Bootham Crescent: Sharing Memories, Shaping Place
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-07-04

Place-shaping and the enhancement of public benefit are key corporate aims for Historic England. Examples are needed to show how these aims can be addressed by the heritage sector and how they might then feed into ways in which we can shape our environment to give it greater meaning and resilience.

Bootham Crescent has been home to York City FC since 1932. The Club has announced its move to the new Community Stadium at Monk’s Cross on the outskirts of York. The present season ending in April 2019 will therefore be the last at Bootham Crescent. The ground will be redeveloped for housing.

The last 25 years have witnessed a concentrated and comprehensive period of demolition, redevelopment and relocation of football grounds. Many have now disappeared below housing estates, supermarkets and retail parks, without a trace or nod of recognition to their history and heritage.

Yet research has shown that football grounds are keenly valued as cherished places and repositories of memory, conveying intense senses of identity and belonging with the power to stir hearts and minds and evoke strong and enduring social responses. This is especially true when grounds are relocated and the fan base is dislocated. 

Interrogating the relationship between place and memory, between tangible and intangible heritage, is always very difficult but for football in particular it is a very important challenge, and one that remains under-researched. Bootham Crescent offers an opportunity to meet this challenge, to test imaginative ways of involving people for whom the ground holds great meaning, and to explore why they value the site and how it should be memorialised.

Jason Wood (Heritage Consultancy Services)