Micklegate Bar

Micklegate Bar is one of the most impressive and famous of the gateways through the York City Walls and plays a ceremonial role in welcoming ruling monarchs to the city. This is also the gateway through which those doomed to be executed at the Tyburn (now the York racecourse) passed on the way to their deaths including Dick Turpin. Notably many of these executions were recorded in William Knipe’s (1867) Criminal Chronology of York Castle which actually recorded executions back to 1379. Interestingly it was customary in York that a prisoner could be pardoned on the condition that they acted as an executioner.

In the Bar Convent on Blossom Street (which can be seen from Micklegate Bar) the hand of Margaret Clitherow is still kept as a religious relic. She was canonized in October 1970.

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