The Gunpowder Plot: York's untold story

Most of us know the Gunpowder Plot as the story of Guy Fawkes and a barrel of powder under Parliament, but York has its own chapter that doesn't get nearly as much airtime. From Saturday 16 September to Saturday 5 December, the Bar Convent Heritage Centre is running 'The Gunpowder Plot: York's Untold Story', an exhibition that looks at the 1605 plot through the lens of York's own history rather than the usual legend. It's less about the explosion that never happened and more about the turbulent post-Reformation era when the Catholic faith was illegal.

The building itself is part of the story. The Bar Convent, just outside the City Walls at Micklegate Bar, is the oldest living Catholic convent still standing in the British Isles, established in 1686 in the long shadow of the plot. Inside, the exhibition leans on rare objects and personal stories rather than a general history. One of the centrepieces is the Gunpowder Crucifix, which belonged to Edward Oldcorne and is the only known item to have survived the raids on Catholic houses after the plot was discovered. Oldcorne was a Jesuit priest born in York in 1561 to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, and he went to St Peter's School alongside Guy Fawkes. He was ordained in the late 1580s, joined the Society of Jesus, and spent seventeen years working as an underground missionary, mostly at Hindlip Hall, before he was arrested in January 1606, tortured, and executed at Worcester on 7 April. He was beatified in 1929.

The other figure at the heart of the exhibition is Margaret Clitherow, known as 'The Pearl of York'. She lived at 10-11 The Shambles and was imprisoned for recusancy from 1577, before she was crushed to death at the Toll Booth of Ouse Bridge in March 1586. Her death is cited as a catalyst for the plotters, and a relic of her hand is kept here at the Bar Convent. Like Oldcorne, she was beatified in 1929 and later canonised in 1970. The exhibition brings these two York lives together to show how the plot played out in the north, far from the cellars of Westminster.

There's more to it than the display cases, too. The exhibition comes with a programme of special events and a new citywide trail, so you can take a self-guided walk and tie the stories to the streets, or drop in for a lunchtime talk or an evening event. The whole thing opens on Saturday 16 September, and the hours are Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, with last entry at 4pm. The tagline the Bar Convent has given it sums it up pretty well: 'Context. Conspiracy. Consequence.' If you've lived in York long enough to know the Shambles and Micklegate Bar but never the people who lived and died between them, this is a good place to fill in the gaps. It runs right through to early December, so there's plenty of time to catch it.