York Ghost in the Gardens 2023
Ghosts in the Gardens is a free and family-friendly activity for all ages and is a great way to experience York's rich history and folklore. The trail will run from September 23 to November 12, 2023. The trail won the Best Place-Marketing Award at a national placemaking conference last year.
Yorkshire Post photographer, James Hardisty, went along to speak with Carl Alsop, Operations Manager at York BID about the trail.
The 39 sculptures will be installed in 14 different locations across the city: Museum Gardens, The Artists Garden, Treasurer’s House, Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, Middletons Hotel, St Anthony’s Garden, Barley Hall, The Shambles, Clifford’s Tower, the Judges Lodgings, DIG, the Castle Museum, the Edible Wood and Library Lawn.
Yorkshire Post photographer, James Hardisty, went along to speak with Carl Alsop, Operations Manager at York BID about the trail.
The 39 sculptures will be installed in 14 different locations across the city: Museum Gardens, The Artists Garden, Treasurer’s House, Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, Middletons Hotel, St Anthony’s Garden, Barley Hall, The Shambles, Clifford’s Tower, the Judges Lodgings, DIG, the Castle Museum, the Edible Wood and Library Lawn.
Transcript
00:00 Hi, so my name's Karl Allsopp, I'm the Operations Manager at the York Business Improvement District,
00:05 the York BID, and the York BID are responsible for the autumn project, the Ghosts in the
00:10 Gardens, and you can obviously see the bride here with me.
00:13 The Ghosts in the Gardens has been going three years now, we're in year three, and this year
00:17 there is more than ever, and they're spread out further than ever.
00:21 So we have 39 different ghosts in gardens around the city in 13 different locations.
00:26 As you can see they're all made of what we call a low aperture wire mesh, which looks
00:32 a bit weird on first view, but actually what that does is it means that as the light hits
00:37 them in different ways, they start to disappear and go quite ghostly.
00:42 Really they're not meant to be spooky, it's all about having a snapshot of history in
00:46 a beautiful location, which I'm sure you'll agree.
00:49 Over by the Hospitium here, an amazing wedding venue, we've got our bride who's rethinking
00:54 things in the beautiful Museum Gardens.
00:57 This year we've added a few new designs as well, so there's ten new ghosts.
01:01 We've got an astronomer, which sits on the roof of the largest observatory in Yorkshire.
01:07 We've got a bear in the Museum Gardens, which seems a bit random, but actually at the turn
01:12 of the century there was a menagerie in the gardens with eagles and monkeys and bears,
01:17 or a bear, and this particular bear kept escaping, he used to chase the gardener around the gardens,
01:22 so we thought what a nice little piece of little known history to bring to life.
01:27 Around the city as well we've got a miller over at the Castle Museum hoisting up a sack
01:32 of grain on the old mill there, which really brings that building to life really nicely.
01:38 We've also got a butcher or a butcher's wife throwing a bucket of slop out a window on
01:45 the shambles, much as it would have been back in medieval times.
01:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]