In the heart of York’s historic Minster Precinct, to stroll down Chapter House Street is to escape from the modern world.

Grays Court in Chapter House Street, roughly where Wrenne's house stands in the novel Sovereign

Perhaps this is why the novelist C J Sansom, in his Tudor whodunit Sovereign, positioned the York lawyer Wrenne’s house on Chapter House Street.

The map of York accompanying Sovereign shows Wrenne’s house was roughly where the modern-day Grays Court boutique hotel and tea room can now be found, across a picturesque, quiet courtyard at the corner of Chapter House Street and Ogleforth.

It would be pedantic to point out that the building that would become Grays Court was, at the time of Sovereign, home to the Treasurer of York Minster and, consequently, unlikely to house any local barristers, but there’s any number of other buildings nearby that could have been Sansom’s inspiration for Wrenne’s house. A comprehensive history of Grays Court can be found on the hotel’s website at www.grayscourtyork.com.

The Minster’s treasurer was unceremoniously booted out of his house in 1547, during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, and the property passed into private hands. In 1720 it was divided, with half going on to become the modern Grays Court hotel and tea rooms, and the other half becoming what is now the National Trust property called the Treasurer’s House next door.

The offbeat Treasurer’s House adds to the cloister-like quirkiness of Chapter House Street making it, with Ogleforth, one of York’s most pleasant streets to walk down.

The Minster has a chapter house within its walls, incidentally, and so it’s not clear why Chapter House Street is so named; perhaps because of its proximity to a chapter house rather than because it ever contained one.

Continue your York tour
Go West to Minster Yard (east) and College Street
Go South to Ogleforth