Micklegate Bar was the most important of York's gateways. The main road out to the south left through the bar.

It was the focus for civic events, such as greeting a monarch, and was used to display the severed heads of traitors.

Micklegate Bar is a rectangular gatehouse. On the ground floor there is a passageway with arches at each end. There are three storeys above. The first building was put up in the early twelfth century and consisted of a simple stone gatehouse with an arch at each end.

There were people living over the bar as early as 1196. An annual rent of 6d was paid from 1196 to 1212 when a Benedict, son of Ingleram, a clerk, lived there.

In the fourteenth century the gatehouse was heightened to include a portcullis. The barbican, a wall protecting the bar, was also added at this time.

When the King or Queen visits York the monarch has to stop at Micklegate Bar and ask permission from the Lord Mayor to enter the city.

Heads you win...

"Off with his head and set it on York gates; So York may overlook the town of York."
So said Queen Margaret in Shakespeare's 'Henry VI'.

Richard Duke of York, whose head was so displayed in 1461, was not the first to have his head chopped off and displayed on Micklegate Bar. Nor was he the last...

• 1403 Sir Henry Percy (Hotspur)
• 1405 Sir William Plumpton
• 1415 Lord Scrope
• 1461 Earl of Devon
• 1572 Earl of Northumberland
• 1663 Four of the Farnley Wood Conspirators
• 1746 William Conolly and James Mayne

Once decapitated, an individual's head was skewered on a pike-staff and displayed from the roof of the bar. There they were pecked by crows and magpies - a suitable indignity for those seen as traitors.

The heads were left there for long periods of time. We know that James Mayne's head was "illegally removed" in 1754 - nine years after it had been put there.

Richard Duke of York was only on the bar for three months. In 1461 his son, Edward IV, replaced his father's head with those of the Lancastrian leaders captured at the battle of Towton. The Earl of Devon was the most prominent of these leaders.