Earlier this month, a Ripon community group gathered at the Old Deanery to celebrate its successes. The Friends of Kirkgate Park was set up 18 months ago to defend the green space between the cathedral and the courthouse from plans to build there.

Since then, they’ve seen off the threat of development and also raised about £10,000 from various sources to fund new benches, planting, a walkway and lighting.

That’s no mean achievement, and implies no small degree of commitment and dynamism. But what was it about the park – which is also variously called Courthouse Gardens, Museum Gardens and Minster Gardens – that inspired such an energetic response?

After all, on a city-wide scale it is barely a handkerchief-sized plot, dwarfed by its neighbours and defined – some would argue – more by the buildings around it than by its own merits.

But, say others, it is the rich, multi-layered past of the surrounding area that gives it a historical resonance few other ‘handkerchiefs’ can match.

Early development

Ripon Cathedral was founded by St Wilfrid over 200 years before England existed – it was a Northumbrian monastery – and has played a central role in city life ever since.

Above ground, that first church on the ridge overlooking the River Skell no longer exists, but below ground it does – the original crypt is still there, the oldest surviving place of continual Christian worship in Britain. The area of Kirkgate Park was monastery land.

In the 11th century, the church was probably badly damaged during the Harrying of the North, William the Conqueror’s brutal campaign to quash resistance to Norman rule in the Anglo-Norse north.

The palace period

A couple of centuries or so later, the area of Kirkgate Park was the site of a palace or manor house of the Archbishops of York, although few details remain. It was surrendered to the Crown in 1542, and from 1629 the remaining buildings were used as a poorhouse. By 1647 it was reported as being in ruins.

Thereafter, the area north of the cathedral was known as Hall Garth, and the central part of it has been open space ever since. 

Fines for swearing

From the 18th century, a bowling green occupied a large part of it, and the 1824 rules of Ripon Bowling Club, which used the green, included fines for “any gentleman calling another a liar” of not less than one shilling, and a fine of sixpence for swearing.

By the time of the 1854 Ordnance Survey map the bowling green had become a garden and was linked to Minster Yard (as Minster Road was then called) by a space with trees and a path aligned with the small door in the north nave aisle of the Minster.

The 1884, the remaining buildings on the south boundary had been demolished, and by 1891, the wall bounding the former bowling green had been largely removed, except for a short stretch, with an arch, near the Old Courthouse.

A park is born

This now completely-open area was landscaped with carefully-planted trees to form what was in essence a public park. Since then, the area has remained largely as it was, looked after in more recent years by successive councils.

The historical patchwork of development on and around the park shows, if nothing else, that pretty much everywhere in an ancient city is a work in progress: things change.

So if the cathedral authorities had prevailed, and their annexe – with café, gift shop and song school – had been built, it would just have been another phase in the slow evolution of the landscape. And it may well have been replaced by something else – eventually.

But that’s a philosophical view, and it’s not how campaigners saw it. During their campaign, the issue of the development was at times hotly disputed and split opinion in the city like few other subjects – although there’s no record of anyone being fined sixpence for swearing, let alone a shilling.

Over a year after the cathedral withdrew its plans, the dust has settled, and peace reigns in the gardens once more –which is just how the Friends of Kirkgate Park like it.

As Jenni Holman, the group’s treasurer, told us at their celebratory get-together, the park is a well-used green area where people can sit and relax. “It’s a beautiful, tranquil space”, she said – and they aim to keep it that way. 

With thanks to Ripon Civic Society for the information contained in this article.