Britain’s oldest music shop
Musicians are spoiled for choice in York. Two local independent shops, MOR Music, off Fossgate, and Red Cow Music, on Goodramgate, boast knowledgeable staffs and sell every kind of instrument. And the city has its own stringed-instrument workshop, where a husband-and-wife team make and repair violins, violas, and cellos.
But Banks Music is the granddaddy of them all. Or rather the great-great-great-granddaddy. A previous incarnation of the Lendal shop is re-created on Kirkgate, the famous Victorian street in York Castle Museum. In fact the origins of Banks go back much further. It was on June 15, 1756, that the York Courant printed an advert which declared, “This day is opened, (at the Organ in Blake-street, York) A MUSIC SHOP, where Gentlemen, Ladies and others may be furnished with all sorts of Musical Instruments and cases; Bows, Bridges, Strings and Wire; Music, Vocal and Instrumental; Books of Instruction, blank Books; rule Paper, &c. Wholesale and Retail, at reasonable prices …”
Info
Address 18 Lendal, York YO1 8AU, +44 (0)1904 658836, www.musicroom.com/york, sales@banksmusic.co.uk | Public Transport Closest bus stop: Museum Street | Hours Mon–Sat 9am–5:30pm, Sun 11am–5pm| Tip Almost opposite Banks is the Judge’s Lodging, a Grade I 18th-century townhouse that used to be home to York’s judiciary. Today it is a hotel, bar, and restaurant with great spaces to eat and drink inside and out.
Remarkably, it is doing the same thing today. Launched by Thomas Haxby, his Blake Street shop can still be identified by the rain heads attached to the gutters initialled “T. H.” and dated 1773. It passed through the hands of two other York musical families, the Knaptons and the Hardmans, before Henry Banks took over in the mid-19th century. Over the years, anyone who had an interest in music went to Banks. A young John Barry, later to become the Oscar-laded film composer, bought supplies here.
Britain’s oldest music shop celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2006 – the same year it finally passed out of local ownership. Now known as Banks Musicroom, its three floors are dedicated to music in all its forms. Much of its stock – sheet music, woodwind instruments, drums – Thomas Haxby would recognise. But who can ever guess what he’d make of the CDs?
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