I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world.	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he's experimenting with federated platforms . He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance, and can found on the PlusPora diaspora pod. He hates cell-phones.

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Walking Tour of York Third Stop, The Merchant Adventurers' Hall As explained here, as part of my teaching this year, I gave my students a walking tour of York. This is the third stop on the tour. Caveat Lector - I do not vouch for the complete accuracy of all of these bits and bobs. Do not quote me. Some of this is myth and legend. This stop represents several of the things I love about York. The Merchant Adventurers' Hall was originally built over the course of a few years in the late 1350s, and the building in the picture is substantially the same structure - although, of course, heavily renovated over the centuries. This is one of the first things I love, the simple fact that this six hundred and fifty year old structure is just there, alongside the road, across from a relatively modern shopping center. The hall was built by the merchants of York, and consisted of a hall for guild business and an undercroft which was used as an almshouse to care for the poor. A chapel was added along one end. This brings us to the second thing I love about this stop - the guild still exists, although in an altered form, and the building is still being used for essentially the same purpose: the hall is still a meeting hall, the undercroft is still used for charitable purposes (among other things), and the chapel is still a chapel. It has been claimed (on wikipedia, so bear that in mind) that the Hall is the biggest timber-framed building in the UK that still serves its original role. I just think that's amazingly cool. The Hall is open to the public when not otherwise in service, although there is an entry fee. The hall is often hired out for other purposes, though - it's used as a market during the annual Jorvik Viking Festival, and wandering through there when a bunch of medieval or pseudo-medieval merchandise is on display is also pretty groovy. In many ways it sums up a part of the charm of York. There's a great deal of history here, but it's not stuck in a corner behind glass. It's out there, on the street, still being used. And in the case of the Hall (and the Minster, about which more later) still being used in ways which are not dissimilar to the ways it was being used many hundreds of years ago. Luddite'sLog, 23 November 2014 © 2014 Jeff Berry

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