a cruising history of York
An archive of York’s queer history, mapping 88+ sites across nearly two thousand years of the city’s life.
Part history, part poetry, part invitation, open to explore from anywhere in the world. A work in progress, coming soon.
There’s nowt so queer as folk, as any Yorkshire nan worth her salt will tell you, usually while looking directly at you. And York has had nearly two thousand years of folk to prove her right.
Nowt So Queer is an audio-led archive of the city’s queer history. It maps 88 sites, from a fourth-century burial dripping in jet to the discos, bookshops & sticky-floored bars where York’s queers found each other. It’s part history, part poetry, part come-and-have-a-go, and you’ll be able to cruise it from anywhere in the world. When? When it’s good & ready!
Nowt So Queer is an audio-led archive of the city’s queer history. It maps 88 sites, from a fourth-century burial dripping in jet to the discos, bookshops & sticky-floored bars where York’s queers found each other. It’s part history, part poetry, part come-and-have-a-go, and you’ll be able to cruise it from anywhere in the world. When? When it’s good & ready!
Whose history is it anyway?
History is, more or less, a pub anecdote that’s been retold so many times it’s insisting on being called fact. Somebody chose which stories got told, which got trimmed and which got quietly binned, and that somebody was very rarely one of us. So here’s the thing. The archive was never built to hold everyone. It was built with the doors locked from the inside. You can’t sneak queer history in through the window & hope nobody notices. You have to queer the whole house first. When queer folk did get their hands on the pen, they wrote in code: green carnations, ciphered diaries, a wink tucked into a dedication.
Who’s in it?
Eighty-eight sites (and counting!), from York’s earliest centuries to living memory. The rule for entry is simple: someone demonstrably set foot in the city, and their life leaves the door ajar for a queer reading.
So you’ll find James I at Gray’s Court, knighting eight men over a single dinner, which is either remarkable generosity or one hell of a dinner party. Anne Lister is working the room at the Assembly Rooms. Oscar Wilde is lecturing at the Exhibition Hall in what one can only hope was a disturbingly fabulous coat. Virginia Woolf is walking the streets with Leonard. There are the men whose desires survive only because the courts at York Castle took the trouble to write them down.
Some of these sites are landmarks. Others are doorways you’ve walked past a hundred times on your way to somewhere less interesting.
History is, more or less, a pub anecdote that’s been retold so many times it’s insisting on being called fact. Somebody chose which stories got told, which got trimmed and which got quietly binned, and that somebody was very rarely one of us. So here’s the thing. The archive was never built to hold everyone. It was built with the doors locked from the inside. You can’t sneak queer history in through the window & hope nobody notices. You have to queer the whole house first. When queer folk did get their hands on the pen, they wrote in code: green carnations, ciphered diaries, a wink tucked into a dedication.
Who’s in it?
Eighty-eight sites (and counting!), from York’s earliest centuries to living memory. The rule for entry is simple: someone demonstrably set foot in the city, and their life leaves the door ajar for a queer reading.
So you’ll find James I at Gray’s Court, knighting eight men over a single dinner, which is either remarkable generosity or one hell of a dinner party. Anne Lister is working the room at the Assembly Rooms. Oscar Wilde is lecturing at the Exhibition Hall in what one can only hope was a disturbingly fabulous coat. Virginia Woolf is walking the streets with Leonard. There are the men whose desires survive only because the courts at York Castle took the trouble to write them down.
Some of these sites are landmarks. Others are doorways you’ve walked past a hundred times on your way to somewhere less interesting.
Queer, slantwise
Queer probably comes from the German quer: slantwise, oblique, off at an angle. That’s exactly how it’s used here. Nobody in this archive gets a label. Most of them never had access to ours, and pinning modern identities onto people who’ve been dead for centuries, who can’t exactly write in to complain, is just a continuation of the erasure we’ve grown accustomed to. Queer is a verb here as much as anything, a desirant itch of questioning that wants more than the official account is willing to give. Anything that turned against the grain of its century is welcome to answer to it.
Read slantwise, York stops being a straight line of dates. It becomes a rhizomatic sprawl of lost stories with no centre, where any point can slip off down a snickelway with any other.
What’s at each site?
Every site will be there in audio & text, to walk in York or wander from your sofa in Cockermouth. Each one holds the history, researched & sourced; an original poem; and a prompt, daring you to write back.
Each history pokes at some facet of queer experience (shame, invisibility, power, the giddy business of exploring), and I write from my own body’s memory of it. There’s no fixed route. Follow an era, follow a theme, follow whoever’s caught your eye across the room. The flâneur strolls. The flamboyeur cruises.
Queer probably comes from the German quer: slantwise, oblique, off at an angle. That’s exactly how it’s used here. Nobody in this archive gets a label. Most of them never had access to ours, and pinning modern identities onto people who’ve been dead for centuries, who can’t exactly write in to complain, is just a continuation of the erasure we’ve grown accustomed to. Queer is a verb here as much as anything, a desirant itch of questioning that wants more than the official account is willing to give. Anything that turned against the grain of its century is welcome to answer to it.
Read slantwise, York stops being a straight line of dates. It becomes a rhizomatic sprawl of lost stories with no centre, where any point can slip off down a snickelway with any other.
What’s at each site?
Every site will be there in audio & text, to walk in York or wander from your sofa in Cockermouth. Each one holds the history, researched & sourced; an original poem; and a prompt, daring you to write back.
Each history pokes at some facet of queer experience (shame, invisibility, power, the giddy business of exploring), and I write from my own body’s memory of it. There’s no fixed route. Follow an era, follow a theme, follow whoever’s caught your eye across the room. The flâneur strolls. The flamboyeur cruises.
Will it ever be finished?
Absolutely not. And frankly, who’d want it to be? Nowt So Queer is a generative anarchive, forever shifting, growing & contradicting itself, as queerness so often does. Anyone who cruises it can write back, in any shape a poem cares to take: a sonnet, a single line, free verse spilling down the page, something barely the length of a breath. Pin it to the site that got you going or let it drift wherever it lands. Listeners will be able to pick a voice or hit shuffle & see who’s waiting on the other end of the line.
Corrections, additions & well-sourced gossip are always welcome.
Where did it come from?
It began in 2022 as Not Yet Dead, a studio show telling the story of queerness through the figure of James I through a series of curated absences and presences. Since then it’s been a guided walk, a poetry walk, an audio walk, and a queer literary tour for LGBT+ History Month in weather so uncooperative it deserves a co-writing credit for added drama. Its research has also gone into a blue plaque proposal for Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1811 stay at 20 Coney Street. That proposal is now with York Civic Trust & Historic England.
Coming soon
The full Nowt So Queer archive, with its histories, poems, prompts and audio walks, is currently in development.