Dean’s Park

This small, leafy park, along with the Minster and a number of surrounding buildings, were part of the Liberty of St Peter, a walled city-within-a-city that was outside Mayoral jurisdiction. The Liberty had its own police force (and still does), prisons, gallows, courts and laws, and was ruled with impunity by the Archbishop.

Within Dean’s Park, a stone arcade is the only remainder of what was the Archbishop’s palace. In 1400 a chamber was specially built near the palace so that Henry IV could watch a tournament taking place in the palace grounds. Richard III also took up quarters in the palace in 1483. Henry VII attended a feast there in 1487; and Margaret Tudor visited it in 1503.