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University of York

Experience 600 years of shopping in a single afternoon

A market cheese stall

University tutors are offering ‘frugal fare’ this weekend at the York Food and Drink Festival, with a shopping tour of York which begins in the year 1450 and provides a glimpse of the future before it concludes in 2050.

Starting at the Fountain Café, Parliament Street, at 2pm on Saturday 17 September, residents of the city will have an opportunity to travel back to the medieval period and experience a very different kind of shopping to the kind we undertake today. With issues such as oil shortages, climate change and food security increasingly in the news however, it might not be too long before the weekly trip to an out-of-town supermarket is again replaced by a more local food culture. 

The walking tour of the city aims to show people where medieval markets used to take place, but will also cover new sites

Louise Wheatley

Medievalist Louise Wheatley will take the lead initially and demonstrate the finer points of haggling for salt fish and coarse flour to create a frugal 15th-century family meal, before Urban Horticulture programme tutor Catherine Heinemeyer demonstrates the emergence of an edible urban landscape and presents a very different 21st-century food shopping experience.

Louise Wheatley explains, “We’re hoping that this exploration of shopping through two different disciplines will excite people about the past and present, but also encourage them to think about future food sustainability. The walking tour of the city aims to show people where medieval markets used to take place, but will also cover new sites for ‘Edible York’, showing that food is a key concern for everyone in every age.”

The event is part of a wide array of events organised as part of the York Food and Drink Festival, which runs from 16 to 25 September.

Further information