York Historic Environment Record

The york central audit of heritage assets report mentions that the carriage works office was constructed between 1875 and 1888.

Following the creation of the North Eastern Railway, the Company gradually rationalised its many workshops concentrating locomotive construction and major repairs at Darlington, wagon-building at Shildon and Darlington, and carriage-building and major repairs at York.
In the later years of British Rail, York became one of very few major train-building workshops left in Britain, and constructed vehicles for export as well as the home market. However, it was fundamentally reliant on home orders, and a three-year moratorium on these in the run-up to BR privatisation led the owners, ABB Rail Vehicles, to decide on closure in 1995.

The offices and stores building (which would later be known as Alliance House), accommodated a series of rooms to facilitate administration at the Carriage Works, and storage facilities for the raw materials and manufactured fixings used in carriage production. The building was originally conceived as a two-part structure, with a two-storey offices section running perpendicular to a longer, single storey stores range. Architectural drawings of 1883 demonstrate the original elevations and internal layout. By the time the Carriage Works opened in 1884, there were few facilities for the workforce. A Mess Room (later called the Canteen Building) was added shortly after the first phase of construction in 1888. Located near the Holgate Road entrance and the foreman’s lodge, its architectural form and style complemented the existing buildings at the site (Alan Baxter 2024).

Dr Bill Fawcett, John A Ives and Alison Sinclair, 2013, YORK CENTRAL AUDIT OF HERITAGE ASSETS,NOVEMBER 2013 (Report). SYO1457.

*Alan Baxter, 2024, Alliance House & canteen building (Unpublished document). SYO3109.