Ingram House, Bootham

One of the City’s most important mid-seventeenth century buildings, composed of eleven bays of two low storeys, but with a four-storey central tower. The middle doorway is late Norman and has been moved from another site, reputedly Holy Trinity Priory. It is round-headed and has several orders of dog-tooth moulding.

A pre-classical brick building, it was erected c.1635-40 by Sir Arthur Ingram who had adapted the city palace of the Archbishops, on the north side of the Minster, as his town house. He laid out the grounds with such a taste that they were one of the sights of York. A visitor in 1634 described them as a “second paradise”, with their flower beds, shady walks, with statuary, fishponds, bowling green and tennis courts. Charles I stayed there in 1642.

It was in 1959 that Ingram Hospital, as it was known for so long, ceased to be a series of almhouses and was converted into four modern flats under the name of Ingram House.

Writing in that year about the building, the late Dr. J. S. Purvis, then Director of the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, said that the original chapel stood in the centre on the south side, and that traces of it remained. Though the purpose of the place was to provide untroubled repose, the house began its career in a stormy period; only four years after its completion came the Siege of York in the Civil War.

As it stood some distance outside the city walls, the house was for some time at the mercy of the Parliamentarian forces. It must have received damage from both sides, and the account for the repairs in 1649 is still in existence.

Sir Arthur Ingram was a Yorkshireman, born at Thorpe-on-the-Hill, near Leeds. He became a linen draper in London and married the daughter of a rich haberdasher, Richard Goldthorpe, who had been Lord Mayor of York and the MP for the City. Later Ingram was able to buy the manor of Temple Newsam and build the magnificent house which still stands there. In 1612 he was appointed one of the Secretaries to the Council in the North, and was knighted a year later. He was MP for York four times, beginning in 1623, and High Sheriff of the County in 1620.

In his will of 1640 Ingram Hospital was not forgotten, though the document is damaged at this part, and many words are lost through the breaking of a fold in the paper:

“And if I shall happen to dye before I have settled and assured land for the performance of the (? payments) and indownments to the poore people and others in the house or hospitall which I have lately builded in Bowtham within the Suburbes of the Citty of Yorke, then my will and mind is that the said house and the groundes therewith now used, and fifty poundes a year paide to Tenn poore widdowes namely for every of them five poundes a peece yearely and . . . every two yeares for every of them, and twenty nobles yearely to some honest (? house-keeper) . . . a whole line lost . . . (shall be) payd for ever by my said sonne Sir Arthur Ingram and his heires out of such lands as hee and they shall thinke fitt and that hee and his heires shall from tyme to tyme for ever see to the (? procuring) chuseing and nameing of such poore widdowes as shall there placed, and of the person who shall from tyme to tyme read prayers in the said house and all other thinges which are to be appoynted . . .”