Fifty Things to Look Out for on Five Rowntree Walks in York
Walk Five: New Earswick

• Sunday 18 June 2017, 2.00PM to 3.30pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
• New Earswick Folk Hall, Hawthorne Terrace (view map)
• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

Join us on Festival weekends for five guided walks highlighting ten little-known ‘things’ on each walk.

Anyone who has enjoyed KitKat, Black Magic or Fruit Gums will know the name of Rowntree. But what many won’t realise is that Joseph Rowntree and his son Seebohm were extraordinary figures in their own right - philanthropists far ahead of their time, progressive employers, radical thinkers and social innovators.

On these walks you can learn about 19th and 20th century York, its chocolate industry, and the efforts of the Rowntree family to change things for the better for all citizens. And you can see the places where Joseph and his extended family lived and worked, as well as the garden village they developed.

Walk Five: New Earswick is a circular walk which gives you a glimpse of a unique Garden Village that can be compared with, for example, Bournville or Port Sunlight. But New Earswick was more experimental than these places, not providing paternalistic and philanthropic housing for the relief of slum occupation, but social engineering designed to change the way people lived. The walk will demonstrate the different phases of the housing and explore the underlying ideas behind the various community facilities, including the Folk Hall and the open air school.

Led by the Rowntree Society, the walks are based on a new book Five Walks in Rowntree York: From Chocolate Comes Change.  Pick up a copy of the book at the end of your walk and try out some of the other walks on your own.

Numbers are limited, so early booking is recommended.

Tickets