One of York’s most prominent empty shops will soon be home to a new trader.
Number 1 Kings Square has been vacant since the departure of Boots more than a year ago.
It’s now set to get a new occupier – which means a building that has been part of York’s retailing tradition since the 1850s will be back in business once again.
Lifestyle store Oliver Bonas is looking to move into number 1 Kings Square.
The brand, which specialises in women’s fashion, homeware and gifts, already has a branch on Stonegate. So this would be its second York store.
Plans have been submitted to change the signage from the distinctive Boots blue to the Oliver Bonas green colour.
The company is also seeking to make changes to the lower ground, ground and first floors of 1 Kings Square – a Grade II listed building.
The work would include changing interior stud walls, creating a new doorway at the rear of the building, replacing the suspended ceiling and installing retail units.
There are also plans for a stained glass window found at the property.
Planning documents say: “The stained glass window in the ground floor is not in its original context or setting and appears to have an ecclesiastical origin. It is proposed to retain this window but to relocate it within the unit where it will remain on public display.”
The documents also state that “no historical features or fabric are proposed to be lost through the works”.
And they conclude: “The public benefits of the proposed works are associated with the introduction of a new retailer into a high profile, vacant unit within the City Centre and the reintroduction of public access to this listed building.
“In addition, these works will not prejudice the future reuse of the vacant upper floors of the building for alternative uses.”
A heritage statement says that retailers have traded from this building right back to the 1850s.
Occupiers have included:
- 1870-1890s – Tailor David Wilson, employing nine men and four apprentices
- 1912 – a tea and wine merchant, ‘with other sundries besides’
- c.1950s – Cussins & Light Ltd. Adjacent storefronts on Goodramgate were purchased and the partitions removed around this time
- 2001-2023 – Boots.
Boots ceased trading here in October 2023. The branch shut as part of a nationwide closure programme by company.
The new planning applications follow one submitted by the owner of 1 Kings Square, K Square 2 LLP, last September, for work to prepare for a then unnamed retailer to move in.
Oliver Bonas opened its first York branch on Stonegate in 2015. At the time, it was the only one of its 45 stores in the north of England.
The business began when Oliver Tress – better known as Olly – started selling the interesting things he found on his travels in a shop in Fulham, opened in 1993.
It now runs 80 branches across the UK.
You can read and comment on the new planning applications here and here.