From Dissenters to Fire Engines

By Maria Staal

Anyone who is familiar with York’s city centre will acknowledge that York has many churches. They are everywhere - on street corners, on squares, or hidden away behind modern buildings. Most of these churches were built a long time ago, in medieval times.

Besides these visible churches, York has a large number of churches that are not so visible. These churches appeared in the last 200 years, modern looking and new, perfectly blending into the streetscape, thus making them almost invisible.

These new churches were built by people who called themselves Dissenters - people who didn’t want to conform to the Church of England. After many of the Dissenters' churches stopped being places of worship the uses of the buildings changed - some were even demolished.

From Dissenters to Fire Engines brings these churches back to life. Looking at the history of each church in turn, revealing the surprising, and sometimes moving stories, of York’s invisible churches.