As well as being a popular recreational space for both residents and visitors, the gardens are the venue for special events such as open-air theatre and music performances. In 1970, bands including
Roxy Music,
Hawkwind and
Pink Fairies staged concerts here. During the 20th-century revival of the
York Mystery Plays, performances were held on a fixed stage in the gardens among the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey. In the 1950s, York actress
Dame Judi Dench acted in the plays performed in the gardens, and played the
Virgin Mary in 1957. The Mystery Plays returned to the gardens between 2–27 August 2012 and involved over one thousand local volunteers. In 2006, between 800 and 1,000 people celebrated the
Chinese New Year with displays that included
lion dancers. In 2007 The Lord Chamberlain's Men presented a production of
Romeo & Juliet. Also in 2007, during the Jorvik Viking festival, there were demonstrations of
Viking craft skills and battle training. The Yorkshire Museum and the Museum Gardens first hosted the
Eboracum Roman Festival in 2016. It has since become an annual event. In 2019 the gardens hosted the York Proms, an open-air classical music concert.
Saluting station The gardens are the location of York's Saluting Station, one of only 12 in the United Kingdom, with
21-gun salutes being fired at noon to celebrate occasions related to the British Royal Family throughout the year. At these times a
military band marches to the gardens before the salute is fired. On 9 September 2022 a 96-gun salute was held in commemoration of the
death of Queen Elizabeth II, one for each year of her life. This was followed, on 10 September by a 21-gun salute to mark the
Proclamation of accession of Charles III.
Exhibitions There is a designated 'Artist's Garden' behind the Art Gallery, within the Museum Gardens. Sculptural works are displayed in this open air space. Exhibitions in this space have included: •
Foundation Myths by Charles Holland (2016–2017) was the first exhibition in the Artist's Garden. •
Leisureland Golf by Doug Fishbourne (June–September 2017) was a fully playable crazy-golf course and sculptural installation. •
The Pollinarium (27 September – 6 October 2018) was a timber structure, covered with flowering plants and shown as part of the
York Mediale. •
Michael Lyons: Ancient and Modern (25 May 2019 – May 2020) is a series of sculptures by
Michael Lyons. It is the first time such a large exhibition of outdoor sculpture has been displayed in York. •
Ghosts in the Garden (23 September – 7 November 2022) is a series of wire-mesh sculptures of historical figures on display throughout the Artist's garden and Museum Gardens as well as at the
Treasurer's House, York,
Merchant Adventurers' Hall,
Barley Hall, and St Anthony's Garden. ==Buildings==
Roman In the northeast of Museum Gardens there are remains of the west corner of the fortifications that surrounded the
Roman fort of
Eboracum. The original defences, consisting of turf ramparts on a green wood foundation, were built by the
Ninth Legion between 71 and 74 AD. Later those were replaced by a clay mound with a turf front on a new oak foundation, and eventually wooden battlements were added, which were then replaced by
limestone walls and towers. These stone defences are some of the few Roman remains that are visible above ground in York. The Multangular Tower is the western corner tower of the Roman fortress, and consists of both Roman and
medieval architecture. The tower has 10 sides, from which it derives its modern name "
multangular", and is 19 feet (5.8 m) high. It was built in its late Roman form during the early 4th century, when it was constructed with three floors to house a
catapult. Behind the Anglian Tower are a series of banks showing the level of the defences during the Roman, early Middle Ages, Norman, and late medieval periods.
Medieval church, York The gardens contain several buildings dating back to the
medieval period, most of them relating to St Mary's Abbey. The
Benedictine Abbey's origins date back to 1086 when
Alan Count of Brittany granted
St Olave's Church and the adjoining land to the monk Stephen of Whitby, who became the first abbot of St. Mary's. When St Olave's Church became too small, a larger church in a
Romanesque style was built nearby, the foundation stone of which was laid in 1089 by
William II. This was replaced between 1270 and 1279 by a church in a
Gothic style. The abbey became the wealthiest monastery in the North of England, worth over
£2,085 a year before it was
dissolved by
Henry VIII on 25 November 1539. Over the next 200 years the abbey fell into disrepair and the abbey church was largely dismantled for its stone. Stones from the abbey church can be seen lining paths throughout the gardens, but the major ruins of the church are on the western side. The church was aligned on a northeast axis because of the shape and size of the site, instead of pointing to the east, the normal alignment for churches in England. Part of the north and west walls that formed the
nave and
crossing, designed in Gothic style by architect Simon of Pabenham in the 13th century, remain standing. The ruins include dummy
lancet windows,
tracery windows and "tracery remains to show that the patterns alternated between a single large circle over two lights and three small circles over three lights". The column
capitals are decorated with foliage in a stiff-leaf style as well as in a
naturalistic style, although this stonework is weatherworn and so this decoration is hard to distinguish. Sections of the
foundations of the church and its
Norman predecessor are exposed, and a plan of their layouts can be seen in the grass. Finds excavated from the site, including life-sized statues of Christian
saints, can be seen in the Yorkshire Museum. St Mary's Lodge was built around 1470 as an addition to the late 12th-century buildings that formed the
gatehouse at the main entrance to the abbey, – now the Marygate entrance to the gardens. Some remains of the 12th-century gatehouse can still be seen, in particular the archway attached to the side of the lodge. The lodge is built of stone, and does not contain
timber framing like the nearby Hospitium. The lodge, along with the attached railings, gates and gate piers are all Grade I
listed buildings, which means that they are of outstanding interest. Originally, the lodge may have been used as a guesthouse for the abbey, and was the point where the poor could claim
alms from the abbey. After the abbey's
dissolution, the lodge became a courthouse until 1722, when part of the building became the Brown Cow
pub. In 1840
John Philips, the Yorkshire Museum's curator, restored and converted it to use as his home while retaining its external appearance. The lodge subsequently became used as offices, and during the early 21st century became the headquarters of the York Museums Trust. Originally there was a defensive ditch along the outside of the walls. The walls include several towers, not all of them dating from the medieval period; the semicircular tower near the gatehouse is a 19th-century reconstruction. The walls and towers were used for the abbey's defence, e.g. in disputes with the City of York over land ownership and taxes, and played a role in the defence of the city during the
siege of York. It was originally part of a group of buildings in the abbey grounds that included a brew-house, stables, mill and, near the main gate, a boarding school with 50 pupils. The oldest parts of the ground floor were built around 1300, but the upper storey has been extensively restored in modern times. The ruined gateway at the side dates back to the 15th century, and was probably the entrance to a passage that ran towards the water-gate by the river. The remains of
St. Leonard's Hospital chapel and
undercroft are on the east side of the gardens, by the Museum Street entrance. The hospital was the largest in England during the
Middle Ages, and was run by a community of men and women of the
Augustinian order. During the 14th century, the hospital could have contained as many as 240 patients, 18 clergy and 30 choristers. St. Leonard's Hospital was closed during the dissolution of the monasteries, when it was surrendered to Henry VIII by Thomas Magnus. The undercroft and chapel were part of the infirmary built between 1225 and 1250. The interior of the undercroft, accessible from the gardens, has a
rib vaulted ceiling and houses a collection of
Roman and
medieval stonework. The
Yorkshire Philosophical Society constructed several buildings in the gardens during the 19th and early 20th centuries, including the
Yorkshire Museum, one of the first purpose-built museums in Britain. The Yorkshire Museum was designed by architect
William Wilkins in a
Greek Revival style and was officially opened in February 1830. On 26 September 1831 the inaugural meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science was held at the Yorkshire Museum. Three of the museum's permanent collections are housed in the Yorkshire Museum building all of which have English
designated collection status, which means they are "pre-eminent collections of national and international importance". The
biology collection contains 200,000 specimens, including both fauna and flora, with most of the collection made up of insects. There are two stuffed specimens of the extinct
great auk, an almost complete skeleton of an extinct
moa and a large collection of specimens from the Yorkshire region including the remains of elephants,
cave bears and
hyena from
Kirkdale Cave dated to the
Quaternary period, around 125,000 years ago. The geological collection contains over 112,500 specimens of rocks, minerals and fossils. Fossils make up most of the collection numbering over 100,000 samples, and include important specimens from the
Carboniferous,
Mesozoic and Tertiary periods. The
archaeology collection has close to a million objects that date from around 500,000 BC to the 20th century, including the
Coppergate Helmet discovered in York in 1982, and the
Ormside Bowl, an intricate example of an
Anglian silversmith. Most of the museum's astronomy collection is housed in the octagonal
observatory in the centre of the gardens, built during 1832 and 1833. The design of its rotating roof is credited to
John Smeaton designer of the
Eddystone Lighthouse. A telescope built in 1850 by the instrument maker
Thomas Cooke of York was installed during the observatory's 1981 restoration. It is
Yorkshire's oldest working observatory and as of August 2007 was opened to the public by a team of volunteers. The building is currently opened every Thursday and Saturday 11.30 until 2.30. The clock in the observatory was made by Barraud of London in 1811, and during the 19th century it was used to set the time for other clocks in York. At the eastern, Museum Street, entrance to the gardens is Museum Gardens' Lodge built in 1874 to a design by
George Fowler Jones in a Victorian
Gothic Revival style. The lodge now houses the Yorkshire Philosophical Society's offices and reading room. The
curator's house ('Manor cottage'), built in 1844 and originally called the keeper's house, is located by
King's Manor. It was designed by J. B. Atkinson and was built using reclaimed limestone from
St. Mary's Abbey.
Tempest Anderson Hall The Tempest Anderson Hall is a 300-seat auditorium-style lecture theatre built in 1912 as an annexe to the Yorkshire Museum. Dr
Tempest Anderson, a York surgeon and vulcanologist, presented the hall to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society to replace its existing lecture theatre. Designed by
E. Ridsdale Tate, it is an early example of the use of
reinforced concrete and is a Grade I
listed building. In the late 20th century it housed a cinema, but it is now used as a conference venue and lecture theatre.
Swimming baths York's first
swimming bath was located in the south-west corner of the Museum Gardens. It was an open-air pool designed by the architects Samuel and
Richard Hey Sharp, one of the designers of the Yorkshire Museum, and measured by and had a capacity of approximately 290,000 gallons. It opened to the public on 8 August 1837, and employed a Keeper of the baths throughout its lifespan. ==Gallery==