Built in the Middle Ages, it gets its name from St Mary's Abbey and the Viking word "gata," meaning street.

[1] The area where the street lies was outside the walls of the Roman city of Eboracum,[2] and represented the northern limit of the settlement; to the north, the land was used only for burials.

It lay immediately north of the abbey, from which it was separated by a ditch and narrow strip of land, and from the 1260s also by a wall, which was turned into a major defensive structure in the following century.

[7] On the street's corner with Bootham lay St Mary's Tower, while at the River Ouse end was a landing, used principally by the abbey.

[5] The area was devastated during the Siege of York in 1644, and only structures protected by the abbey walls survive from before this date.

[6] The street runs south-west, from Bootham, down to the Marygate Landing on the River Ouse, where it meets Dame Judi Dench Walk.