Free heritage craft workshops at St Anthony's Hall

If you have ever looked at York's old buildings and wondered how they are actually kept standing, here is a chance to see the work up close. The York Conservation Trust has put on a series of free heritage craft workshops as part of its 50th anniversary programme, and they are running right through the next few weeks.

The sessions take place at St Anthony's Hall Gardens, tucked beneath the city walls on Peaseholme Green, from midday to 3pm, and they run from 24 July right through to 14 August. There is no booking needed, so it is the kind of thing you can simply turn up to on a lunch hour or with the family at the weekend. The whole point is to get people to see skills that usually happen behind closed doors on a building site, rather than in a museum.

What you will see depends on the day, but the line-up covers a lot of ground. There is joinery, woodcarving, masonry, stained glass, and work with faience and terracotta, with extra weekly demonstrations in woodcarving and plastering. Thin Ice Press is also part of the series, bringing traditional letterpress printmaking into the mix. It is a good spread, whether you are genuinely interested in how a building is put together or just want something free and family-friendly to do over the summer.

Guy Bowyer, Chief Executive Officer of the York Conservation Trust, put the whole thing into context. Heritage skills, he says, are essential to the future of York's historic buildings, but many people never get the chance to see these crafts being practised. The demonstrations are a chance to meet the craftspeople who care for the city's built heritage, learn about traditional techniques and understand why these skills are as important today as they have been for centuries. The hope is that it will encourage people of all ages to look more closely at the craftsmanship around them and engage with the city's heritage.

It helps to know who is behind it. The York Conservation Trust is a charity, a property company and a custodian of historic buildings across York and North Yorkshire, and it has been at it since 1945, when it was founded by Dr John Bowes Morrell and his brother Cuthbert. Its portfolio now runs to more than 70 historic buildings, which it restores and lets to commercial and residential tenants. St Anthony's Hall Gardens itself is an award-winning sensory garden the Trust took on in 2008, and it picked up the Conservation/Reuse, New Build, Open Space/Public Realm Award at the York Design Awards in 2009. It is fully accessible and open to the public during daylight hours, so it is an easy place to visit even when the workshops are not on.

Thin Ice Press is worth a mention in its own right. It is a University of York social enterprise that keeps traditional printing methods going, and its studio sits right in the garden of St Anthony's Hall. Inside there are 115 boxes of wooden type and 100 boxes of metal type, and the studio runs its own workshops in letterpress, linocut, bookbinding and risograph. If the craft series gets you interested in printing, that is the place to follow up.

So, if you are in town between now and 14 August, St Anthony's Hall Gardens on Peaseholme Green is free to wander into, and the workshops are free to watch. It is a low-effort way to see a side of the city that usually stays hidden.