This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester. I always thought I should give then and now photographs a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart. Now this has come to my attention I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place.
York is a place I have visited and lived in over the last forty five years. I first went to York on a school trip in 1979 and we did lots of different things. We went to the Railway Museum, the Castle Museum, went up Clifford’s Tower. We visited Mother Shipton’s Cave and Fountain’s Abbey. I made a return visit to York in the summer of 1987 when we had some Yugoslavian Scouts over.
In October 1987 I studied Economics at York University for three years.
I made a return visit to York in July 1993, I stayed on campus and did various things including a return visit to Fountains Abbey.
It was quite a few years later before I visited again, and this time it was a fleeting visit to the university in March 2006 for a meeting. I had flown up to Leeds and hired a car to drive to York and then drove back, all in the one day.
I also was there for a mobile learning workshop in April 2009, and stayed at the hotel by the Railway Station. We did a family holiday to York in March 2013.
It was on the March 2006 trip that I drove into Heslington Village next to the university and took this photograph of Heslington Main Street with a Sony DSC P200 digital camera.
On a return visit to York in September 2023 I took the opportunity to retake the photograph, this time with an iPhone 13.
Apart from some greenery not much has changed. However in the 2006 photograph in the background are two bank branches next to the Post Office. In 2023 the Post Office is still there, but both bank branches have closed and are now empty.
I also took this view in March 2006 from pretty much the same vanatge point.
So I took it again in September 2023.
Again not much has changed, well apart from the greenery on the house.