The first room, which is now the admissions area and shop, would have been a workshop or storeroom. It may also have served as makeshift sleeping place for the lower servants, such as the scullions who did the daily work in the kitchens.

The roof in this room has quite a lot of original timber (the darker wood). These timbers have been tree-ring dated to 1360, when this part of the house was built. King Edward lll was then on the throne and York was approaching the height of its importance as the second city of medieval England. Look for the main timber, stretching across the middle of the roof. Where it joins the wall, furthest from the courtyard door, you can trace four straight lines and a diagonal, scratched across it. This is a fourteenth-century carpenter’s mark. It told them to place this timber in the fourth main bay from the east and on the north side of the building.