ON the centre pages of The Press recently we carried a poster-sized photograph of St William's College on College Street, taken in the 1890s. It showed two gardeners standing on a patch of grass just across the road from the college on a piece of land which, according to the photograph's caption, had been only recently (in the late 1890s) cleared of houses.

The really striking thing about the photograph, however, was that it showed St William's College covered in drab render, and looking very unlike the building today, with its black and white half-timbering neatly picked out.

The photograph, which we have reproduced again here, prompted one reader who commented on The Press' website to ask a very sensible question. "Does anybody know if York buildings were usually covered in render in the medieval period, and only uncovered in the last century to conform to a fashionable view of what half-timbered buildings should look like? Or were the timbers originally exposed and only covered later, perhaps to protect and extend the life of the timbers?"

We don't know the answer to that. We wonder if any readers do?

As we explained last week, St William's College was originally built in about 1465 to provide accommodation for York Minster's 'Chantry Priests', a community of about 24 men who were paid to pray for the souls of those who had died. It is named after William Fitzherbert, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, who was Archbishop of York from 1143-1147.

The building went through many changes down the centuries. By the Victorian period it had fallen on hard times, and had been been divided up into small tenements and shops. The building was bought in about 1900 by Frank Green, who owned the nearby Treasurer's House, and in 1902 he sold it to the church authorities. It was extensively restored by the architect Temple Moore in 1906.

As to College Street itself: we know that right at the end of the 1890s some buildings at the south west corner were demolished (presumably the houses referred to as being 'recently cleared' in the caption to our original photograph), both to open up the street itself and also to allow for the creation of Deangate. Before that, there had been only a narrow, tunnel like entrance leading from College Street onto Goodramgate.

Given the interest in the photograph we published last Wednesday, we have dug out, from Explore York's wonderful Imagine York archive, a few more photographs of St William's College and College Street. They range in date from the 1870s to the 1910s. The rendering was still there on the college in photographs from the 1890s, but had gone by the 1910s. So we suspect that it may well have been removed during that 1906 restoration by Temple Moore.

Several of the photographs, meanwhile, clearly show the buildings which once stood on the opposite side of the street to the college - and the narrow, tunnel-like entrance through to Goodramgate before Deangate was opened up...

Stephen Lewis

The Boer War gun

On a completely different topic, some readers will know about the Crimean War cannon which once stood, one at either side of the Blue Bridge, as a memorial to those who died in the Crimean war (the war made famous for the Charge of the Light Brigade).

But did you know that York also once had a Boer War gun? It was kept near the Green Howards Monument on Tower Street, and was actually a facsimile used for competitions and training in gun manoeuvring. And here it is, in a photograph from the early 1900s which also comes from Explore York Libraries and Archives...