Where are the heads? A visit to the Micklegate Bar Museum

My flat is about five minutes away from Micklegate Bar.

They don't display the heads of traitors on it anymore (although I know a few people who wouldn't mind seeing Tony Blair's bonce up there). People used to live in the rooms in the barbican above the gate. This was also where they housed condemned criminals before they were carted off to Knavesmire and hanged. I imagine that made for some awkward moments as far as neighbour relations go.

Micklegate Bar now houses a museum. I got in free with my York Card, which does all sorts of wonderful things, including keeping milk from going sour, warding off spectres in snickleways and freshening one's breath. After crossing a room full of museumy tat, the staff acknowledged my card and suggested I start at the top and work my way down.

The top room is largely devoted to the Battle of Towton, a big bloody messy battle fought during the Wars of the Roses in a village southwest of York. A large screen plays a movie of historians talking about how awful it was over images of Towton today, a bucolic piece of quiet Yorkshire countryside.

It's quite a wordy museum on the whole, with lots of placards and not many artifacts, although there are hats you can try on. There are also a few items of fake food, in order to, I don't know, make the place looked lived in or something. Maybe in the past they gave prisoners phony bread just to taunt them.

There are probably several ghosts that haunt Micklegate Bar and its surrounding environs, but the one I read about was Sarah Brocklebank. Her father was keeper of the keys, a very high position for a commoner. He was in charge of locking the gate up at night and unlocking it in the morning. One day his kids were playing with the keys -- you can probably see where this is heading -- and lost them. I guess Sarah felt bad enough about it to haunt the place after her death. My favourite part of the story is that after the keys were lost, they just didn't bother to lock the gate anymore.

Of course, these days, things are made even simpler by just not having a gate at all. Micklegate can be a wild place after dark, though. I haven't seen any ghosts yet, but it isn't rare to see the living dead of the pissed-up variety.