Lady Anne House and the two Terry Cottages, former almshouses, are now part of a York hotel

Middletons Hotel in York includes Anne Middleton’s Hospital, a former almshouse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

During our weekend say in York, after visiting the site of the former parish church of Saint Mary Bishophill Senior, I walked down Carr’s Lane, a cobbled lane beside the old churchyard, to see two former almshouses that have been incorporated into Middletons Hotel on Skeldergate.

Middletons Hotel is in secluded courtyard gardens within the City walls, and has 56 guest rooms spread over six historic, grade II listed buildings. It is a charming collection of brick houses and pretty gardens, with associations with the past mayors and sheriffs. The buildings are from different periods and in varying architectural styles, and they include Anne Middleton’s Hospital, the Organ Factory and the Terry Memorial Homes.

Lady Anne House is a former almshouse on Skeldergate in the Bishophill area, founded by Ann Middleton in 1659 to house widows of Freemen of the City of York. Dame Anne Middleton was the wife of Peter Middleton, a 17th century Sheriff of York. Middleton’s Hospital had 22 apartments around a small garden and housed 20 widows.

The original hospital was demolished in 1827, and rebuilt further back from the street in 1828 as a two-storey building in brick and stone. It was designed by the York architect Peter Atkinson (1780-1843), and was completed in 1829. The garden walls also date from this period.

The statue on the façade is often identified as Ann Middleton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In the centre of the façade of the building, a statue of a woman in Puritan dress is sometimes identified as Ann Middleton. The statue is believed to have survived from the original building.

The hospital was endowed with bequests by the founder in 1655, by Thomas Norfolk, George Townend and with a bequest from Lady Conyngham shared by four York hospitals. Later bequests were made by William Monckton, Stephen Beckwith, Mary W Lambert, Green Simpson, Frances Pool, John Richard and Edward Hill.

The hospital had 19 residents at the beginning of the 20th century, and each received a pension of £6 yearly and the use of one room.

The building was modernised in 1939, to house 10 almspeople or residents and a warden. However, the building was in a poor state of repair by 1972. It was bought by the owners of the hotel at 56 Skeldergate, who restored it and incorporated it into the hotel. Since 1997, it has been a Grade II* listed building.

The Sir Joseph Terry Cottages were built as a pair of almshouses (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The hotel also incorporates the Sir Joseph Terry Cottages or Terry Memorial Homes, built in the front of Middleton’s Hospital in 1899 by public subscription in memory of Sir Joseph Terry (1828-1898).

Terry was Lord Mayor of York on three occasions and was the driving force behind the success of the Terry’s chocolate brand, a major employer in York from 1767. He died in 1898 while he was standing as a Conservative candidate in a by-election in York.

The Sir Joseph Terry Cottages were two brick-built bungalow-type dwellings, built as a pair of almshouses intended for married couples over 60. They are now incorporated in the hotel, with one suite named Chocolate and the other named Orange.

The Sir Joseph Terry Cottages … one suite is named Chocolate and the other is named Orange (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Skeldergate House at 56 Skeldergate, an original part of the hotel, is a Grade II* listed building. The earlier house on the site was bought by Ralph Dodsworth in 1769. When he became Sheriff of York in 1777, he commissioned the architect John Carr to design a new house, large enough to entertain groups.

Dodsworth died in 1796, and the house was let to Thomas Smith, who bought it in 1807 and then sold it on to William Cooper in 1825. His son later brought it into business use. A carriageway was built through the building in 1925 to provide access to the rear yard, involving the demolition of some rooms and a rear service wing.

The house was owned in the mid-20th century by Hans Hess (1907-1977), director of York Art Gallery. He was a Jewish refugee who had fled Nazi Germany. His guests at Skeldergate House included Charlie Chaplin, Benjamin Britten and Cleo Laine.

The house later became a hotel and is now part of Middletons Hotel. The carriageway was filled in, restoring the building to its original appearance, in 1998-1999. As part of the restoration, it became the hotel conference suite, and more recently it has been converted into nine bedrooms and a lounge.

The three-storey building retains its original door and doorcase, much of its original plasterwork, windows and fittings and a late-19th century fireplace. The staircase was completely rebuilt, using some original furnishings.

Skeldergate House was built by John Carr for Ralph Dodsworth in 1769 in 1777 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Cromwell House was built in the late 19th century and was once. It now includes 18 bedrooms, as well as the hotel reception, lounge, restaurant and bar.

The old Organ Factory, with Victorian-style stained glass windows, was originally the workshop of York’s master organ builder Walter Hopkins. He retired in 1921, but many of his masterpieces are still in use in York and beyond.

In all, Middletons has 56 bedrooms spread across six historic Grade II listed buildings clustered around its courtyard gardens in the heart of York.

Sir Joseph Terry was Lord Mayor of York and the driving force behind the success of the Terry’s chocolate brand (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

‘Listen to the Past, Talk about the Present, Look to the Future,’ in conversation in York

‘Conversation Piece’ by the sculptor Ailsa Magnus at the corner of Bishopthorpe Road and Scarcroft Road in York (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

Two of us have been staying for the last few days off Scarcroft Road in York, close to the junction with Bishopthorpe Road, with its busy and bustling parades of shops, restaurants and cafés.

‘Conversation Piece’ is a visually striking sculpture by the sculptor Ailsa Magnus and has been standing at the corner of Bishopthorpe Road and Scarcroft Road, close to these shops, since 2010. It tells any number of imaginary stories.

‘Conversation Piece’ was created by Ailsa Magnus when she was commissioned to create a sculpture representing the past, present and future of the community in this area of York.

Ailsa Magnus, who recently relocated from North Yorkshire to her native Scotland, has worked on many public commissions throughout the UK and has had several residencies. Her commissions include the glazed stoneware Ibstock Landmark Sculpture (1998), and carved brick wall reliefs for Chinese Ethnic Housing, Hull (1996) and for Henshaw’s, Conyngham Hall Arts and Crafts Centre (1998).

The woman, man, and child represent the past, present and future (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The three figures in ‘Conversation Piece’ on the corner Bishopthorpe Road and Scarcroft Road in York are a woman, a man, and a child, three ‘modern day guardians’ paying homage to the figures found on walls around the city. They represent the past, present and future development of this area in York.

The woman is a sweet maker holding a Terry’s Chocolate Orange to represent the past. She represents the past, as the factory closed many years ago. Many of its once large workforce lived in the area and worked in the Terry’s factory further up Bishopthorpe Road.

The man is a professional modern-day worker, and represents the present community. He is doing his shopping on his way home from work, clutching his bag and briefcase. His facial expression has been described variously as fretful, overworked, quizzical and bemused.

Ailsa Magnus asks us to imagine him as Michael, a Micklegate resident, at 5:30 on a Friday evening who has just finished another busy week at work. He stops to pick up a few bits and pieces from the shops on Bishopthorpe Road before heading home. He chats as he goes to his partner of 15 years, on his hands-free mobile phone. They discuss the day’s events and plan their weekend ahead.

The child, of course, represents the future and is holding a plant or a tree sapling, a symbol of the future.

The inscription on the stone base reads: ‘Listen to the Past, Talk about the Present, Look to the Future.’ Around it are bricks bearing shapes that also have inscriptions – fragments of conversations or questions – submitted by local residents. They range from the general ‘What if?’ to the more specific ‘Can we stop global warming?’

These shapes around the base are based on a popular 19th century sweet created by Terry’s, which featured conversation starters. They appealed to the Victorians, and someone who was tongue-tied could always offer their companion a little piece of sugar paste printed with a suitable inscription: ‘How do you flirt?’ or ‘Can you Polka?’ or ‘Love Me.’

Ailsa Magnus explains that the Terry’s Conversation Lozenge ‘was a very early version of texting or Twitter’ – and she set up a Twitter account so local people could engage with the project and tweet suggestions for a text on a 21st century ‘Conversation Lozenges.’

‘Perhaps an idea will come to you while sitting on the bus, or walking the dog,’ she suggests.

‘Listen to the Past, Talk about the Present, Look to the Future’ … the inscription on the stone base (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Tales of the Viennese Jews: 11, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Jewish librettist

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) … his image seems to be present on every street corner in central Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

The Tales from the Vienna Woods is a waltz by the composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), written just over a century and a half ago, in 1868. Although Strauss was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church, he was born into a prominent Jewish family. Because the Nazis had a particular penchant for Strauss’s music, they tried to conceal and even deny the Jewish identity of the Strauss family.

However, the stories of Vienna’s Jews cannot be hidden, and many of those stories from Vienna are told in the exhibits in the Jewish Museum in its two locations, at the Palais Eskeles on Dorotheergasse and in the Misrachi-Haus in Judenplatz.

Rather than describe both museums in detail in one or two blog postings, I have decided since my visit to Vienna last month to post occasional blog postings that re-tell some of these stories, celebrating a culture and a community whose stories should never be forgotten.

When Kurt Waldheim was President of Austria, there was a cruel joke among journalists that the definition of an Austrian politician was someone who tried to convince you that Hitler was German and that Mozart and Beethoven were Austrian.

Of course, both composers died in Vienna, Mozart in 1791 and Beethoven in 1827. But while Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Germany – in Bonn in 1770, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Austria – in Salzburg in 1756.

The great Jewish composers and musicians associated with Vienna included Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), who lived in Vienna in 1897-1907; and the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), a cousin of the grandmother of the Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Nor should we forget the Jewish origins of the Strauss family.

Mozart decorates souvenirs and boxes of chocolates and marzipan in shops in central Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

There can be no doubting that Viennese citizens and shopkeepers regard Mozart as one of their own – he decorates shop windows, chocolate boxes and a variety of marzipan gifts on every street in the Austrian capital.

And, while no-one could even imagine that Mozart was Jewish, many key Jewish people influenced his life and work.

The Habsburg Emperor, Joseph II (1780-1790) issued his ‘Edict of Toleration’ in January 1782. For a long time, his chief censor was Joseph von Sonnenfels, a convert to Catholicism but a grandson of Rabbi Michael the Pious, Chief Rabbi of Berlin. He was a subscriber to Mozart’s piano recitals and generously helped the composer’s brother-in-law, Joseph Lange, when the actor was ill.

Joseph II raised Israel Hönig (1724-1808), a rich merchant and a subscriber to Mozart’s piano evenings, to the nobility with the title of ‘Edler von Hönigsberg’ and made him a ‘Government Counsellor’ (Regierunsrat), although he remained a faithful Jew.

Joseph II also employed Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838), a converted Jew from Venice and a one-time Catholic priest, as the librettist of the Imperial Opera House.

Lorenzo da Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano in the Republic of Venice. He was Jewish by birth but in 1764, his widowed father converted himself and his sons to Roman Catholicism in order to remarry. Emanuele took his new name of Lorenzo Da Ponte from the Bishop of Ceneda, Lorenza Da Ponte, who baptised him. He was ordained a priest in 1773 and moved to Venice.

But the young priest led a dissolute life: he had a mistress while he was the priest at the Church of San Luca and they had two children. He was charged with ‘public concubinage’ and ‘abduction of a respectable woman’ in 1779. At his trial, it was alleged that he had been living in a brothel and organising the entertainments there.

He was found guilty, banished from Venice for 15 years, moved to Gorizia Görz, then part of Austria, and from there moved to Vienna. There, through the good offices of the composer Salieri, Da Ponte met Joseph II and later Mozart, at the residence of Baron Wetzlar, a converted Jew who supported the composer and wanted to help Da Ponte.

In his collaboration with Mozart, the Jewish-born Venetian poet wrote the libretti of three operas: The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Cosi fan tutte (1790).

Figures of the Golem on a shop shelf beside the Old-New Synagogue in Prague … does the Golem comes to life in the statue in ‘Don Giovanni’? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The original character of Don Juan first appears in The Trickster of Seville (1630), a play by Tirso de Molina (1579-1648), a Spanish monk from a family of converted Jews or conversos. A century and a half later, another converted Jew and priest, Emmanuele Conegliano, known as Lorenzo da Ponte, reworked Tirso’s play as a libretto for Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Jewish folklore comes to life in the finale of Don Giovanni, as a huge marble statue is turned into flesh to exact vengeance on a murderer. Indeed, the oblique reference to the Yiddish legend of Der Golem was not lost on audiences in the Austro-Hungarian empire who were familiar with the tales of the Golem of Prague.

Mozart, like Michelangelo – who concealed his love of Judaism in his Sistine Chapel painting – criticised the anti-Semitism of his time, in his opera Il Seraglio, depicting the hated Turk, Selim Pasha, as a compassionate man devoid of religious prejudices.

Mozart was well-read in the works of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), grandfather of the composer Felix Mendelssohn, owned copies of his works and seems to have been influenced by his thinking.

Judengasse or Jewish Street … Wetzlar helped Mozart to move to No 3 in 1783 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Baron Raymond Cordulus (Naphtali Herz) Wetzlar von Plankenstern (1715-1799), a wealthy Jewish banker who converted to Catholicism, was Mozart’s understanding landlord during his early, struggling period in Vienna and Mozart asked Wetzlar to be the godfather of his first son. When Mozart found more secure lodgings at Judengasse 3 in 1783, the baron paid for his move.

Mozart and introduced to Da Ponte were introduced at Wetzlar’s palais in 1783. When theatrical intrigues seemed to prevent the first staging of The Wedding of Figaro in Vienna in 1785, Wetzlar to look after the financing of the opera and to stage the production in London. In a letter to his father, Mozart says ‘the Baron, a wealthy Jew, is my true and good friend.’

When almost all wealthy supporters had abandoned Mozart by 1791, shortly before his death, he was still welcome at Wetzlar’s house.

The composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847), grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, was known to his contemporaries as ‘the Mozart of the 19th century.’ He regularly conducted Mozart’s orchestral compositions and played the piano concertos with great enthusiasm.

Ernst von Mendelssohn Bartholdy, a nephew of the composer, presented some valuable musical manuscripts to the library of German Emperor William II in 1908. They included a complete copy of Mozart’s Entfuhrung aus dem Serail.

From the early 19th century on Jewish virtuoso musicians played a major role in popularizing Mozart's compositions.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s kinsman, Joseph Joachim, was the leading violin virtuoso of his time and a close friend of Clara and Robert Schumann and of Johannes Brahms. In a letter to Clara Schumann on 18 August 1857, he writes: ‘… for us, who generally consider Mozart a musical Divinity, all little parts by him are interesting and dear.’

Hermann Levy (1839-1900) was the conductor at Bayreuth of the first performance of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, and provided one of the best German translations of Le Nozze di Figaro.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was instrumental in revitalising the popularity of Mozart’s operas at the beginning of the 20th century. He was the meticulous, demanding conductor of their initial productions at the Salzburg Festivals.

Bruno Walter (Schlesinger) (1876-1962) wrote in his Von der Musik und Musizieren (‘About Music and Music Making’) in anticipation of the approaching bicentenary of Mozart’s birth on 27 January 1956. He wrote, ‘To begin with, this should serve above all as a word of gratitude for the supreme joy with which Mozart’s compositions have brightened, blessed my life.’

Mozart and Beethoven in the window of Vienna’s best-known music shop, the Musikhaus Doblinger on Dorotheergasse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Other postings in this series:

1, the chief rabbi and a French artist’s ‘pogrom’

2, a ‘positively rabbinic’ portrait of an Anglican dean

3, portraits of two imperial court financiers

4, portrait of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis

5, Lily Renée, from Holocaust Survivor to Escape Artist

6, Sir Moses Montefiore and a decorative Torah Mantle

7, Theodor Herzl and the cycle of contradictions

8, Simon Wiesenthal and the café in Mauthausen

9, Leonard Cohen and ‘The Spice-Box of Earth’

10, Ludwig Wittgenstein and his Jewish grandparents

11, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Jewish librettist

12, Salomon Mayer von Rothschild and the railways in Vienna

13, Gustav Mahler and the ‘thrice homeless’ Jew

14, Beethoven at 250 and his Jewish connections in Vienna

15, Martin Buber and the idea of the ‘I-Thou’ relationship

16, Three Holocaust survivors who lived in Northern Ireland.

17, Schubert’s setting of Psalm 92 for the synagogue.

18, Bert Linder and his campaign against the Swiss banks.

19, Adele Bloch-Bauer and Gustav Klimt’s ‘Lady in Gold’.

20, Max Perutz, Nobel laureate and ‘the godfather of molecular biology’.

A sweet little shop in Limerick recalls Greek heroes and entrepreneurs

Leonidas at No 22 O’Connell Street, Limerick, is sweet little shop that recalls the career of an innovative Greek entrepreneur (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

No 22 O’Connell Street, Limerick, is a sweet little shop in every sense of the word. This shop is a pretty, terraced and diminutive single-bay, two-storey building, built around 1900.

The fluted, full-height pilasters are joined by a plain rendered band at the parapet level, and there is a modern timber shopfront at ground floor level that dates from about 1990.

The round-arched window opening has a rendered reveal, painted sill that is possibly replacement, and a 1950s timber casement window.

This building has a pitched artificial slate roof that is hidden behind the parapet wall and its cast-iron cresting.

Since I last wrote about this shop a year ago, the modern shopfront has been stripped back, and I could see this week how this reveals earlier woodwork and carpentry at this unusual building. But some may find the story of Leonidas is even more revealing.

I had often wondered how a branch of Belgian chocolates, with a little hint of luxury, came to be named after a Spartan general who could have hardly allowed himself any sweet little indulgence.

Is Leonidas named after the Spartan hero? (Photograph: Haarajot / Wikipedia / CCL)

Leonidas (Λεωνίδης), whose name means ‘son of the lion,’ was the warrior king of Sparta, and a member of the Agiad dynasty, claiming descent from Heracles. During the Second Persian War, Leonidas led the allied Greek forces to a last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC while attempting to defend the pass from the invading Persian army. He is remembered in myth and history as the leader of the 300 Spartans.

A later Greek hero was Leonidas of Rhodes, who competed in four successive Olympiads – in 164 BC, 160 BC, 156 BC and 152 BC – and in each of these won three different foot races.

An athlete who won three events at a single Olympics was known as a triastes. There were only seven triastes ever, and Leonidas is the only one known to have achieved the honour more than once. He hardly achieved that on a diet of chocolates!

But while the Belgian chocolate company Leonidas uses an image of the Spartan king as its logo, the business takes its name from neither of these Greek heroes. Instead, the company was founded in 1913 by a Greek-American confectioner, Leonidas Kestekides (1876-1948), who first began producing his chocolates in the US.

Leonidas Kestekides was born to Cappadocian Greek parents in Nigde, Cappadocia, now part of modern-day Turkey. In his early adulthood, he moved from Constantinople to Greece and then on to Italy, where he became a wine merchant. He struggled financially before moving to New York, where he lived from 1893-1898 and worked as a confectioner.

He lived in Paris in 1898-1908. He visited Brussels in 1910 with a Greek delegation from the US and at a trade fair was awarded the bronze medal for his chocolate confectionery. He returned to Belgium in 1913, and founded the Leonidas chocolate brand after marrying Joanna Teerlinck from Brussels.

Leonidas opened a tearoom in Ghent in 1913, and a tearoom in Brussels in 1924. The brand and logo of Leonidas was adopted in 1937. The company was named after its founder by his nephew, but the name and design of the symbol were inspired by the marble statue of Leonidas in the Sparta Museum, in the belief that the Spartan myth is still important in European and Western culture and tradition.

The first shop outside Belgium opened 50 years ago in Lille in France in 1969. The brand soon went international, with shops in Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, New York, at Harrods in London – and even in Athens.

Leonidas at No 22 O’Connell Street, Limerick, before the shop front was stripped away (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A first-time visit to a chocolate factory

Busy at work in the chocolate factory … Skelligs Chocolate near Ballinskelligs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry, at the end of last week, I also visited Skelligs Chocolate, Ireland’s only open-plan chocolate factory.

The factory is on the Skelligs Ring, which was named in The Lonely Planet’s ‘Top 10 Regions’ to visit in 2017.

The factory is just a few steps away from Saint Finian’s Bay and looks out to Skellig Michael, the UNESCO World Heritage site that was a backdrop in the latest ‘Star Wars’ movie, The Last Jedi.

This open-plan chocolate factory welcomes visitors to come and see the award-winning chocolates being made, to taste the chocolate and to learn about chocolate-making.

The first factory opened in 1996, with two small production rooms, one for making chocolate and the other for packing. ¬It was a big move from a kitchen table to that factory, starting with a staff of four, one chocolate wheel machine and a passion for chocolate making that survives to this day.

Somehow, people found the factory in this remote location and in May 2010 the company extended the factory to deal with the increased demand from shops and visitors.

However, tragedy struck just as the new factory was working to full capacity to prepare for the 2010 Christmas season. The factory was burned to the ground, but no one was hurt or injured.

The business received great support from family, friends and customers and in February 2011 a temporary production facility was set up nearby in Cahersiveen.

After a tough year of fighting for planning permissions, the business returned to the home of Skelligs Chocolate within a week of the first anniversary of the fire, and the new state-of-the-art production facility opened in 2012. The first premises were about 1,200 sq ft; the new one is 6,500 sq ft.

Children are welcome at Skelligs Chocolate near Ballinskelligs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The philosophy at Skelligs Chocolate is to keep it simple and to make sure everyone has the best possible chocolate experience. The company aims to make the factory as pleasant to visit as it is to work in and is constantly trying to improve the visitor experience.

This is an actual working chocolate factory with the only ‘open plan’ chocolate production facility in Ireland. It was nominated by Failte Ireland as one of the ‘50 secret destinations of the Wild Atlantic Way.’

This was my fist visit to a chocolate factory. After gift buying and before leaving, we had coffee in the Puffin Café looking across at the Skellig Islands. We then made our way down to Saint Finian’s Bay for a walk on the beach in the small cove and another view of Skellig Michael before continuing on to Valentia Island and Cahersiveen.

A walk on the beach, with a view of Skellig Michael, at Saint Finian’s Bay, beside Skelligs Chocolate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)