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  • Clifford's Tower is a hugely important site, has played a central role in the history of York for nearly 1000 years.

  • Within those walls, it holds all kinds of stories.

  • These buildings that we work with are touching history.

  • Clifford's Tower is a quintessential example off that it has an incredible history from William the Conqueror's Mott, his mound and his timber palisade, which was destroyed and then rebuilt in the 13th century.

  • We've got Henry the Thirds Great Castle that he built the Stone Bailey walls and Clifford's towers.

  • We see it now.

  • This is the remarkable genesis off this place.

  • What we're really trying to do is do justice to this amazing place to tell those stories so much better.

  • Our opportunity to assist people's interpretation on at the same time to conserve this truly iconic monument really is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

  • The improvements that we're planning to make to the Tower are going to bring riel benefits to the visitor.

  • We're going to be taking people chronologically through some of the key moments in the history of the tower.

  • We talk about violent, past, tragic past.

  • It's been brutal.

  • It's had royal visitors and possibly even a royal inhabitant.

  • We want to give this information in exciting and innovative ways in the tower.

  • The visitor might not expect this because they move around the tower.

  • We are going to give information through sound so we can really help visitor to hone into the atmosphere.

  • We're going to pick five characters through history from ordinary Craftsman Tomb or wealthy people.

  • That's going to tell us, um, really interesting stories, some stories that people may not be aware off know about yet We're going to do that through audio buried into benches that were creating, which will sit into the lobes of the tower.

  • One of the stories we need to tell is the massacre of the Jewish population in 11 90 on it will be treated with a great deal of sensitivity.

  • We've worked closely with the curator ZA and the Jewish community to make sure that the stories that are told fully represent the memory in the history of that particular event.

  • What's been really great as we've been developing the project has been working with our local community, and lots of local groups toe understand a bit more about the kind of stories that will be interesting to them.

  • What they'd like to see us do with Clifford's Tower.

  • It will be amazing.

  • Thio, go into the tower, explore those stories, hear those voices wind your way up The staircase is to get to the roof where you can then look out across the city and imagine what it looked like in the past.

  • To do this, we need to make a number of improvements.

  • The improvements at Clifford's Tower will start at street level, which will help with access and also with people's appreciation off the significance.

  • Off Clifford's tower will be a new paved area facing towards the eye of York.

  • There'll be some bench seating there.

  • They'll actually be a small Piaggio down there where people can buy their tickets and buy a guidebook.

  • There'll be a small model for people.

  • Thio appreciate the central place that Clifford's tower had within your castle itself, up the steps leading to Clifford's Tower, which have always been a big challenge for many people, were introducing handrails toe either side.

  • We've also got three new resting places which were building nestling into the mocked where people can stop off on sit down have a rest look out over the eye of York.

  • Once visitors get inside, people find it difficult to understand really what it is they're looking at.

  • Andare solution has Bean to design a timber deck supported on four very tall timber columns On then, from the underside of that timber deck, we've suspended staircase and some walkways.

  • The preservation off the building for future generations is a huge priority.

  • Stone repairs are being carried out by conservation masons, whose mission is to actually conserve every piece of stone in city, every piece of surface everything.

  • The project that we're doing, we hopefully enable more people to get inside the tower will be able to increase capacity, will more than double it.

  • But also, we hope that the way will be telling.

  • The stories will also encourage more people to come in, discover the fascinating story of Clifford's Tower and York and enjoy those amazing views.

  • Working on a historic building of this nature is really exciting and challenging and something we love to dio.

  • It's a joy.

  • It's a journey of discovery, Clippers, towers and iconic medieval building great importance, but also really important to York.

  • We really hope that by the time we finished the project, local residents will be able to join with us in celebrating.

  • What we've done will come and see what we've done, and then we'll want to keep on coming back and enjoying the tower.

Clifford's Tower is a hugely important site, has played a central role in the history of York for nearly 1000 years.

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