“Tickets, please!” The train conductor punched ours, and moved on with a smile. Joe and I were riding the rails to the north of England’s city of York. My whole adult life I’ve wanted to enjoy the British countryside traveling this way, and walk its ancient cities.
Having arrived at the station I was loath to leave trains just yet. “Lets go to the National Railway Museum, Joe! It’s right here!” He cheerfully agreed, so, after depositing our bags in our room a short mile into the city, we walked back again.
Returning was worth it! Magnificent train engines and cars, polished to perfection, were displayed in the immense room; they, along with delightful bygone train advertising posters, represented two hundred years of railway history. Japan’s Bullet Train was here, and The Flying Scotsman, not to mention the very earliest Tom Thumb train, with stagecoach carriages mounted on iron frames. (Harry Potter’s beautiful red Hogwarts engine was on exhibit elsewhere at the moment, but would return in a month.) We peeked into the stagecoach windows at shredding horsehair-and-leather seats, and imagined how passengers felt, whizzing along the rails at the shocking speed of 15 miles per hour.
Then we rode the enormous ‘Wheel of York,’ set up just outside the museum. Each snug little cab, with cushy seats, was surrounded by glass; the ride was smooth and quiet, and it rose so high! We saw forever in every direction as it slowly rotated. Wonderful!
The 900-year-old York Minster Cathedral still dominates the city’s skyline.
York. Hmmm…where to start? First, a thumbnail history. (Remember these dates. You’ll understand why, later.)
It was founded in 79 AD, when 5,000 Roman soldiers, comprising the ninth legion, set up camp here. They promptly built a massive fortress where the Rivers Ouse and Foss still meet. Then, for the next three centuries, York became hugely important commercially and militarily. (One emperor was acclaimed in this city, and two more died here.) The rivers made transporting goods- and soldiers- much easier. Roman engineers and rivers go together.
Everywhere we looked there were Roman footprints.
Roads. Walls. City streets. Gutters. Towers. Bridges. Aqueducts.
Our hotel was located just feet from an immense Roman wall terminating at an arched gate, which leads into old York. Surrounded by a dry moat, the impressive wall had once enclosed the city. We walked atop part of it, as sentries once did.
The next day we signed up for a superb bicycle tour that lasted two hours. Sally, a history student, guided us into intriguing areas that had been too far for us to walk to comfortably. Returning to the town centre again, she had us stop behind a familiar building- The Treasurer’s House, located behind the cathedral.
Only that morning we’d toured the main house, but, for lack of time, not the basement, though the remote possibility of experiencing ‘oddities’ down there had been tempting.
I didn’t realize then that I already knew the basement’s story.
This building, from medieval times until the early twentieth century, had been the residence of every cathedral treasurer. The story Sally related I’d already heard as a child, ‘straight from the horse’s mouth.’ The man involved had finally been persuaded to give an interview for a radio broadcast. Speaking quietly, with a pleasing Yorkshire accent, he patiently told listeners what had happened to him.
I still remember his account.
In 1953 he, a plumber, was repairing a pipe in the house’s ancient basement when he heard a high horn sound, peculiar enough to warrant investigation. He couldn’t pinpoint the source, and finally decided it was an odd pipe noise.
Then, out of nowhere, the basement’s poor lighting gave way to a sunny late afternoon. Roman soldiers, led by a horseman blowing a trumpet-like horn, marched toward him in formation, moving through the basement wall as though it didn’t exist- closer, closer…The terrified plumber leaped off his ladder, dived under a workbench and crouched there, frightened nearly to death. The soldiers marched right past him, not at all ghostly, but as alive and substantial as he. Their sun-browned faces were streaked with dust, their breastplates muddy. Short, sheathed swords were belted to dark green, kilt-like garments. Each man held a round shield in his left hand, and a long spear in his right. Eyes were cast to the ground. Everyone looked tired, even downhearted. The ground trembled with their passing. Their leader, riding a bay horse, moved further up the road. There was a light breeze; metal equipment flashed in sunlight.
The soldiers showed absolutely no awareness of the petrified plumber.
But here’s the thing. From just below their knees, there was nothing. He watched their upper legs rise and fall as they passed, saw sandal straps tied behind knees, and heard and felt sandaled feet hit the ground. But the soldiers’ lower legs were invisible.
Finally, after what seemed hours, the army passed into the distance. The shattered man shot out of the basement and crashed into the caretaker, who took one look at his sheet-white face and terrified countenance and said, quietly, “You’ve just seen the Roman legion, haven’t you?”
The plumber was so shocked he couldn’t speak sensibly about it for a long, long time.
But when he did, scholars at the time heard him describe the men’s round shields, sandals laced knee-high, and not to mid calf, as was the accepted thinking, and that they’d marched away up a wide stone road, which had gradually became evident as the terrain rose.
Road? What road?
His account was dismissed as not credible.
But he stuck to it, and his observations proved correct. Further research, and the basement’s subsequent excavation revealed a wide Roman road under the existing floor at exactly the level the soldiers had been marching on. Round shields and long, laced sandals were unearthed in another part of York, and all of this evidence dated 900 years before the Treasurer’s House- and nearby cathedral- had come into existence.
The man refused to set foot in that basement ever again.
Oh, how I wish I’d gone down there: it would have been a thrill to realize that I’d accidentally stumbled into the very place I’d heard about in my youth, and had never forgotten.
Because that quiet, thoughtful voice had held the ring of truth.