York is a beautiful, medieval city in the North of England—but is it a good place to look for LGBT+ history? Well, it might surprise you, but the answer is yes: there are major monuments to LGBT+ history in and around York.
One is Holy Trinity Church in York itself, where (as you can see from the rainbow plaque) the first gay marriage in England took place—in 1834! Or at least it is in Holy Trinity that a woman called Anne Lister, sometimes called “the first lesbian in history” and known on TV as Gentleman Jack, exchanged rings with her partner, Ann Walker, over Easter communion.
Who was Anne Lister? She was an upper-class woman who did not at all conform to her period’s gender expectations: she dressed all in black—no frills, no jewelry, no lace—managed her estate without masculine help, and traveled in a Byronic style—ultimately dying while exploring the Caucasus mountains in the south of the Russian empire.
Many of her neighbors took a dim view of her and her close relations with other women, which is why she was called “Gentleman Jack”—which was not intended as a compliment. But of course they did not know in detail about her private life, as we now do. Why? Because Anne Lister was a prolific diarist. She wrote diaries through her whole adult life, of which over 4 million words survive, in 26 quarto volumes.
About a sixth of her diaries are in code, but when scholars decided to decipher the code—what they found astonished them. Anne Lister not only had an active lesbian life—she was a kind of lesbian Don Juan—she turned out to be a historical first: the first person in whose own words we hear that she was attracted *only* to women. To quote:
“I love and only love the fairer sex, and thus, beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs.”
Her estate, Shibden Hall, is also near York, in Halifax, and is very worth a visit. Another even grander estate near York also has an LGBT+ connection: this is Castle Howard, the seat of a branch of the family that produced (among other historical figures) Ann Boleyn, and one of the grandest of England’s so-called “Stately Homes.” In this case, the connection is not to real life but to a TV show, the 1981 Granada TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews as the gay (or MSM?) couple.
And there is more, quite close to Castle Howard, at the ruins of the great medieval Cistercian monastery, Rievaulx Abbey., where St Aelred (1110-1167) was abbot for the last 20 years of his life. Aelred was a great intellectual figure. Today, among the books he wrote, De Spirituali Amicitia (On Spiritual Friendship) is the one that generates the most discussion, or maybe I should say controversy. The question is, simply: does Aelred, tell us, in effect, that he was gay? Certainly, in contrast to the general monastic tradition, he considers love (possibly chaste love) between monks important and valuable, and he seems to say that he (like St Augustine) had homoerotic attractions in his youth.
As with a number of historic figures, I think it is safest to start with the following statement: he certainly wasn’t straight! And today, both Catholic and Anglican churches recognize him as a saint, and the LGBT+ Catholic and Anglican organizations regard him as their patron.
In short, York has a surprising amount of LGBT+ history, adding to its general, medieval charm. Interested in visiting LGBT+ England? Check out Oscar Wilde Tours’ LGBT+ history tour in April 2026!
