Standing in the shadow of the Minster, College Street dates back to the fifteenth century and includes a house with a ghost story from the time of York’s Great Plague.
A ghost from the Great Plague may haunt the house on the left in York's College Street
St William’s College was founded in 1461 as a home for the Minster’s chantry priests. It was named after Saint William, Archbishop of York in 1153-4, whose tomb can be found inside the Minster. The half-timbered exterior hides a courtyard and café/restaurant and is the only surviving building of its kind in the country
St William’s College also hosts conferences and exhibitions and its restaurant serves light lunches and evening meals. (Service can be a bit hit and miss, but since the restaurant is used as a training ground for York College students on catering courses, this is perhaps to be expected. For the same reason the quality of food can never be guaranteed, but is usually totally acceptable for the prices charged. The wine list used to be something else – bottles at well over £30 to accompany your snack?)
Next to St William’s College are some small houses (pictured above) whose histories date back to before the time of the Great Plague of the 1660s, which was the setting for one of York’s many ghost stories.
A York Great Plague ghost story
The impact of the Plague on cities like York can’t be overstated. Whole families were wiped out at a time, and when this happened their houses were boarded up to prevent the spread of infection. The house on the far left of College Street as you look at St William’s College was just such a house.
When the plague eventually died down the house was un-boarded and its gruesome occupants rediscovered. The father and mother of the family undoubtedly died of the Plague, but upstairs in the room whose window overlooks College Street was discovered the body of a young girl who rather than dying of the plague had died from starvation.
The girl had mistakenly been boarded up inside the house alive with her dead parents and had failed to succumb to the plague. For whatever reason – perhaps because plague houses were avoided like, well, like the plague – the citizens of York had failed to hear her pleading cries to be let out.
To this day it is said that her ghost can be seen at the upstairs window of the house on College Street, begging to be freed from her morbid torment.
Continue your York Tour
Go north to Minster Yard (east) for the Treasurer’s House and the Deanery
Go west to Deangate, Minster Yard (west) and York Minster
Go south to Goodramgate