Old York Tea Room: Owners who painted cafe name on 14th Century Yorkshire building to fight council decision

Tony and Thomas Vickers took over the building, which was originally built in 1316, in the busy Goodramgate in February. After commissioning an artist to paint the name of the tea room on the building, the couple noticed it was getting some negative attention.

“At the time, naively or not, we didn’t realise we’d need planning permission so we didn’t apply for it, Tony Vickers said. “We just went ahead and did the sign. A couple of months later a certain individual decided to do a one-man protest outside our building holding up a cardboard sign calling us vandals and went to the local press with it.

“He then got his friends on board and went to the council complaining about our signage saying that it was a detriment to York and we had damaged a historic building, which we believe is complete nonsense. In light of that, we put in a retrospective planning application in April.”

On November 13, however, Becky Eades, head of development and planning services at the City of York Council wrote to Mr Vickers explaining the decision to refuse planning permission.

Her letter read: “The painted signage applied to the rendered elevations of this Grade 1 listed building, due to the excessive scale and the extent of the signage and its role as precedent for further signage to the upper façade which cumulatively would dominate the front of the overall building, detracts from the building’s exceptionally fine architectural and historic character and its setting within the Central Historic Core Conservation Area.”

Tony Vickers said: “We believe there’s absolutely nothing wrong with what we’ve done. Just to give a little bit of perspective, we’ve touched no listed material at all. This is brand new render that was applied just over two years ago. The only thing that’s changed on the building is the aesthetic look of it.

“In our opinion, we’ve enhanced the building, we haven’t damaged it, we haven’t defaced it, but York council doesn’t agree it seems.”

He added: “We’re more upset than angry because what we’ve created is beautiful and it seems York agrees. Our customers don’t want us to remove it and they’re the ones that pay my bills at the end of the day and keep us going, so we’ve got to listen to them. I implore York council to do the same and listen to its residents.

“We’re going to wholeheartedly fight the decision because we believe it’s the wrong decision. This street is a lot busier because we’re here and the businesses around are feeling the effect of it. We stand by what we’ve done and we’re not going to say sorry because we’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”

Mr Vickers added: “It would be difficult without the signage especially through the summer because of the tourist trade we get.”

York Council has been contacted for further comment.