BARLEY HALL
History and Archaeology
Barley Hall was 'rediscovered' in 1984. Although it had long been known that there was a medieval building in this location, the house was not officially recorded as medieval until 1980, and it was not until the site was sold for redevelopment that the extent of the medieval structure became clear. The picture shows the property in 1978.
Once the property had been purchased for redevelopment, an incredible amount of investigation and research got under way and it became clear that this was a very interesting site. The end result was that York Archaeological Trust, who had already been involved in the excavation of the site, purchased the property in 1987 with the aim of restoring it fully as a venue for an exploration of York's medieval past, just as they had already done for the Viking period with the Jorvik Viking Centre.
In 1987, YAT carried out a thorough archaeological examination of the building's interior and they later also looked at the courtyard area. These investigations were invaluable in piecing together the medieval layout of the building. It was clear that the building had been altered hugely over time, with floor levels changing and timbers moved around the building depending on the differing needs over time. Nevertheless, it was possible to piece together the shape of the medieval property. The timbers of the building were tree-ring dated with fascinating results. Examination of the timbers in the northern Chamber range revealed that the trees had been felled in the spring of 1360. The Hall range gave more ambiguous results, suggesting that this range had been first erected in around 1430, and then substantially rebuilt in around 1515.
Download an article on the excavation findings (pdf)
Alongside the archaeology there was a great deal of historical research in the archives of the city of York, York Minster, and also the West Yorkshire Archive which houses the records of Nostell Priory. It was this monastic establishment near Wakefield that had first built the property and owned it through to the dissolution of the monasteries in the time of Henry VIII.
The Priors Lodging
Thomas de Dereford, Prior of Nostell from 1337 to 1372, arranged for the building of a hostel in York in 1360. The Priors of Nostell were prebendary canons of York Minster and were expected to attend ceremonies, services and business meetings in the city; it therefore made sense for Prior Dereford to build a residence in York. However, by the fifteenth century the Priory had fallen on hard times and this was no doubt the reason why the hostel came to be leased out to private tenants. The most distinguished of these, and the man whose family home we are working to reproduce at Barley Hall, was Master William Snawsell.
Master Snawsell lived in the house for at least 20 years from the mid 1460s to the late 1480s. In 1540, along with all monastic property, the building was confiscated by the crown. By the seventeenth century it was almost certainly divided up into several smaller dwellings with the result that the "screens passage" - the internal corridor area at the end of the Great Hall - came to be used as a public short-cut through from Stonegate to Swinegate. It remains a public right-of-way through the heart of Master Snawsell's house! By Victorian times, the house was "a warren of tradesmen's workshops" and its last use before being sold for redevelopment in 1984 was as a plumber's workshop and showroom.