A typical display of boots in J Kidd's window

The latest shop to get a new look as part of the re-development of our Victorian Street, Kirkgate, is J Kidd, the boot maker, writes Gwendolen Whitaker, Curator of History.

Again we have used research to make sure each shop we complete is based on a real Victorian York business. Look out for more blog posts, or visit the museum over the next few months, to see them taking shape.

The shop window of J Kidd, bootmaker

James Kidd was born in 1841 and grew up in rural Melbourne, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. His mother was a dressmaker.

As a young man James moved to Wheldrake, a village on the outskirts of York. He married Amelia in 1865 and lived with his in-laws who were agricultural labourers.

A pair of children's boots in the shop window

Two of the couple’s children were born in Wheldrake, and they went on to have five children although two girls died young. In the 1870s the family moved to York and James set up as a boot maker. He was to stay in business for over 30 years, with his sons as apprentices and later boot makers in their own right.

The business was located on Wellington St, close to the family home and the work of his daughter, Elizabeth, who was a housemaid at a private lunatic asylum.

An advert for another boot and shoe business in York

Another boot shop in York used cautionary verse in its advertisement...

There were very many boot and shoe shops in York. In 1896 there were 137 listed in the Trade Directories. The majority were York-based with a clog maker in the Little Shambles.

Boot makers who advertised showed that there was a huge product range, from Boots & Shoes Made Without Stitches  to French imported silk and satin shoes.

Boot makers like James, working on the streets where people lived, were as important as the corner grocer, somewhere to go for a quick cheap repair of an expensive, essential commodity.

This advert for a corn 'cure' shows the need for a good pair of boots!

Epworth's shop window in Kirkgate

The first shop to have received its facelift is Epworth’s Jewellers, which has had its window decorated and redesigned.

The Epworth’s family business began as a pawnbrokers, jewellers and silversmiths in 1831 in Precentor’s Court near York Minster. It was run by husband and wife Charles from Lancashire and Rachel fromDevon.

By 1851 they had six children and four years later had bought another business in High Petergate.

Detail from Epworth's shop window

When Charles died, Rachel ran the business with the help of her children before remarrying. Rachel and her new husband sold their High Petergate business to local pawnbroker Henry Hardcastle.

In 1874 the youngest Epworth daughter, Elizabeth, opened up a jewellery and silversmith business at 79 Low Petergate and four years later moved to Spurriergate.

She ran the shop with her niece and Mrs Emma Owen, a widow and lady of ‘independent means’. Elizabeth traded for 27 years retiring in 1905.

Epworth's Martinmas sale advert

This lovely advert was printed to co-incide with the annual Martinmas Fair, which was a big event in York and took place on November 22.

It started traditionally as a ‘hiring fair’, where workers would go to find work with employers, but grew to become a pleasure fair with stall and exhibitions.

More shops will be completed as work progresses over the next few months. Regular visitors will see some shops close – then open again – as we install new displays and tell the stories of York’s Victorian traders.

Another detail from Epworth's window

Guide Jack Gann mixes up some Georgian mincemeat

The festive season means it’s time for York Castle Museum’s guides to roll up their sleeves and get back into the Kitchen Studio for a bit of Christmas baking.

This year the focus is on historic mince pie recipes, one from Tudor times, one from the Georgian era and an up-to-date meat-free recipe from Nigella Lawson.

Denise Hamilton, deputy senior guide, says: “Staff love cooking in the Kitchen Studio – it is one of the highlights of the Christmas period. We have one guide making the mince pie recipes for visitors to watch and another talking about the old recipes and answering any questions.”

Jack gets a Tudor pie out of the oven ready for glazing

The Tudor recipe, from A book of Cookrye Very necessary for all such delight therin (1584), is made from the usual fruit and sugar, but is mixed with beef mince, an unusual combination these days, but Denise says visitors usually enjoy it.

“People are quite suprised they quite like it!

“Visitors usually want to listen to a bit of history, but then they want a taste  – they enjoy tasting the difference between the recipes.”

Brushing the meaty Tudor pie with a rosewater, sugar and butter glaze

Both the Tudor recipe and the Georgian recipe, from Elizabeth Moxon’s English Housewifry (1764), contain rosewater, a popular ingredient dating back as far as 8th century Arabic recipes and a popular remedy for depresssion during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The final recipe from Nigella Lawson’s 2000 book, How to be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, misses out suet altogether, adding chopped apples to the mix.

You can come and see the pies being made, and if you’re lucky, get a taste, every Saturday and Sunday from 26 November – 18 December and every day from 19 – 23 December.

For more on Christmas at the Castle, see our website.

The Georgian mincemeat mixture

The Tudor mince pie before being glazed

1950s room at York Castle Museum

A healthy group of seven turned out on Saturday at York Castle Museum to discuss this month’s book.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson sparked a lively discussion with regards to family attitudes, sibling rivalry, keeping up appearances, changing York, war and attitudes to death amongst other topics! 

The group then handled objects from York Castle Museum’s collection such as a Victorian tea set and propaganda documents distributed throughout the Second World War with tips of how to make your food go further with suggested recipes for stale bread and the like in order to reduce wastage (or pig food). 

They were then shown around the museum, looking at certain exhibitions including the 1950s period room that linked to the themes of the book.

The book club will meet again at the Yorkshire Museum on Saturday 10 December 2011 at 3pm to discuss the book Pompeii by Robert Harris.

• If you would like to read more about the writing of Behind the Scenes at the Museum and its links to York read this Guardian interview with Kate Atkinson

As the nights draw in, York Castle Museum’s Dave Cree, pictured, is preparing for this autumn’s torch-lit tours in October.

The tours are run after-hours by Dave and fellow senior guide Denise Hamilton and include stories about the museum buildings and their former life as prisons – including a section on infamous highwayman Dick Turpin – as well as fascinating facts about objects on display and the occasional ‘ghost’ story.

Dave says: “We always stress that this isn’t a ghost walk – it’s more a tour which aims to tell visitors things they might not realise or notice during an ordinary daytime visit.

“We enjoy doing it and we don’t use a script. We meet so many people from different walks of life and usually get a good response and a really appreciative audience.”

The tours take place at the end of October to coincide with the Illuminating York festival, as well as the half-term holiday and, of course, Halloween…

They start with a walk around the north side of the museum, a former women’s prison, including a look at Kirkgate, the recreated Victorian street, where grafitti left by former prisoners can be seen on the walls and one section used to be an execution chamber.

Upstairs visitors find out more about childbirth and fatality rates in Victorian times in our From Cradle to Grave exhibition.

A few ghost stories and reported ghostly sightings are thrown in as well, but Dave always stresses he personally doesn’t believe them!

The second half of the tour takes visitors around the south building of the museum, the former Debtors’ Prison, with a look at prison life. There’s a visit to the former shackling area, stories of executions and the cramped conditions and claustrophobia of life in the cells are brought to life.

The tour culminates with a look at the life of former prisoner Dick Turpin and the stories and legends associated with him.

Tickets for the torch-lit tours, on 28 and 29 October, cost £10 and can be booked by telephoning 01904 650333.

We’ve been working for several months now on researching the  history of York shops and businesses to see if we can build them into Kirkgate over the next few months.

We wanted to bring real traders’ names into the street and to combine their stories with the vast collections held at York Castle Museum to give a fresh look to the street while keeping its long-held appeal for visitors.

The interior of Sessions' booksellers - photo used by kind permission of Sessions family

An advert for Leak & Thorp

Names familiar to York residents today will be there – such as Robson and Coopers (then Coopers’ Saddlers), Banks’ Music, Sessions’ booksellers and Leak & Thorp drapers. We’ve had a fascinating time talking to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Victorian owners of these businesses.

The exterior of Horsley's Gunsmiths

An advert for taxidermist Edward Allen

We’ll also be including names probably forgotten to today’s generation, such as The Little Dust Pan – a shop which sold ‘everything’ (similar to York’s Barnitts’ today), Greenwoods Antiquities (the Victorians loved antiques), Horsley’s Gunsmiths, Kendalls’  Toy Shop and Fancy Repository, Henry Hardcastle Pawnbrokers and Edward Allen the taxidermist.

We’ll be opening up a corridor previously closed to the public and including a Cocoa Room, where people were encouraged to drink hot chocolate rather than alcohol, plus Rymers’ Undertakers.

A group of York people photographed as part of Seebohm's 1901 report on poverty, photo used by kind permission of the Rowntree Society

Another corridor will be doubled in height and will be altered to resemble a back alley, or ‘snickleway’, where visitors will be able to peer into the inside of a poor family’s home, based on how York’s Seebohm Rowntree described living conditions at the time.

Preparations are nearing completion now with building work scheduled to start in the New Year, and we have already started making small changes to the street which sharp-eyed regular visitors will probably notice.

There’s much more planned and we will be updating you via this blog over the next few months as work progresses!

Lynne Glazzard at one of our taster days

We wanted to give people the chance to see some of the things they can make in our courses which run from now through until next July.

Lynne Glazzard, from Glaisdale, near Whitby, specialises in making jewellery, and was here to show how to make 60s-style rings.

She uses a long cylindrical piece of acrylic which she cuts into chunks. You can choose a style and colour, taking inspiration from our 60s gallery, and then file the ring to your desired shape and add Mary Quant style decorative flowers if you wish.

The result: a unique, groovy ring to take home and wear or simply admire!

A selection of the kind of 1960s rings you can make

Lynne is also an expert in making jewellery from silver clay, which starts out looking like playdough and, once it has been fired in a kiln, ends up looking like solid silver. She’ll be back next year to do a course in this too, making silver pendants.

I can really recommend all our crafts courses, they are a chance to try something new and the bonus is there is always something to take home with you.

Lynne’s courses are on 1 October (Sixties Style Jewellery) and 12 May next year (Silver Clay Pendants).  Full details of all the courses running at York Castle Museum are available on our website.

 Outside, the old Prisoners’ Exercise Yard is now a medieval jousting arena, decked out with brightly-coloured shields and banners.

Here Geoff Hutchinson and Andy Wilson are pictured putting some of them in place:

Children will be able to play as knights practising their jousting on our wooden horse, which has been carefully constructed and painted by Andy.  See if you can aim your lance into the wooden hoop target!

Andy at work making the wooden horse

The completed horse ready for action

There will be also be a professional armourer showing off his skills every Friday and Saturday during the school holidays.

Every day there will also other games and stalls to explore – weather permitting…

Inside you will be able to try on helmets and handle swords in our Military Studio.

Little ones will be able to play in our new Castle Playroom, at the end of the Toy Stories gallery.

This has also been decorated in grand, medieval style. Children will be able to play giant medieval board games or play with our castle-themed toys and dressing-up clothes!

Lynda Withers puts together a toy castle in the Castle Playroom

Lynda and Lucy Knock show off some of our fancy dress clothes in the Castle Playroom

For more details of dates and times visit our website or download our Summer Fun Leaflet 2011 about all of York Museums Trust’s summer holiday activities for families.

Over the last year it has been opened by volunteers.  They have been opening it up to the public after the mill grounds had been closed for over 5 years.

Since then, funding has been sourced and work finally started on making it all work again.

Last month saw the old axle been removed and a new one put in – with the net axle the mill can be operational. It currently does not grind grain but this will be coming up in later stages of the mill development.

The next stage will come after the summer holidays. This will involve the changing of the area around the mill. The current plans for the mill area are situated inside the mill and open for discussion.

You can find out more by downloading our information leaflet, which tells you how you can have your say on the plans.

Raindale Mill wheel can currently be seen turning most Saturdays and Sundays between 11am and 1pm – but please phone and check before visiting as work on the mill is still in progress and it may not always be possible for it to be seen in action, especially in poor weather conditions.

Museum guides Carl Newbould and Alan Milner with the refurbished street piano in our Victorian street, Kirkgate

It now plays ten tunes, the clearest being  There they are and Funiculi funicula.

Street pianos, or barrel organs, were in most towns in England by the 1880s with their heyday around 1900. They began to decline steadily during the Edwardian period and rapidly during the First World War. By the 1930s they were a rare sight.

They were generally made by Italian immigrants in London. The first ones were also played by Italian immigrants but by 1900 over half were played by Englishmen.

Records show that a lot of money could be made on a good day, organ-grinders who knew their patch knew which tunes were popular, and when their customers had just been paid so Saturdays was always the best day of the week.

However, in some streets, residents would pay organ-grinders to move away from their houses further down the street so they didn’t have to listen to the music!

This street piano was built around 1895-1900 by Capra, Rissone & Company of 30, Warner Street, Clerkenwell, London.

It was bought by Canon Algernon O. Wintle of Lawshall Rectory, Bury St Edmunds in 1947.

Canon Wintle was a clergyman but his life-long hobby was mechanical musical instruments. He re-furbished many street pianos, primarily to give work to ex-servicemen after the First World War, and learnt how to set the tunes, he traded as The East Anglian Automatic Piano Company. Between 1948 and 1950 Canon Wintle rebuilt this street piano and set the tunes and he donated it to the museum in 1950.

Street pianos were made of wood so they were light enough to push. They have a wooden frame with tuned strings hit by felt-faced hammers. These hammers are caused to move by a large wooden pinned barrel turned by a handle on the side of the box.

There is another handle for changing the tune, and when turned it raises the keys clear of the pins, moves the barrel along to another set of pins, drops the keys again, and indicates the number of the new tune.

Watch this interesting old Pathe News film  from 1960 to see Antonion Tomasso, preparing a barrel, marking it, and later seen playing it.  Mr Tomasso was this country’s best barrel piano arranger and came from a family extensively connected with the street piano business.