Few visitors to St. Andrew’s realise that the riverside walkway running around the site and connecting Ferry Lane with Chantry Lane is a relatively new addition to Bishopthorpe, having been built by the Trust in 2001. Before this Ferry Lane and Chantry Lane were both cul-de-sacs, and while brave and determined ramblers could perhaps force a path through, the riverside section between the two lanes was pretty much impassable.
Although the path is now appreciated by walkers as they make their ways along the riverside, the real reason for it’s construction was to counter river erosion, which was eating into the old churchyard at a rate of half a metre a year. An outer band of medieval burials had already been washed out and the river was only two metres from the East wall of the old church.
A) an undermined tree
B) the ramblers ‘path’
C) lid of coffin exposed by erosion
D) rod marking grave goods in river
Clearly urgent work was needed, so the Trust commenced a project to restore the embankment to the position shown on Ordnance Survey maps of circa 1850. This was a major engineering project and involved building an earth-covered barrier of rock fill and gabions anchored on the riverbed, then overlaid with topsoil to create a naturalistic riverbank with a new walkway on top.
The popularity of the path is now giving cause for more concerns over erosion, but this time not from the river but from the intensive footfall which is taking a heavy toll on the path surface. Our current fundraising initiative includes an objective to install a more durable surface to cope with the high level of public use and to allow the path to be used by disability vehicles.