I bought a York City turnstile at auction. It’s the best £300 I’ve spent

An auctioneer marched through the listed items as if he had a train to catch. There was no ceremony or fanfare, just Lot after Lot, his voice like the incessant rhythm of a sewing machine. On a screen 200 miles away, I watched mesmerised. His hammer fell on bids for a brass-bound bucket jardinière, a cast concrete trough, a copper and zinc weathervane, a Victorian terracotta chimney pot and a pair of vintage step ladders. Then he announced Lot 7243, “A cast iron turnstile from York City football ground.”

It was the first of eight such turnstiles on sale, each heaved from the soon-to-be bulldozed Bootham Crescent like particularly obstinate molars. I watched because I cared and because I wanted to write about the process of selling off a beloved ground – who buys the signs and seats, why do they do so, what does the item mean to them and where does it end up? These turnstiles and everything else that was being sold off had belonged to the old ground, and sometimes so had I. Growing up in York, Bootham Crescent had been another home in childhood and through my teenage years, and now it would exist no more. Empty space and then houses would overcome a place where crowds had roared and groaned, tarmac over grass. Her insides were being scattered and there were corners of the world that would be forever York City.

Bids for Lot 7248 did not gather pace as they had for the previous five of these iron refugees. The first had gone for £320, and then prices had increased with each turnstile – £340, £420, £440 and then £460. But 7248 seemed to linger on £280. She was going once, going twice and in a few split seconds some romantic, foolish instinct struck me. It decreed that £300 would not be so much for something so magical. A few