Birthplace of King Charles I’s last companion
Stand at the southern end of Shambles and you will be faced with a timber-framed building bowed down by its great age. This is Herbert House. Now a bootmaker’s shop, it is the handsome former home of a king’s last confidant.
Depending on which account you read, Sir Thomas Herbert was either born in the house or in adjacent Lady Peckitt’s Yard in 1606. It was his family home – great-grandfather Christopher Herbert had lived here when he was lord mayor in 1573.
Info
Address 14 Pavement, York YO1 9UP | Public Transport 3-minute walk from Shambles car park. Closest bus stops: on Stonebow | Hours Herbert House is now occupied by Jones Bootmaker, open Mon–Fri 9am–5:30pm, Sat 9am–6pm, Sun 10am–5pm| Tip Herbert House is one of a number of historic properties now owned by the York Conservation Trust: visit www.yorkconservationtrust.org to learn about them all.
Sir Thomas was a great friend to Charles I, and his strong supporter during the Civil War. The banqueting room at Herbert House may have been the place where members of Charles’s retinue were entertained during the royal visit to the city in 1633, and the king himself on a second visit, in 1639. Even when the royalist cause was irrefutably lost, Sir Thomas remained steadfastly loyal. He accompanied Charles to his execution on January 30, 1649, at Whitehall in London. So as not to shiver in the cold – and thus appear fearful of his fate – the king asked for two shirts. As Sir Thomas was responsible for Charles’s wardrobe, it is believed that he supplied them.
The king gave him a silver watch engraved with a rustic scene. Though Sir Thomas stayed in London until after the restoration of Charles II, he spent his last years in York, having left the capital at the onset of the plague in 1665. He bought the property at 9 High Petergate, where he wrote his memoirs.
Much later, Herbert House fell into disrepair. Occupied by a draper’s shop, its timbered façade was plastered over and it was described as “dejected and shabby … and rather Dickensian London in character.” But the building was restored in the 1920s, when a lot more history was uncovered. One of the main beams in the banqueting room was found to carry a painted frieze of pomegranates and grapes incorporating a medallion with the initials “C.H.” – Christopher Herbert, perhaps?
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