Investigation Summary
Treasurer’s House is a Grade I listed historic house at 2 Minster Yard, York, built over part of the Roman legionary fortress of Eboracum and later occupying the site of the medieval residence of the Treasurers of York Minster. The surviving house was substantially rebuilt in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, divided and altered in later centuries, and reunited and remodelled by Frank Green with architect Temple Moore between 1897 and 1900. Green gave the furnished house to the National Trust in 1930.
Its best-known paranormal narrative concerns apprentice heating engineer Harry Martindale, who said that in February 1953 he heard trumpet-like sounds and saw a mounted and marching group pass through the cellar walls. A later-disclosed 1957 account by housekeeper Joan Mawson and earlier stories preserved by the National Trust form part of the same claim tradition. Roman deposits and a major fortress road are genuinely documented beneath and beside the property, but archaeology does not verify an apparition, identify the reported figures or establish the precise relationship between the Roman surface and Martindale’s viewing position.
PRN classifies the Roman-soldier story as important named testimony with later institutional preservation, but not as independently corroborated paranormal evidence. Other reports of animals, children, a grey lady, cigar smoke, moving chairs, stopped clocks and sensations are current National Trust claim transmission without complete incident files.