What is Micklegate Bar?
Learn more about Micklegate Bar the home of the City Walls Experience
What is inside?
The City Walls Experience offers an ideal introduction for anyone wishing to walk the most complete city walls in England. The exhibition tells the story of Micklegate Bar. It includes artifacts found nearby and video presentations of historical figures like Princess Margaret Tudor, Royalist Colonel Henry Slingsby, and PC Harry Sowden. Harry Sowden was one of the Bar’s last residents and a keen naturalist. Inside, you can find the remains of the Bar’s portcullis, which was broken up and reused as a room divider.
The top floor features a map of the walls and displays highlighting historical features that are still visible today, as well as those lost to time. You can also see into the Bar’s tiny ‘bartizan’ towers, which may have once been used as temporary prison cells.
History of Micklegate Bar
Over the last several hundred years, Micklegate has served as a defensive gateway, home, prison, ritual site, and tourist attraction. Its earliest parts probably date from the early 1100s. The outer facade took its present shape in the mid-14th century when builders heightened the gate to house a portcullis. Micklegate Bar used to have a barbican—a walled but roofless space in front with walkways on top of its walls—but this was demolished in the early 19th century. A timber and plaster structure on the inner side added additional rooms in the late 16th century, but this was removed in 1827.
The Bar was the most important of York’s four main gateways, allowing access to those approaching from the Great North Road. It was also the most strongly fortified, although it saw little action. Micklegate Bar has traditionally served as the ceremonial entry point to York for royal visitors. It was also where authorities banished undesirables from the city. For condemned prisoners, it offered the last glimpse of York as they were dragged from the castle to be executed at the Knavesmire. Throughout history, people have displayed the heads and body parts of infamous traitors on top of the Bar. Records also show its use as a temporary jail cell in 1729.
People lived in the Bar until about 100 years ago; several families often occupied different chambers within it simultaneously. It also served as a toll checkpoint, where civic authorities inspected people and goods entering York before granting them admission.
Why is it Important?
Micklegate Bar remains a spectacular feature of York’s city walls, which are the most complete of any English city. It has witnessed key events in local and national history. From medieval times to the present, ruling kings and queens received lavish pageants and spectacles at the Bar, using it as a stage and backdrop.
The Bar has also seen more gruesome sights. In 1403, people displayed Harry Hotspur’s head on a spike there, and in 1460, the head of Richard Duke of York (the father of King Richard III). They displayed the heads of Catholic martyrs in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the last heads spiked at the Bar belonged to two Jacobite rebels in 1746. In 1739, Dick Turpin passed through the gateway on his final journey to meet the hangman’s noose. After York’s Royalist defenders were defeated at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, Micklegate Bar was the site where the city formally surrendered to the forces of Parliament following a siege that lasted over two months.
The Bar has inspired writers and artists. Walter Scott was a passionate defender of the city walls when they faced demolition by the city authorities. An image of Micklegate Bar appears in the introduction of certain old editions of Ivanhoe (1819). The Bar also features in the Wilkie Collins thriller No Name (1862).
