THE ANLABY ROAD

Arnold Street

As Gladstone Street had been named after a prominent Victorian, so it seems was Arnold Street. Mathew Arnold (1822 – 1888), who was seen by many as the embodiment of Victorian values and constraints, was a famous poet, literary critic, and once professor of poetry at Oxford University. It seems likely that the name was given in his honour. The street was laid out on land that had been owned by the York & North Midland Railway Company, and was developed from c.1870. The Cenus of 1871 records just two houses in the street, including Arnold House, mentioned earlier. Historian John Markham, suggests that Arnold Street had at first been named St Mathew Street, and was re-named in 1870, to avoid confusion with another St Mathew Street, nearer the church of the same name. At the bottom of Arnold Street were allotment gardens, running along the side of the railway lines, almost to the edge of Anlaby Road. The entrance to these allotments became known as Arnold Lane.

Arnold Street was also home to a “double-decker piggery”, allegedly England’s first, built for pig dealers Shouler & Crawford in the early 1920s, and latterly owned by the Rawson family, from the late 1920s until World War Two. Arnold Street marks the boundary of the area devastated by the compulsory purchase and demolition madness of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and sadly has no surviving original property.

Download the 1872-1873 Buchanan Trade Directory entry for Arnold Street

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