Hidden in a lane of York, Barley Hall is a medieval town house restored and presented as it was around 1483 — at the exact hinge between the Wars of the Roses and the arrival of the Tudors. It offers a striking plunge into the domestic life of a rich York notable, on the threshold of our period.
The house of a York goldsmith
Built around 1360 (it belonged to Nostell Priory), the house was rented in the 1460s to William Snawsell, a goldsmith and Lord Mayor of York — and a supporter of Richard III. Snawsell lived here until around 1489. The museum restores his interior as it might have been around 1483, from an inventory of 1478: the Great Hall (1430), the parlour, the gallery and the chambers are furnished and decorated to bring back the daily life of a rich urban family at the very end of the Middle Ages — tableware, hangings, furniture, a colourful atmosphere that breaks with the austere image often held of the age.
A threshold of history
Barley Hall chose to freeze its restoration at a precise and meaningful moment: 1483, the year of Richard III's accession, two years before Bosworth. It is the very threshold of our atlas, the instant just before the Tudor turning point. At the Dissolution (1536-1541), the Nostell Priory that owned the house disappeared. Long forgotten, subdivided, Barley Hall was rediscovered in the twentieth century and saved from demolition. It is today a remarkable tool for understanding material life at the hinge of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. To see: the Great Hall (1430), the store with its original 1360 frame, the parlour, the gallery and the chambers furnished from the 1478 inventory.
Did you know?
Barley Hall nearly disappeared: rediscovered in 1980 during a survey before demolition, the house kept only 30% of its original timbers reusable. A new frame was then assembled off site, then re-erected in only ten days around the remains — saving at the last moment one of the few witnesses of the medieval town house of York. The surveyor of a demolition became the saviour of a monument.
Notes
Barley Hall lies at Coffee Yard, York, North Yorkshire; a museum run by the York Archaeological Trust, open to the public. Hours to check.
Quiz
- To around which date is Barley Hall restored?
- To around 1483 (threshold of the Tudors)
- To around 1700
- To Roman times
- Who rented the house in the 1460s?
- William Snawsell, goldsmith and Lord Mayor of York
- Henry VIII
- A bishop
- How was the house saved in the twentieth century?
- Rediscovered before demolition, restored with a new frame
- Bought by the queen
- Moved stone by stone