The changing face of Rougier Street

ALL being well, archaeologists will start digging beneath Rougier Street this summer in what is being billed as the largest public dig in York since Coppergate. They will be looking for evidence of the old Roman civilian city which once stood on this side of the river - with the ultimate aim of opening a new, underground Roman attraction modelled along the lines of Jorvik.

The excavation and resulting new museum will be part of a planned £150 million scheme to redevelop the street, which will see three buildings (the Society Bar, Northern House and Rougier House) demolished and replaced with the new Roman museum, plus a 145-bed hotel, more than 200 flats, offices, shops, cafés and restaurants.

It promises to be a complete transformation of Rougier Street. But of course it will not be the first time this quarter of York has been completely changed.

We have dug out a series of old photographs of Rougier Street and George Hudson Street dating back as far as the 1930s which show the series of transformations the area has gone through already in the last century. Let's just hope we get it right this time, and that the latest transformation will be built to last...

1. Providence Place and Rougier Street seen from Station Road in about 1933. Lumb's newsagents is on the corner. on the other side of Lumb's - with washing hung out to dry - is Providence Place, which was demolished between 1937 and 1940.

2. Lumb's and Providence Place had both been demolished by the time this photograph of the Rougier Street/ Station Road junction was taken in January 1958. They had been replaced by a car park - not for the first time in York. On the opposite side of Rougier Street is a row of brick terraces, which in the early 1960s were bought by motor engineers Leedhams (York) Ltd. Leedhams planned to demolish them to extend its showroom and service area. Beyond the row of terraces can be seen rising, on Tanner's Moat, the distinctive shape of the wonderful old horse repository which once stood here - a kind of equine equivalent of a multi-story car park.

3. The car and coach park on the corner of Rougier Street and Station Road was still very evident in this photo, taken in about 1960. The Yorkshire Insurance Company building (later Norwich Union then Aviva) was subsequently built on this site. The grand bulk of the former GNER headquarters (now the Grand Hotel) can be seen rising back right.

4. A close up of the car park on the corner of Rougier Street and Station Road in January 1960 - sixty years ago exactly. Eagle-eyed readers will spot that it was actually known as the Rougier Street coach park

5. The corner of George Hudson Street and Tanner Row in June 1968. There was talk of creating a bus station to the right of the County Hotel. We're still waiting...

6. June 1972: The old Co-op building on the corner of George Hudson Street and Tanner Row in June 1972. There's now a Chinese restaurant and supermarket on this corner

7. This high-angle view of a multi-storey car park under construction in George Hudson Street in 1973 shows the elegant spire of All Saints North Street in the middle distance, with York Minster behind.