centre, it demonstrates British archaeology at its best.

Following the success of the Viking Centre, the Trust's next major development was the ARC, the Archaeological Research Centre. They took over the disused medieval church of St Saviourgate, and set up the centre where school parties and others can come and see the archaeologists at work and learn how to sort pottery and weave wool ...

Annus horribilis

YAT's success, however, has been hard earned and in many ways it is only now emerging from the trauma of its annus horribilis of 1991-2. This took two forms. Firstly, there was the advent of PPG16 [a local government planning regulation that required developers to take into consideration the impact of their work on the archaeology of the land in question] which hit all the long-established trusts hard, but the YAT suffered more than most in that it was the most successful of the old-style trusts, providing a seamless archaeological service for the city of York, bringing together not only archaeology but also tourism.

However, the Trust was also a major catalyst in provoking the change by voicing its concerns about the scandal of the Queens Hotel site in Micklegate, which, having lain vacant for nearly 20 years, was suddenly redeveloped, barely giving the archaeologists the opportunity of carrying out the most rudimentary of excavations. As a result of this, English Heritage leant on the York City Council to appoint a city archaeologist jointly funded by English Heritage and the council, who would advise the city planners. The Trust smiled bravely and made available the whole of the magnificent archive of the archaeology of York which they had built up over nearly 20 years. As a result, excavations in York itself have been drastically reduced as development has conformed to mitigation strategies intended to minimise the disturbance of archaeological deposits, and the Trust is turning itself into a contracting archaeologist bidding for projects in the area around York.

Barley Hall

The other trauma of the annus horribilis came with the economic slump which caught the Trust in the middle of its major redevelopment of Barley Hall. This is a late medieval timber-framed hall house that had originally been the town house of Nostell Priory. However, the medieval origins had been lost and the timber framing was completely concealed by brick buildings. Yet the remains were exceptionally complete and the Trust therefore decided to restore it as a wealthy hall house of 1483 when it was in the possession of William Snawsall, a prosperous goldsmith who had been lord mayor of York. This mean removing more recent insertions, excavating down to medieval levels inside and outside the building and replacing the timbers where necessary.

The collapse in the property market allowed the Trust to buy adjacent buildings and embark on redevelopment. To do this and complete the resotriation, they had to borrow £900,000. However, they still needed to furnish Barley Hall in appropriate medieval style and this has proved more difficult. Instead of completing it immediately, they have had to do it gradually, and only in 1993 were they able to furnish three main rooms of the house: the hall, the parlour, and the buttery and pantry. The furnishings are all replicas ...

It is easy to get a foretaste of the house as the screens passage has become a public thoroughfare. This is sealed off from the hall by a huge glass window through which passers-by can view the hall in all its glory, the garish ceramic floor tiles and its bright wall hangings tending to be completely at odds with our Victorian-inspired preconceptions about the drabness of medieval halls ...

The Jewish burial ground

The project of which [the YAT] is most proud is the recent publication of the Jewbury cemetery. This was the excavation of the Jewish burial ground at York, excavated in 1980 in something of a hurry in advance of redevelopment by Sainsburys. The Jewish authorities were not altogether happy about this, and no sooner were the excavations completed than they insisted that all the bones should be reburied. The Trust and its collaborators had just three weeks to complete all the post-excavation measurements and analysis. Work went on day and night, and in the event, it just enabled them to finish measuring the bones in time.

It was the burial ground not only for the Jews of York but also, until they got their own cemetery, for the Jews of Lincoln whose bodies often arrived in York somewhat the worse for the delay. There are lots of interesting similarities and differences with the Christian cemeteries of medieval York. (The main comparison is with St Helen's, a poor Christian cemetery excavated by the Trust: they would now like to excavate a medieval cemetery in a rich quarter of York for a full comparison.)

The Jews were buried in wooden coffins nailed together with iron nails, quite contrary to modern Jewish practice which forbids the use of iron. The cemetery was extremely neatly laid out with none of the intercutting of earlier burials that is a feature of the Christian cemeteries. Medieval writers often refer to Jewish cemeteries as being the 'Gardens of the Jews' – hortus iudeorum – immaculately kept by a garden keeper. It is clear that the York burial ground lived up to this high standard.

The Jewbury report is a good example of the workings of the Trust, for it has been financed almost entirely by the Trust, ultimately from the profits of the [Jorvik] Viking Centre, with no grants from English Heritage or the developer. It is likely to become the standard and indeed virtually the only account anywhere in the world of medieval Jewish burial practices. It is another in the list of YAT projects that has only been possible because the Trust has devoted its own resources to research, publication and public presentation.


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