Photographs by the author. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web project or cite it in a print one.]
Left: Museum) Lodge. Right: Closer view of entrance, gate piers with attached reconstructed gas-lamps, and gilded gates. There are matching shields on the side of the entrance porch and upper part of the gate pier. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Museum Lodge on Museum Street, is a Grade II listed building designed by George Fowler Jones (c.1818-1905), who also designed the Club Chambers opposite. Jones was a member of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, for which the Yorkshire Museum had been built. Born in Aberdeen, Jones had practised in Scotland before developing his large practice in York. The listing text dates this ashlar building to 1874.
Left: The gates at the Lodge. Right: Entrance-gate ornament.
The building fulfilled a need. It stands at the main entrance to Museum Gardens, the Yorkshire Museum and the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey. Both the Gardens and Museum were the property of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, founded in 1822. Although the Gardens and Museum were private to the Society, with members having their own keys to the gate, the general public, including railway excursionists, was admitted to the gardens for a charge on open days, for horticultural shows and concerts. A gatekeeper was needed to regulate this kind of entry. For some time, the gatekeeper lived in a house near the gate, but with the opening of Lendal Bridge in 1863, the increase of traffic in Museum Street necessitated the contrivance of an "off-street" waiting place for those carriages wishing to enter, and with that came the provision of a dedicated lodge.
The Lodge from the Museum Gardens.
With "crow-stepped gable and embattled circular tower" (listing text), the building owes something to Jones’s Scottish origins, and there is even a hint of Balmoral with the round tower and machicolations. It can fairly be described as "delightful" and, though something of a folly, "far superior to the same architect’s Club Chambers opposite" (Pevsner and Neave 226). The Lodge is still used by the Society, but the management of the gardens changed in 1960, when they came under the aegis of the City of York Council. They are now run through the York Museums Trust. Access for non-members had been increasing for some time.
Links to Related Material
- Museum Gardens, showing Western Entrance
- Museum Lodge in context (in spring)
- Drinking Fountain nearby
Bibliography
"The Lodge and attached gate piers." English Heritage. Web. 17 March 2020.
"George Fowler Jones." Dictionary of Scottish Architects. Web. 17 March 2020.
Pevsner, Nikolaus, and David Neave. Yorkshire: York and the East Riding. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Wood, Rita. "The YPS Lodge and its Architect" (a very informative piece).
Created 16 March 2020
Last updated 2 September 2023