Marks one of the earliest printers – and a haunted house
“Holy Bible 1682.” So says a sign outside No. 35 Stonegate, mocked up to resemble a large leather-bound book. Passers-by often speculate about the old building’s provenance. Did it once house a church, or provide a home for clergy from the Minster?
Neither – this marks the spot where Francis Hildyard opened his famous bookshop, the Sign of the Bible, in 1682. It later housed a printing press: it was here in 1759 that John Hinxman published the first two volumes of Laurence Sterne’s pioneering novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The book’s initial print run sold out immediately and it became an international best seller.
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Address 35 Stonegate, York YO1 8AW | Public Transport 6-minute walk from Bootham Row car park. Closest bus stop: Exhibition Square | Hours Mon–Sat 9:30am–6pm, Sun 11am–5pm| Tip As well as the Bible, look out for some of York’s other above-head-height oddities, like the Red Devil on the shop next door, the statue of Minerva on Minster Gates, and the Native American on Low Petergate.
York has a strong history of publishing. A Dutchman revelling in the name Fredericus Freez brought printing to York within 20 years of William Caxton’s having introduced it to England. Irishman Thomas Gent settled in York and ran an early newspaper, the Original York Courant, in the 1700s. Another book-selling business, launched by Quaker William Alexander in 1811, was taken over by a fellow Quaker, William Sessions, and only closed in 2009.
The Golden Bible, as the sign above 35 Stonegate is sometimes known, also marks the spot of what is supposedly one of York’s most haunted houses. When the TV medium Derek Acorah visited for his Ghost Towns series he was filmed being dragged backwards by an invisible force. Such was its reputation that renowned astrologer Jonathan Cainer bought the property, and with international mind-bender Uri Geller turned it into the Museum of Psychic Experience in 2004. Here, experiments were conducted to attempt to prove the existence of paranormal powers. It was later rebranded as “Haunted – York’s most haunted house,” before Mr Cainer sold it, in 2014.
Today it is an Oliver Bonas shop, but you can still admire some of the stained-glass windows added when glass painter John Ward Knowles owned the property in Victorian times.
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