SIR Arthur Ingram was, by all accounts, a bit of a rogue. The Yorkshire landowner, investor, alum magnate and some-time politician and MP, who died in 1642, has been described by once source as 'a rapacious, plausible swindler'.

A merchant turned customs officer turned landowner and investor, he made several wealthy marriages (one contemporary, John Chamberlain, wrote of Ingram's second wife Alice Halliday that 'she had withstood an army of wooers, and I think is now lighted on the worst'), bought into the Yorkshire alum trade, and served at various times as MP for Stafford, Appleby-in-Westmorland and ultimately York.

He rebuilt Temple Newsam near Leeds as his family home, and built the almshouses in Bootham, York, still today known as Ingram House. And at some point in the early 1600s he also built a substantial mansion at the western side of Dean's Park, in the shadow of York Minster.

Ingram is believed to have died in York in 1642, just as the civil war was breaking out. His mansion in Dean's Park long survived him but gradually became ruined. And then, sometime around about 1880, along came an anonymous watercolour artist and painted a glorious landscape view of the ruined mansion, with the Minster walls in the foreground.

That painting now hangs in the Merchant Adventurers' Hall in York, where it can be viewed by visitors. But it also appears in the book Streets of York, from which we have reproduced it (picture 1 today).

At some point, the ruins of the mansion were cleared away by the Dean and Chapter of York Minster, and the area they had occupied was laid to gardens. Chris Shepherd's contemporary photograph (picture 2) shows the same view today.

The Streets of York was first published last year to coincide with an exhibition of the same name at St Williams College. Book and exhibition between them raised more than £70,000 for three local charities. A second print run of the book has now been brought out, with proceeds this time all going to York Against Cancer.

In Yesterday Once More last week we carried three paired images from the book, showing how Walmgate Bar, the view of St Michael-le-Belfrey church, and Chapter House Street had changed (or in the case of the latter not changed) over the last two hundred years.

We're dipping into the book again this week with three more pairs of images. The painting and photograph of Dean's Park make up the first pair.

The other images show:

3. The newly-created Deangate and York Minster, viewed from Goodramgate in about 1903. This detailed sketch by E Ridsdale Tate shows College Street fenced off. The space behind the fence was subsequently used to store ancient timbers from a row of half-timbered houses on Pavement that were demolished to allow Piccadilly to extend northwards to link up with Pavement and Parliament Street in 1912.

4. York Minster, Deangate and College Street viewed from the same point on Goodramgate today.

5. The view northwards from Baile Hill across the rooftops of York towards York Minster in about 1835. The watercolour by C Dillon (which, like the painting of Sir Thomas Ingram's House, now hangs in the Merchant Adventurers' Hall where visitors can see it) shows just how open the view was almost 200 years ago.

6. Baile Hill today. Chris Shepherd's photo shows how completely the view of Dillon's day has been eclipsed by overhanging branches.

Stephen Lewis

The Streets of York: Four Centuries of Change by Darrell Buttery, Ron Cooke, Stephen Lewis and Chris Shepherd is printed by York Publishing Services, priced £30. All proceeds from sale of the book will go to York Against Cancer.

The book is available online from www.ypdbooks.com or from Amazon, or from the York Against Cancer shops in Huntington and at York Hospital.