The curator of York Castle museum, Mr R. Patterson, has yet to be beaten in his races against bulldozers when the slums of York are being demolished. Sometimes, perhaps, the bulldozer is there at about the same time – but not before he has snatched the frontage of a shop or other material to be used in the reconstruction at the museum of a Victorian-Edwardian street.

One has to be quick to go slumming nowadays if one is to get the best in bulky Edwardiana. As soon as it became known that the King William Hotel in Walmgate was doomed, the clients in the “spit and sawdust” bar found themselves with an unlikely fellow drinker in the curator, who toyed with a half-pint of bitter while he made a mental inventory. Mr Patterson said:

“There was quite the biggest spittoon I have ever seen anywhere. It was a trough on the floor, running the whole length of the bar, into which fresh sawdust was tipped daily. We had had our eyes on the King William for some time. It had a very ornate, unspoilt frontage. The window had a 3in. brass pipe running across it and fitted with four naked bats-wing gas burners – quite the latest thing in the 1840s.”

The facade of the King William now standing in the museum “street,” will bear one of its original notices: “Bicyclists specialty catered for.” Its interior will be lit by the gas burners; and the spittoon, filled with fresh sawdust, will adorn the foot of the bar.

When Mr Patterson and his three assistants go down among the demolition men, they look for shop fronts, house gutters and fall pipes, and foot-scrapers, pavement grilles, wrought iron, lamp-posts, and any other Edwardian street furniture.

Bathing costumes

The rebuilt “street” is to be called Half Moon Court and will stand in the felons’ unshackling yard next to the old debtors prison. The earliest building will date from about 1840; but the street will be equipped as if time had stopped in 1918. Its chief charm, therefore, will be as a memory-nudger for the over-fifties.

A shop frontage taken from The Groves, a York slum area, is to be used for an early electrical gadget shop; the hardware shop frontage from Bedale will contain anything from an early vacuum cleaner to an apple peeler, and the women’s ware shop (early Victorian, also from The Groves, will display early bathing costumes and motoring and cycling outfits. The frontage of an old junk shop from York’s Whip-ma-Whop-ma-Gate has been used for the garage, which will house two veteran cars, an 1807 steam car, the Weston, and a 1908 Colibri.

Half Moon Court is York’s fourth reconstructed “street”, the others are all Victorian. The slumming will continue for Mr Patterson and his helpers. They are looking, particularly, for enamelled metal street advertisements.