Home to Thomas Cooke’s telescope
A stubby stone-built box sporting a cone-shaped tower sits in the middle of Museum Gardens. This is York Observatory, the city’s eye on the sky.
It was completed in 1833 for members of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society (YPS). Renowned optical scientist Thomas Cooke built the four-and-a-half-inch telescope it originally housed. He was a born innovator: he ran the first purpose-built telescope factory in the world, at Bishophill, York, and invented a steam carriage which could travel at 15mph (although it kept crashing).
Info
Address Museum Street, York YO1 7FR, +44 (0)1904 687687, www.yorkshiremuseum.org.uk | Public Transport Closest car park: Marygate. Closest bus stop: Museum Street | Hours Various| Tip If you want a spectacular place to stay in York, nearby Lendal Tower is now a holiday accommodation. This 700-year-old Grade I – listed monument offers amazing rooftop views.
York has played a major role in the development of astronomy thanks to two remarkable men. Left deaf and mute by a childhood illness, John Goodricke had an amazing mind. From the Treasurer’s House, he was the first to observe that the variability of light from some stars is periodic, winning acclaim from the Royal Society just two weeks before he died of pneumonia in 1786, aged 21. The year before, Goodricke’s friend and fellow astronomer Edward Pigott identified a variable star himself. He later became the first Englishman to discover a comet, which was named after him. Pigott’s notebooks survive in the City Archives (see p. 60), while there is a plaque near Treasurer’s House (see p. 204) dedicated to John Goodricke.
As well as studying the heavens, York Observatory served as the city’s timekeeper by accurately plotting the movement of the stars. Its clock, dating from 1811, was precisely 4 minutes and 20 seconds behind GMT – but you had to be a member of the YPS to set your watch by it or it cost you sixpence.
After the Second World War, the building fell into disrepair, and by the 1970s, it was in danger of demolition. A public campaign raised £50,000 to restore the observatory to its original glory. Today it holds regular open nights, when the public can look through the telescope and see the surface of the moon and any visible stars.
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