"When Hungate Was Taken Down.........." – Solid And Ephemeral: The Dichotomy At The Heart Of The Archaeology Of Clearance In 1930s York.

Summary

In the early 1930s the Hungate district of York had become renowned as an area of dilapidated buildings and people living in poverty. In parallel to this the York Corporation had embarked on a new housing programme. This new programme required tenants and in an act of self fulfilling prophecy this process drove the demolition of Hungate.

This act of clearance is solidly defined in the archaeology, through the remains of levelled buildings and rubble. However, the act of demolition is fleeting and very little can be said about the final days of the Hungate population. Work in 2017 has also revealed new traces in the archaeology, suggesting a previously unrecorded period of continuity.

This paper will map the managed clearance of Hungate during the 1930s. It will conclude by drawing a parallel with AD 5th century York, where similar challenges are found in the demolition archaeology of that period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology Of Interwar Europe (1918-1939)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 367