Malton: Taking a look back at York Road from the town

This process can be likened to what we know nowadays as 'Privatisation'.

The end result was the sale to private individuals of what had been a valuable shared leisure facility for local citizens: they were not too impressed by the changes.

Looking back at York Road (Image: Malton and Norton Heritage Centre)

The cause was taken up by poet George Dinsdale, who was a Post Office manager, and Malton resident during the early to middle eighteen hundreds.

He spoke of living in a cottage 'near to a green bank side in Newbegin' (...I wonder where that was!...) and these were his words on the changes that had taken place on York Road:

"No more on The Browse do we sport and play...

As a park for the people few could it compare...

'twas rich, it was rare...

And now its enclosure with sorrow we see..."

A nationally well-known rhyme from that time was "The Goose and the Common" and it expressed similar feelings.

Read more from Howard:

• A look back at Malton's railway station
• A look back at Broughton Rise
• A defensive town wall once surrounded Malton, but what happened to it?

The area on York Road was well 'set up' for the building development that subsequently took place because it had its own sandstone quarry, still there today and with access to the river but unused since 1948.

The remains of the sandstone quarry (Image: Malton and Norton Heritage Centre)

It is crossed by the A64 on a bridge as shown both in the photo and on the map.

The map (Image: Malton and Norton Heritage Centre)

It is fair to assume that the majority of the local residential development has emanated from that quarry.

• Howard Campion is a trustee at the Malton and Norton Heritage Centre.