It is perhaps a testament to how books can hype up a trip that when I saw the listing for 87 Micklegate, I knew that I had found our accommodations for our time in York. I had been reading The Service of the Dead by Candace Robb and was in a pretty medieval York state of mind (sans the inclination to experience the lack of sanitation there).

So you can imagine how devasted I was when I realised that the place was already booked for our first night in York. I basically scrambled to find alternative accommodation for our first night and managed to persuade my family to stay in two places for our time in York (which took some time because we generally like to just pick a location and stick there).

Well, after we saw the house, we had absolutely no regrets about the increased hassle. Apart from the history and character of the house, it’s also located in the centre of York – close to both the train station and all the attractions that we wanted to see. This made exploring the Shambles, A Chocolate Story, Jorvik Viking Center, and many other places very convenient. It’s also one lane away from York Brewery, but sadly they’re no longer brewing and there are no more tours.

The house is beautiful and nestled among a few shops – there’s a newspaper agent, an antique store, and even a fish and chips store. There is also a bakery and a pub/restaurant opposite, which makes it really convenient if you need anything.

According to the information booklet in the house, 87 Micklegate is a “timber-framed range containing three separate tenements under one roof” and was restored in 1967 by Ings Property Company in co-operation with York Corporation and the then Ministry of Public Building and Works.

The front door opens to a long and narrow corridor. If you go all the way to the very end, you’ll find this:

It’s a very tiny outdoor space! We didn’t go out, but I thought it was pretty cool that this was built in.

The first floor consists of two rooms (a kitchen and a bedroom) as well as a bathroom.

The kitchen is spacious and very modern. All the information we needed about York was thoughtfully placed here. I really appreciated the information booklet, which contained a bit about the history of York and the history of 87 Micklegate as well! I didn’t know that the division of the building into three parts was part of the original design.

Another interesting fact: the date of the building is somewhat uncertain because it was not in John Speed’s 1610 map of York but “from the point of view of style it is believed that the houses cannot be much later than 1500”. According to the book, “[t]he Royal Commission on Historical Monuments believes the houses to be of late medieval date.”

The age of the house means that the floors aren’t perfectly level (suitcases with wheels aren’t a great idea here) but it just adds to the charm. This is the bedroom on the first floor and you may be able to see from the photo that it slopes a little.

But I think the clearest way to look at how uneven things may be is to look at the steps:

You can see that they tend to slope in the middle. As much as I love this house, it’s not a good choice if you’re travelling with very young children or elderly folk for whom steps would be a problem.

The second floor has two more bedrooms and the second bathroom.

I found the beds to be really comfortable.

I read that the survival of this place in a comparatively unaltered form may be due to its use for butcher’s trade. Apparently, there were quite a few butchers here at one time!

The top floor is the attic, which is wide and spacious – we loved hanging out here.

The wifi was also the strongest here; by comparison, it’s really hard to connect to the Wifi on the first floor. My siblings loved this space so much that they opted to cut some of the walking time in York short to go back and enjoy the house.

You can find 87 Micklegate on AirBnB. The place is managed by Wheelwrights York and they were extremely helpful and responsive. Like I mentioned earlier, we stayed in a different space for our first night in York and there was a bit of a gap between the checkout time of our first house and the check-in time at 87 Micklegate. Wheelwrights helped us to find a place to for our luggage and thanks to their help, we had a really smooth move from one place to another.

This was probably the most unique place that we stayed in for our trip. I loved the character of the place, sloping floors and all, and the fact that it was equipped with all the modern comforts needed as well.