This week the Lord Mayor of York and the Civic Party will be helping to prepare the Mansion House for Christmas, by taking part in a Victorian Christmas decoration workshop.

The civic party will be joined by members of the Mansion House team and volunteers on Wednesday 21 November to make traditional Victorian decorations, under the expert guidance of historian Louise Hampson.

The decorations will adorn the public rooms in York’s famous home to capture how it would have looked in the late Victorian period – and will be open for all to see during St Nicholas Fayre (starting on 29 November).

The Lord Mayor of York, Councillor Keith Hyman, said: “I’m really looking forward to sharing the Mansion House with visitors in the build up to Christmas.”
The Mansion House will be open from Thursday 29 November throughout the Fayre weekend from 10am to 4pm.

Entrance to see the Mansion House in all its Christmas splendour is £5.00 for adults, £4.00 for concessions and £2.50 for York residents with a valid YorkCard. Entrance includes a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie.

Labour have today abandoned their plans to introduce a “Quality Contract” system of bus franchising into the City. They have finally accepted that such a scheme is neither practical nor affordable.

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Instead bus services will continue to be provided by the existing bus companies although some attempt is going to be made to improve coordination arrangements.

They are hoping that the Government will provide funding for a “Better Bus Area Fund” but it seems unlikely that such funding would be made available unless the Council and bus companies both agree in future to make performance information available to passengers.

It was only last week that the Council refused to release usage information about their flagship “all York” bus ticket.

More on this story to come later.

York becomes the first UK council to adopt pioneering new archive cataloguing technique

York has become the first City in the UK to adopt a pioneering technique that will create the first digital catalogue of a unique 800 year old civic archives in record time.

The project archivist is taking on the ambitious task of cataloguing the archives using a method never used before in the UK on city records – to carry out the project in just 15 months, whereas traditionally it could take up to 10 years.

The behind-the-scenes project blog is at http://citymakinghistory.wordpress.com

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