Old White Swan
pub in York, North Yorkshire, England, UK
The Old White Swan is a historic public house in the city centre of York, England. The core of the building is timber-framed and was constructed in the early 17th century. It lay at the back of a coaching yard on the north-western side of Goodramgate, but with another entrance on Low Petergate. Underneath a glass panel in the floor is part of a Roman column, although this is not its original location.
The building was in use as an inn by 1703, making it the third-oldest pub in the city. In this period, part of the building lay in the parish of Holy Trinity King's Court, and part in the Holy Trinity Goodramgate parish. Both claimed the right to charge a rent for the pub, leading its landlord to paint a white line through the courtyard and kitchen, demarcating the boundary, and providing a justification for him to pay only partial rent to each parish. In 1723, the local constables decided to watch for possible Catholic activity in the pub, and spent £1 at the business while doing so — a substantial sum for the period.
In 1742, the pub was renamed as the "White Swan and Sandhill", but the suffix was dropped again in 1786. Brick extensions were added to either side of the original building in the early and mid-18th century, and the frontage on Goodramgate was rebuilt in 1771, following which this became the principal entrance, with the one on Petergate eventually closed.
“Old White Swan” enters the record as pub in York, North Yorkshire, England, UK. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what White, Swan and York can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26549042. Authority coordinates are 53.961, -1.080. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1703, 1723, 1742 and 1786.
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This entry incorporates text from “Old White Swan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.