Poor School, later part of the Bar Convent, Blossom Street, York. This is the red brick building on the right, with tall stone pilasters and a pediment, which was designed by George Townsend Andrews and completed in 1844. It stands next to the historic Bar Convent, or "more properly the Roman Catholic Convent of the Institute of St Mary" (Pevsner and Neave 253), which was first established here in 1686. The convent ran a series of boarding and day schools for girls (Murray 1988, 40-41). Andrews's three-bay addition to the north, up to the street corner, was originally built as a Poor School, but was later acquired by the convent.
Coloured lithograph: 'Bird's-Eye View of the City of York', 1858 by John Storey, after Nathaniel Whittock (YORAG: R1946). slightly cropped here. Credit: York Museums Trust (York Art Gallery).
The mid-Victorian "Bird's Eye View" above shows Andrews's neat neoclassical building beside the covent. The convent buildings themselves were designed and remodelled over the years by Thomas Atkinson and his successors, J. B. and W. Atkinson, but Andrews did carry out alterations to the convent chapel in 1847-49 (Pevsner and Neave 254).
This is a street full of history: seen close to Micklegate Bar itself are the gables of the former Trinity National School for Girls, designed by J. B. and W. Atkinson and dating to 1852.
Links to related material
Photograph by Rita Wood. This may be used 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 document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. [Click on both the images to enlarge them.]
Bibliography
"Bird's-Eye View of the City of York," coloured lithograph, 1858, by John Storey, after Nathaniel Whittock (YORAG : R1946).
Directory of York, 1885, published by George Stevens. 97-98. University of Leicester, Special Collections Online. Web. 12 August 2021.
Murray, H. Nathaniel Whittock’s Birds Eye View of the City of York in the 1850s. York: Friends of City Art Gallery, 1988
Pevsner, Nikolaus, and David Neave. Yorkshire: York and the East Riding. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Created 5 October 2022