King’s Manor

About King’s Manor

King’s Manor was the medieval abbot’s house for St Mary’s Abbey. A house probably existed on the site in the late 1200s, although the current building is mostly a reconstruction of the late 15^th century. In the 1530s, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, the abbot’s house was established as the headquarters for the King’s Council in the North, serving as the chief arm of government in the region. King’s Manor was improved and repaired for Henry VIII’s and Queen Catherine Howard’s visit to York in 1541 and used to house the royal party for twelve days.

Further building work took place in the early 1600s when James I visited twice. His son, King Charles I, also stayed in the house on two occasions – his brightly painted coat-of-arms can be seen above the building’s main entrance. In 1641, the Council of the North was abolished and at the end of the century, the King’s Manor was divided into apartments. The building was later taken over by a number of schooling institutions in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, more recently becoming university buildings.