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The former Trinity National School for Girls, by J. B. and W. Atkinson, 1852. Nikolaus Pevsner and David Neave describe it as being in Tudor style, of red brick with stone-mullioned windows (253). At 3 Blossom Street, York YO24 1AU, it is just outside Micklegate Bar, the medieval gate into the city from the London direction. It continued to function as a girls’ and infants’ school until 1956 (Murray, 1988, 40). Later, for some years it housed the Citizens’ Advice Centre; at present, the building is occupied by Spectrum Community Health who, together with the national charity Changing Lives, act as the providers of drug and alcohol services in York. There are no original interior furnishings to be seen.
Looking along Blossom Street.
In the 1885 directory, the school is described as Holy Trinity Church of England Girls’ and Infants’ School, with Mistress, Mrs Ruth Raper and, for the Infants, Miss Smith. Holy Trinity church is in Micklegate, and succeeded the medieval priory of that name. The school, as built, was not next door to a public house as it now appears to be. Between the school and the pub, the following businesses were listed in 1885: a haircutter and tobacconist, a draper and milliner, and then the Punch Bowl Inn (three bays only of this frontage in a 1906 photograph in Murray, 2003, 129), beyond which was a chemist’s shop on the corner of Nunnery Lane.
The Nathaniel Whittock view – more schools. Credit: York Museums Trust (York Art Gallery).
The school, identifiable by its two gables, appears in the lower left foreground of the Nathaniel Whittock panorama of York. The original drawing had been displayed in York in late 1856, and the subsequent lithograph (51.2 x 91.5cm) can be dated to 1858. The detail from the lithograph shows Blossom Street with a carriage approaching Micklegate Bar; a second carriage is stationary outside the main front of the Bar Convent, designed by Thomas Atkinson 1787-9. The convent ran a series of boarding and day schools for girls that had been initiated in 1686 (Murray 1988, 40-41). The three-bay addition on the corner is by G. T. Andrews, 1844; this was a Poor School, later acquired by the convent.
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
____. A Directory of York Pubs, 1455-2003. York: Bullivant, 2003.
Pevsner, Nikolaus, and David Neave. Yorkshire: York and the East Riding. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Created 12 August 2021