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On the Lastingham Digest: 'My mind keeps gong back to this thoughtful essay, especially this: 'Whilst photographing [certain places] the impetus becomes less to capture and record and more to inhabit." Mary from Bluesky
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Gabled delight at Ogleforth in York. This is what happens when you cover a medieval timber framed building in glue and roll it through a brick factory.
“The specific existence of the vital qualities of different spaces becomes evident and tangible mostly in the moments of passage from a space to another..”
Tonino Griffero
Born Slippy
I’m working my photographic way through a building in York that is remarkable in its survival. It is Grade I listed, medieval (mostly), timber-framed (mostly), and it’s my first time inside. It isn’t open to the public, having been mothballed for some time. The ground floor bears the marks of modern intervention, shoehorned into a building that has shape-shifted in use for over 500 years.
I’ve finished the first floor and am taking a break on a day when temperatures have exceeded 30 degrees Celsius. When I set off up to the next floor, I hardly feel rested. Sweat pours into my eyes and I feel a little light-headed. Perhaps that explains why, as I manoeuvre through a tight threshold into one of the darkest corners of the building, I think that what I encounter in the pocket of space before me is a dream.
When I first set out as an architectural photographer, I never imagined that my vocation would lead me to moments like this.
I look around. The building is empty. Should I really be here?
When the shapes resolve themselves, I realise that I have stepped into a mystical confluence of chance and circumstance that has opened a portal into another time. For those brief moments I leave my earthly bounds and travel back into a room that holds treasures far beyond the material.
Here I can see faint patterns, scrolls and vines, curlicue finials and, most shockingly, in the way that it revealed itself by torchlight - a face.
I move back to the tripod to capture it but I stop and take it all in again. This is the sleazy side of my photography. My job is to record the building before the next chapter of its story begins. But here, guiltily - not wanting to break my reverie - my finger tends to linger over the shutter button a little longer than it should.
After some time I feel like an imposter. I’ve spent far too long here, so I plough on through the rest of the building without a planned break. After completion, I sign out and step back into the great walled city of York.
It is hot and it is busy, but the face is always on my mind. So I do what always draws me away from rumination: I walk and lose myself amongst the hustle. I think the usual routes through York might overwhelm me, so I seek refuge in the city's magical snickelways, turning wonder into movement until the golden hour and beyond
York's network of medieval lanes, ginnels and passages were affectionately christened "snickelways" by writer and artist Mark W. Jones.
As I walk through Bootham Bar into the first hole in the wall, I’m taken into a parallel universe to the one that is teeming through the Shambles and along Petergate - a world that is the warp to the weft of the tourist city.
From Minster Yard and into Ogleforth and Bedern, I feel as though I’m threading through York like a needle.
Instead of getting caught up in the streets, I’m taking a section across them: an archaeological slice of the bustle on this hot June day in 2026.
Much of the time I’m a solitary traveller, walking parallel to streets where noise is fragmentary, funnelled intermittently through the jetties and crooked cuts.
Halfway through I come across Black Horse Passage. It feels refreshingly raw and uncompromising amidst the polished high streets of the commercial centre. A stencilled piece of graffiti catches my eye.
Drive Boy, Dive Boy, Dirty Numb Angel Boy.
The words are remnants from the film Trainspotting - from the song Born Slippy. The artist changed “dog” to “dive” and perhaps that’s what I’ve been doing all afternoon - slipping away from the obvious and into the dives between.
Three Cranes, Mad Alice Lane, devil-guarded Coffee Yard.
Some of these alleys are over 200 feet long, leading into an embarrassment of riches and delicious dilemmas as other yards and spaces reveal themselves along the route. Should I finish what I started or should I take the route with the tantalising view, or explore what lies beyond the dragon beam?
Beyond Black Horse Passage, I take the circuitous route via the banks of the Foss and into Straker’s Passage until I’m thrust from the darkness of the snicket into the blinding bustle and theatre of Fossgate.
After the cool, shady confines of the alleys, the shock brings on a rising sense of anxiety and so, with the shadows lengthening, I seek out the salubrious solace of a pub. It feels like another threshold - away from the theatre of the streets. For the first time since leaving the building, I stop moving.
Inside, and feeling a little light-headed, I sit and watch the golden hour pass until the neon lights start to glow and, perhaps after drinking my pint too quickly - in the darkness of a honeycombed snug that stretches along the lines of an old burgage plot - I think about the room I came across whilst working this morning and see the face again, as clear as day.
To be continued...
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The Treasurer's House Boundary Wall (along the snickelway route)
The Treasurer’s House is one of York’s most remarkable historic houses, standing on the site of the medieval residence of the Treasurers of York Minster and built above the remains of Roman Eboracum.
Rebuilt in the 16th century, it lies check by jowl to York Minster. The boundary wall skirts along Minster Yard and Chapter House Street.
I've walked this route so many times and never really seen the boundary wall for what it is. Walking it via the snickelways seems to have slowed me down and given me a different lens through which to see it. This time, the wall came alive with different materials and shapes:
A wall to interest Tennyson perhaps?
And yet there's something more - something telling in what the wall consists of - something from a different building, another layer of time:
and perhaps another snickelway, infilled with stone?
And finally, only York has enough historical clout to infill the space around its post boxes with 900 year old chevrons:
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I'm giving to the next person to sign up for membership a copy of York Minster's remarkable St. Wiliam Window book.
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I lodged at York Beechwood Grange Caravan Club Campsite. A couple of miles outside of York - took 10 minute taxi ride to the city centre.
Andy Marshall
SNICKet ginnEL alleyWAY
Andrew Morrison
Finding Tennyson's Wall
"Astonishingly, this wall stands opposite the school attended by Alfred Lord Tennyson and he later wrote about the 'old wall covered with wild weeds opposite the school windows.'"
Read on:
Andy Marshall
Finding St. William
"Time itself is folded into the work. The orphaned Victorian Bible covers carry one history. The unfolding concertina pages carry another. The medieval narratives held within the glass are drawn into the present through paint, ink and observation."
Read on:
Andy Marshall
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Andy Marshall
And I take another look at the photograph of the face - looking closer at the incised lines. A man with long hair and a goatee.
They are crossed by geometric forms - intersecting circles and arcs - perhaps apotropaic marks, some might say. What catches my eye is that the painted pattern continues across the incisions, filling them with pigment. It suggests the face was carved first, before the wall painting was applied.
The location of these marks and the wonderful building I'm photographing will be revealed in next week's digest.
Thank You!
Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with iPhone 17 Pro and DJI Mini 5 Pro.
🔗 Connect with me on: Bluesky / Instagram / Facebook / X / Tumblr / Flickr / Vimeo / Pixelfed / Pinterest / Flipboard/ Fediverse: @fotofacade@digest.andymarshall.co
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