More Around Popple Street – My walk on Monday 21st August 1989 continued up and down Popple Street. Popple Street still remains, but the area to the south had been changed by the building in 1979 of the Myton Swing Bridge over the River Hull and the building of the A63 Roger Millward Way which left it as a dead end. Formerly it had led to De La Pole Street and on to Great Union Street – and there is still a footpath leading to a pedestrian crossing at the roundabout on the junction with that street and the A63.
Works entrance, Popple St, Hull, 1989 89-8o-52
Popple Street is a short street leading south-east from Hedon Road and around a hundred yards down it turns at right angles toward A63 – and there are steps up to the pavement but no vehicle access. This picture is on the right-angle bend and the sheds at right are still there, the premises of Arronbrook Leisure Homes Ltd. Astablished in 1987 this company still makes static caravans and holiday homes on the site.
Almost all of the rest of the picutre has changed, except for a large shed which just peeps up above the brick wall, still there on the opposite side of Hedon Road. C B North’s saw mill has long gone, though the company remains as a timber merchants and manufacturer of root trusses on the Hedon Road, but the other sheds there were demolished around 2020.
C M Railton & Son, Popple St, Hull, 1989 89-8o-53
There was another photograph of C M Railton & Sons building in my previous post, I think taken from the footpath which replaced De La Pole St, but here I show it actually a little further down Popple Street looking towards Hedon Road. As I noted in the the previous post the site is now occupied by a medical supplies company, but this rather attractive building has been demolished and replaced by a larger but bland warehouse of First Aid Supplies
Works, Popple St, Hull, 1989 89-8o-54
Walking towards Hedon Road I made this picture of the buildings at the left of the previous view which are still on the street as Selles Medical Goods Inwards. They have lost those pulleys for lifting goods in to the upper floor and the doorways there are now large windows, while the large ground floor window and wall below is now a wide metal-shuttered entrance to the building. The door at right is still there but also with a metal shutter.
Robbies Pub was Grade II listed five years after I made this photograph, and the listing text begins “Formerly known as: Victoria Hotel HEDON ROAD. Public house. c1850, altered c1875 and later C19.” A fairly lengthy description follows. This picture shows some of the fine detail which justifies its listing.
This used to be a popular pub for Hull’s dockers and was known by them as the ‘Monkey House’. Probably the name came from J. F. Mitchell’s “That’s The Way To The Zoo” written in 1883 which includes the verse: ‘That’s the way to the zoo! That’s the way to the zoo! The monkey house is nearly full But there’s room enough for you.’ This became both a skipping rhyme for girls and a popular insult.
The picture also shows the view down Popple Street with the former building of N R Burnett Ltd, still a Hull timber merchant but now in West Carr Lane. I’d photographed this view from the opposite side of the road in 1985, and the caption to that photograph has more about the company: “N R Burnett is a timber company founded in Hull in 1935 by Norman Rutherford Burnett and became a private limited company in 1941. During the war it was based in York, but returned to Hull in 1945, and was based at the Albert Mill here in Popple St until 1960 when it moved to larger premises in Great Union St. It was one of the first suppliers for caravan builders. They still operate from sites in Sutton Fields Industrial Estate, Hull and Ossett as an importer and merchant of panel products, softwood and hardwood timbers.”
C B North, Hedon Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8o-56
On Hedon Road I photographed the offices for C B North as well as the end of the yard stretching from Popple Street of Arronbrook Lt, Mobile Home Manufacturers. The C B North building, across the road from their saw mill, became home to Paragon Joinery and Soper Plastics who relocated and the building was demolished around 2013. I rather liked the two rows of glass bricks inserted in the side wall, one at an angle presumably lighting a stairway. The building was on the corner of the what was I think the entrance to a saw mill (and earlier also a coal wharf) and is now one of the entrances to the South Orbital Trading Park.
Great Union St, Hedon Rd & Popple Street: The River Hull divides the city in two, and although there are around a dozen bridges linking the two sides, they remain very separate. Perhaps the most obvious aspect of this are the two league sides, Hull FC and Hull KR, facing each other in bitter rivalry from West and East. The river may not quite be an iron curtain but at least when I first went to Hull it was a very tangible divide.
I stayed in North Hull, on the west side of the river, and was surprised to find my wife who had grown up there was almost completely ignorant of anything on the other side. Of course some people worked on the other side of the river, and back in the sixties and seventies were often delayed on on their way to work or coming home as the bridges opened for river traffic. Now those openings are infrequent as few vessels make passages upriver.
Mo’s Cafe, Great Union St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-15
I photographed Mo’s Cafe on two different days in August 1989 and the notice in this picture tells me it had recently closed and “MOVED TO DRYPOOL GARGE 18 HEDON RD 2 MIN’S AWAY”. My second picture a day or two later is from across the road and shows some of the surrounding buildings which were still there on Great Union Street until 2015, but are now demolished.
On the north corner of St Peter Street, those buildings were part of the Rank Hovis Clarence Mill site, and Mo’s Cafe was at the rear of the Waterloo Tavern on Great Union Street at its junction with Clarence Street. The pub closed around 2010 and is now an an antiques salvage yard.
As You Like It, Hedon Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8n-16
This doorway presents a mystery I have been unable to solve in its plate fixed on the wall. At the top is a helmet of sorts, perhaps a link to diving though it could be just heraldic fantasy. Below is a shield with its three crowns, the emblem of the City of Kingston upon Hull since the 1400’s and the text ‘AS YOU LIKE IT’, presumably a trademark as underneath in smaller letters it states ‘REGISTERED’.
Finally at the bottom is one of those lettermarks of combined letters, always unreadable unless you know what they are. I can see a ‘J’, ‘F’ and ‘R’ with an ‘L’ that is possibly for Limited as there is a small ‘D’ to the right. Perhaps some local historian will know more and comment.
Gravestone, Great Union St, Hull, 1989 89-8o-62
I think the small graveyard area is part of the churchyard of the former St. Peter’s Church, which was destroyed in a wartime bombing raid in 1941. Since the Covid lockdown this area has been cleaned up by a group of local residents and is now a small park now known as ‘Thinkers Corner’ after a sculpture by Kevin Storch was placed in it on the 59th anniversary of the start of the Second World War in 1989.
Unfortunately I could not read the inscription on the stone but I thought he had probably been the captain of the vessel shown.
I don’t know what was in these tanks if anything, but the 1928 OS Map shows some molasses tanks in this area to the south of Hedon Road. The large building with HERALD on it has its frontage on Popple Street, just off Hedon Road, and the name N R Burnett Ltd large on the other side. The company is still listed as a timber merchant in Hull, now in West Carr Lane. HERALD seems to have been painted over their name at a later date. It was also on the side of the building followed by a second line already illegible, but could have read TIMBER [HULL] LTD.
This area is immediately to the north of Hull’s timber dock, Victoria Dock, which opened in 1850 and closed to shipping in 1970 and has been redeveloped for residential use. Hull remains the UK’s leading importer of softwood mainly from Russia and the Baltic states.
C M Railton & Son, Popple St, Hull, 1989 89-8o-66
C M Railton & Son were as their sign states Joinery Manufacturers and the property in the centre of the picture is still on Popple Street, backing on to Hedon Road next to Robbies pub (aka Victoria Hotel/Monkey House.) The site is currently a medical supplies company.
C M Railton moved out and are now registered in Beverley as a non-trading company, due to be struck of the register and deemed to be bona vacantia – without owner.
Behind at right is a sawmill, one of a number on the Hedon Road. You can read an extensive article by Paul Gibson, The timber industry in Hull, on his Hull and Eat Yorkshire History site.
National Dock Labour Board, Popple St, Hull, 1989 89-8o-51
The National Dock Labour Board was set up by the Labour government following the 1945 Dock Strike in 1947 to adminster the Dock Workers’ (Regulation of Employment) Scheme. It combined the trade unions and employers and controlled wages, hiring of labour and discipline of workers and was financed by a levy on employers.
It gave dock workers security, guaranteeing them with work on the docks, finding employment for them if they were laid off by an employer – or if no work was available a £25,000 payoff. The scheme was abolished by Thatcher in 1989 as being an anachronism that prevented the industry exploiting its workers. Dockers went out on strike in July 1989 but most voted to go back to work in August.
This building remains on Popple Street though rather difficult to recognise except by the distinctive brickwork. It was used for some time by St John Ambulance but is now a charity providing activities and education for vulnerable adults.
More from East Hull in later posts. As always you can click on the pictures to see a larger version on Flickr.
Kenfig, Hedon Sand & River Hull – these pictures I made on Monday 21st August 1989 on a short section of the River Hull. I had hoped to walk along the footpath beside the river between Drypool Bridge and North Bridge.
Boats, River Hull, downstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8n-35
The small tug Felix-Tow has got around a bit since it was built in the Netherlands in 1955. After working in Rotterdam the Ijssel came to Felixtowe in 1967 where it was renamed FELIX-TOW. I think it was fairly new to Hull where it was owned by Dean’s Tugs Ltd – and was still in service in 2008 – perhaps still now.
Boats, River Hull, upstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8n-36
The vessel in the foreground is a coastal tanker belonging to the Hull based petroleum company RIX which still operates a fleet of coastal oil tankers, estuarial barges and crew transfer vehicles. Rix have oil storage tanks around a mile further up the river.
The company, as their web site relates, began in 1873 when Robert Rix, a sea Captain and Merchant Adventurer working in Hull set up in business building small coastal craft on the south bank of the River Tees in Stockton. In the 1900s the company bought steam ships and began operating them. The move into petroleum products came in 1927 when they began importing tractor vaporising oil and Lamp oil, packed in oak casks on their ships from Russia to the Humber.
The company expanded rapidly after the end of World War Two, supplying agricultural and commercial diesel across Yorkshire and opening petrol filling stations around Hull. The company has continued to grow and expand into new areas.
Vessels, River Hull, upstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8n-21
Barges like these in the middle of the picture were once very common, and were often moored three or four abreast in the Old Harbour downstream of Drypool Bridge, but by 1989 were becoming much less common, though some are still in use. Others have been converted to houseboats.
Barges like this might carry as much as 24 large lorries and could transfer goods from the docks to river wharves at much lower costs than road transport, with much lower pollution and carbon footprint. But of course they could only take goods to sites on navigable rivers and canals and so are much less flexible than road transport.
Hedon Sand, River Hull, upstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8n-22
Hedon Sand, IMO 5185875 was a Grab Hopper Dredger built in 1954 close to Hull at Richard Dunston’s Hessle Yard. The ship had gross tonnage 677 tons, deadweight 813 tons and was around 50 metres long with a breadth of 10 meters. An 8 cylinder four-stroke msrine Ruston & Hornsby engine give it a top speed of 9 knots.
Hedon Sand, River Hull, upstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8n-23
Known for most of its active life as Kenfig, it had been built for the British Transport Commission and was transfered to the British Transport Docks Board in Cardiff in 1963. It returned to the Humber and was used in dredging the Humber Dock Basin when Humber Dock was being converted to the Marina.
Mud is always a problem in the Humber and in the River Hull and I think dredging was always needed when the River Hull was still a commercial river. In recent years there seems to be far more mud in the river close to the mouth than I remember.
Hedon Sand, River Hull, upstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8n-24
Kenfig was sold to Jones & Bailey Contractors Ltd, Hull in 1983 – they also owned another dredger, Grassendale and they renamed it Hedon Sand. In 1989 when I took these pictures the vessel was sold to be broken up in Hull.
River Hull, upstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8n-25
I think some at least of these massive wooden beams had probably once supported parts of the riverside path I had hoped to walk.
Kenfig, River Hull, upstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8n-26
Ahead of me I could see North Bridge but with extensive work taking place on the riverbank there was no way I could continue to walk along it and I had to retrace my steps to Drypool Bridge
Hedon Sand, River Hull, upstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989 89-8n-12
On my way I took another picture of Hedon Sand before walking up to the road and going on into East Hull – where I took more pictures. More later.
Trinity House & High Street. On Monday 21st August 1989 I took a bus to Queen’s Gardens and then walked down Prince’s Dock Street and on to the High Street at the heart of the Old Town.
Hull Trinity House, Princes Dock Street, Hull, 1989 89-8n-56
This massive archway on Princes Dock Street led through to Trinity House Navigation School and other buildings of Hull’s Trinity House. The date 1842 above the entrance is for this building, erected a few years after Princes Dock was opened as Junction Dock in 1829 – and before it was renamed in honour of Prince Albert for the royal visit of 1854. Junction Dock joined the Old Dock (Queen’s Dock) to Humber Dock creating a string of docks joining the River Hull to the River Humber and making an island of the Old Town.
Hull’s Trinity House is of course far older, established in 1369 as the Guild of the Holy Trinity by Alderman Robert Marshall (I’m sure no relation of mine) and around 50 others as a sort of ‘Friendly Society’ for parishioners of Holy Trinity Church. It was only in 1457 when Edward IV granted it the right to charge duties for loading and unloading goods at Hull to fund an almshouse for seafarers that it got a maritime connection, and it acquired its premises from Carmelite friars, though the current Trinity House Lane building is a 1753 rebuild.
Later monarchs gave it the right to settle nautical disputes, to charge import taxes to maintain the harbour, set buoys and licence pilots for the Humber. In 1785 it set up a school which taught boys in reading, writing, accountancy, religion and navigation for three years before they began their apprenticeship. The school is now an academy and has moved to another site, and the archway now leads to a car park and events area which has been named Zebedee’s Yard after Zebedee Scaping (1803-1909) who served as Headmaster for 55 years.
Doorway, Old Town, Hull, 1989 89-8n-41
You can still see this doorway at 39, High Street, though it is currently not numbered, just to the north of the entrance to Bishop Lane Staith. The area below the semicircular window at top right has been opened up as a larger window, though the sill in my picture suggests it was earlier bricked up.
Transport Museum, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-44
The Transport Museum was set up by Thomas Sheppard and opened in 1925 as the Museum of Commerce and Transport and housed in the former Corn Exchange on High Street and had a very extensive display showing the evolution of transport and Hull’s principle industries, along with ten veteran cars bought from a private museum and horse-drawn vehicles from East Yorkshire.
Like much of Hull it suffered extensive wartime damage – Hull was the most severely damaged British city or town during the Second World War, with 95 percent of houses damaged and almost half of the population made homeless. But news reports except on rare occasions were only allowed to refer to it as a “north-east coast town” and even now many histories of the war ignore the incredible damage to the city.
The museum reopened in 1957 as the Transport and Archaeology Museum. But in 2002 the transport collection moved to the new Streetlife Museum and this building became the Hull and East Riding Museum
Wilberforce House, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-46
Thomas Sheppard became the first curator of the Hull Municipal Museum in 1901 and achieved a massive increase in its visitor numbers by refurbishing the display and making entry free. Sheppard went on to set up half a dozen other Hull museums, the first of which in 1906 was Wilberforce House, opened as a museum in 1906, dedicated to the slave trade and the work of abolitionists and a memorial to Hull’s best-known citizen, William Wilberforce MP.
Wilberforce House, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-31
William Wilberforce was born in this house on the High Street in 1759. The house is one of the oldest in Hull, built in 1660 but extended by the Wilberforce family in the 1730s and 1760s. In 1784 part of the premises became the the Wilberforce, Smith & Co Bank.
Wilberforce sold the house in 1830. After Hull Council brought in a rate to fund the preservation of historic buildings in 1891, a campaign began for the council to buy the house which they did in 1903, opening it as a public museum in 1906.
Wilberforce House, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-32
The display that many in Hull had grown up with was updated in 1983 to the dismay of many residents who felt it lacked the detail and impact of the original and that it represented a move towards entertainment rather than enlightenment.
The displays were again altered in 2006-7 with improvements to access and reopened in 2007, which was the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Britain.
House, 23-4, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-33
These houses dating from around 1760 and restored after wartime bombing according to the Grade II listing text were incorporated into the Wilberforce museum in 1956.
House, 23-4, High St, Hull, 1989 89-8n-34
Here you see the view south down High Street from the houses, past Wilberforce House
From High Street I walked on to Drypool Bridge where the next post in this series will begin.
Treasure, Fresh Meat, Rose Villa… has some more pictures on Beverley Road, from where I walked into Pearson Park andthrough the Avenues back to my parents-in-law’s home.
Treasure Chest at 220 Beverley Road had closed and was to let, but its frontage contained messages at various levels, including an ‘OPEN’ sign on the door. the shop is still there, one in a row of shops on the east side of the road going north from Temple Street, and in 2022 was occupied by ‘Edward Scissor Barbers’. It had gone through a number of changes since 1989, including ‘£1PLUS’, a Polish Butcher, a Unisex Hair Salon and doubtless more.
I’m not sure what Treasure Chest had offered, though previously it appeared to be possibly a secondhand furniture shop offering to carry out home clearances. The windows were flyposted, with ‘Can Gorbachev reform Russia‘, a meeting at the New White Harte and an SWP ‘Troops out Now‘ protest in London (I think out of Ireland.)
But more mystifying were the two carefully printed ‘SIMPLE MINDS‘ at the top of each window. Were these for the Glasgow rock band?
Fresh Meat, Beverley Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8n-65
Another mystery door behind a wire screen protecting the frontage. It advertises ‘FRESH MEAT’ but with pictures of what I thought was a hamster and some kind of tropical fish. On the door an invitation to ‘JOIN OUR CHRISTMAS CLUB’ has been posted on top of another advertising a holiday play scheme at Kingston Community Centre – what I first took to be a pile of bodies is actually a rather sinister clown whose cap offers ‘TONS OF FUN’.
This picture was taken on Sunday 20th August 1989 and the shop was closed, but otherwise I’m sure it was still in use.
Rose Villa, 269-71, Beverley Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8n-66
Rose Villa, now a nursing home, is on the west side of Beverley Rd on its corner with Pearson Park, facing the Dorchester Hotel. The Beverley Road Heritage Trail leaflet states:
“Rose Villa is now a care home but was originally Claremont Villa, the home of coal and wool merchant William Croft. His business partner Henry Croft lived just across the road at the Dorchester Hotel, which at the time was three houses: Dorchester House, Tamworth Lodge and Stanley House.
The buildings are notable for their fanciful shaped gables and turrets, built by Bellamy and Hardy in 1861-2. Other occupiers here have included ship owners, timber merchants, and popular local grocer William Cussons.”
The Dorchester Hotel was at one time owned by one of my wife’s relatives, though I never went there.
Pearson Park, Archway, Pearson Ave, Hull, 1989 89-8n-51
This Grade II listed gateway to Pearson Park was made by Young & Wood of Hull and is cast-iron in a Classical Revival style.
Pearson Park was Hull’s first public park, laid out on land given to the Corporation by Zacharia Pearson, Mayor of Hull in 1860. Pearson was sent to school by his uncle after this mother died, and ran away to sea when his was 12, but was sent back to complete his sentence at Hull Grammar. He went back to sea on leaving school and rapidly progressed to becoming a captain and then a ship owner. With his brother-in-law he founded Pearson, Coleman & Co shipping timber from the Baltic and freight and later passengers to America – and later Australia and New Zealand.
Pearson became mayor in 1859 and donated liberally to various charities in Hull as well as giving the land for Pearson Park. But in the 1860s several of his business affairs went disastrously wrong. His worst mistake came with the US Civil War where he tried to keep Hull’s cotton mills in work by sending ten ships to try to break the blocade and all ten and their cargoes were lost. His bankruptcy was for a spectacular £646,000 – something like £63m now allowing for inflation – and he was ostracised from civic life in the Hull.
Pearson Park, Archway, Pearson Ave, Hull, 1989 89-8n-52
Despite his spectacular removal from Hull society, Pearson Park retains his name, and Pearson is still among the great philanthropists of Hull. This archway seemed in fairly good condition when I made these two pictures in 1989 , but had long lost both its gates and the maritime themed decorations and urns which had stood on top of the arch and a few large cracks can be seen at the top of the arch.
The archway was returned to its original grandeur by restoration specialists Lost Art in 2019 in an extensive project. It is now also stronger to be more resilient to the extra weight of modern traffic.
House, Salisbury St, Park Avenue, Hull, 1989 89-8n-53
I walked through the park and crossed Princes Avenue to walk down Park Avenue. You can see in this picture the poor condition back in 1989 of these grand houses close to the corner with Salisbury Street. I think this was 109 Park Avenue, but there is a virtually identical house in Salisbury St.
House, Salisbury St, Park Avenue, Hull, 1989 89-8n-55
This group of eight Grade II listed houses are thought to be the only remaining examples of domestic buildings by George Gilbert Scott Junior, an early exponent of the Queen Anne style.
House, Salisbury St, Park Avenue, Hull, 1989 89-8n-54
Some of these houses had already been restored as this view shows. All now look in good condition.
This was the last picture I took on this walk on Sunday 20th August 1989, but I was back in the centre of Hull taking pictures the following day – which I’ll post shortly.
Binnington seems to be a relatively common family name in parts of Yorkshire, though not one I’d come across before elsewhere. It’s hard to read the street number but I think it is 323, one of a short run of shops between the railway bridge and De Grey St on the west side of Beverley Rd.
I hadn’t come across many shops that were both hairdressers and tobacconists, though I think there may have been a couple of others in Hull. I wasn’t sure whether the CLOSED notice in the window was merely out of opening hours or more permanent.
Newland United Reformed Church, Beverley Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8m-13
Newland United Reformed Church was on the corner of Beverley Road and Brooklyn Street but was sold in 2012 and demolished. Nothing had been built on the site by May 2022.
There had been a church here, Hope Street Congregational Church since 1797. In 1903 it had been replaced by Newland Congregational Church, a simplified Gothic brick church designed by Moulds and Porritt in red and yellow brick with terracotta dressings which was demolished in 1969. Presumably it was then replaced with this simpler structure – Newland United Reformed Church from 1972.
May Street runs east from Beverley Rd, and Mayfair Unisex Salon was on its northern corner with Beverley Rd. As well as the obvious attraction for me of the male and female silhouettes for the ‘SUPPLIERS OF N.H.S WIGS GREAT SELECTION’. But also a face peers down from the upper window.
Hills, Beverley Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8m-15
Not only Mayfair, Hull also had (and still has) its Park Lane, though the lane now looks very different with no trace of Hills or any of its buildings.
The corner is now occupied by a building with a brickwork panel showing a junk and some Chinese characters and was built by the Hon Lok Senior Association along with ten houses and ten bungalows in Park Lane.
Hills, Office, Park Lane, Bull Inn, pub, Beverley Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8m-16
Thomas Hill Engineering Co. (Hull) Ltd had offices on the corner of their site on Park Lane opposite the Bull Inn. I’m not sure what kind of thinks they engineered but apparently in 1977 they were granted US Patent 4031764 on ‘Devices for “rotating articles in which the disadvantages of existing devices are minimized, and in which the containers are kept in line.”
Stepney Chapel is still on the corner of Cave Street and Beverley Road, but now looks in a very sorry state, around ten years or more since there were last services at Glad Tidings Hall (Pentecostal). The Chapel was built in 1849 when Stepney was still a small village as a Methodist New Connexion Chapel, but was replaced in 1869 by a much larger and grander Gothic church with seating for 600. This closed in 1966 and was demolished with a supermarket now on its site.
The Methodist New Connexion began in Sheffield in 1797 by secession from the Wesleyan Methodists led by Alexander Kilham and William Thom and grew rapidly. Accused of having sympathies with Tom Paine and the French Revolution it gave greater power to the lay member of the churches than the minister dominated Wesleyan Methodists. It grew rapidly paricularly across the north of England, though in the 20th century the various Methodist groupings re-united. William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was ordained as a Methodist New Connexion Minister in 1858.
As my picture shows clearly, the chapel is aligned to Cave St rather than Beverley Rd.
Scott St Chapel and Beverley Rd: More pictures I made in Hull in August 1989 before and after a week with family and friends in Scotland.
Mason & Jackson, Printers, Scott St, Hull, 1989 89-8f-43
This building was on the corner of Scott Street and Carr St, a short street that ended at the Cottingham Drain.
It was builtaround 1803/4 as a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, one of the first in Hull, and the first in the then fast growing area of Sculcoates and had seating for 531 worshippers. The plain brick was coated with stucco some time in the mid 19th century and the building is mentioned in the Hull pages of Pevsner. Later the population of Sculcoates fell as the area became more industrial and new Methodist churches opened elsewhere in Hull. By 1910 the chapel became a printing works, still in use by Mason and Jackson Ltd until 1997 – you can read more details and see pictures in Paul Gibson’s Hull & East Yorkshire History. Sadly efforts by Gibson and others to get this buidling listed were refused and it was bought and demolished to provide more lorry parking for Maizcor in 2001.
Mason & Jackson, Printers, Scott St, Hull, 1989 89-8f-43
This had been the front entrance to the chapel on Scott Street.
Mason & Jackson, Printers, Carr St, Scott St, Hull, 1989
A view across Scott Street shows the Carr Street side of the building. Listing was denied on the that the building has been ‘too altered to qualify’, but I think this picture shows that the alterations were only superficial. Paul Gibson’s pictures show that many of the interior features remained. This wasn’t a great building, but a fine example of its type and one of the oldest remaining buildings in the Sculcoates area of Hull. As my picture shows it stood out from the other later buildings on the street some of which still survive.
Gatepost, Royal British Legion, Beverley Rd, Hull, 1989 89-8f-31
There is an interesting block of 3 houses on Beverley Road immediately north of College Street, and it was that street name which gave me the clue tothe origin of this post, which dates from 1836 when Kingston College was built by Hull’s leading early Victorian architect Henry Francis Lockwood. The college was built just a little to the north and set back from the road and a few yards to the north two more pillars lake this do form a gateway to what is now Kingston Youth centre. The college didn’t last long closing in 1847 and its building was bought and turned into almshouses by Trinity House in 1851. At some time it became the Kingston Youth Centre and was badly mauled and had a sports centre added.
When the two houses at 46-48 were added inside the grounds of the college (then owned by Trinity House) in the 1860s I imagine this pillar was kept but its peer removed. This pillar is stuck rather oddly into the corner of the front yard of No 46, which is perhaps why it is in better shape than the two along the road.
The British Legion are no longer at Kingston Cottage at 44 Beverley Road, which is only locally listed. Also by Lockwood it was built as the Kingston College Lodge. As one of his earliest works it should be listed – at the moment it only has local listing. The college has been so much altered that it would be hard to make out a case for its retention in the lottery funded schemes to rejuvenate the area.
This grand Grade II listed Victorian style pub at 246 Beverley Road is not quite as old as it looks and was built in 1903 in red brick and terracotta designs of architects Freeman, Son & Gaskell to replace an earlier Bull Inn that had been on the site for around a hundred years. It closed around 2010, briefly reopened in 2011 and was converted to flats in 2017. I chose an angle for the picture which left the fine bull outlined on the shadow side of the more austere building on the opposite side of Stepney Lane, Stepney Board School.
Stepney Board School, built in 1886, architect W Botterill is also Grade II listed. Its Queen Anne style lacks the exuberance of the pub which had to attract customers while the school had school attendance officers to keep its numbers up.
Reynoldson St, Hull, 1989 89-8m-26
I think you were never far from a boat in Hull, but relatively few parked theirs outside the front door. I couldn’t remember exactly where I made this, but the next few frames I took were all on or just off Beverley Rd. Fortunately when I posted it on Hull: The good old days on Facebook, I got over 30 replies in the next hour telling me.
I kept only very brief notes while I was taking pictures feeling it a getting in the way of my creative processes. Often I’d done considerable research before going out to take pictures and had a good idea of what I would take photographs of, but there were always other things like this that caught my attention. Usually I could remember something about the when I’d developed the film and made the initial contact print, but not this time.
Still some more pictures from Hull before I returned to London.
Looking across the River Hull from the riverside path through the scrap metal you can see the Drypool Bridge and the converted warehouses on Clarence Street between High St and the River. Further to the right are the gates of a dry dock and I think the chimneys of Blaydes House, now the University of Hull Maritime History Institute at I High St.
Dry Dock, River Hull, Hull, 1989 89-8f-62
Swinging around a little brings a second set of dock gates into view, and this was the entrance to Hull’s first inland dock, needed as the Old Harbour on the river bank was getting far too congested. The Hull Dock company, founded in 1783 and the first of its kind, built the dock and opened it in 1788 simply as the Dock. It was built close to the site of Hull’s medieval walls and the street just to the south of the former dock is still called North Walls. The dock was renamed Queen’s Dock when Victoria visited in 1854 and all but the short section between the river and Dock Office Row was filled in in the 1930s and reopened as Queens Gardens in 1935.
Dry Docks, Hull College, River Hull, Hull, 1989 89-8f-63
The Yorkshire Dry Dock Co Ltd, Ship Builders Ship Repairers were incorporated in 1917, but there had been dry docks here much earlier as a detailed study in Paul Gibson’s Hull and East Yorkshire History relates. Hull’s Arctic Corsair, currently being restored, is expected to open to visitors at North End Shipyard in early 2025.
Works, Lime St, Hull, 1989 89-8f-54
Lime street runs parallel with the River Hull on its east side from North Bridge to Scott Street Bridge, and then on to the busy industrial Cleveland Street, always in the 1980s one of Hull’s dustiest streets. Between Lime Street and the river were a number of wharves and many were still in use in 1989, and some businesses here still had some maritime connection.
This picture is looking south down Lime Street from its junction with Jenning Street. I turned into Jenning Street. There are some bulk storage tanks and timber storing sheds in the middle distance and three large of cranes suggesting some large redevelopment.
Scott St Bridge, Hull, 1989
Back in 1989 I was still able to cross the river on Scott Street Bridge. I think Hull Council had long wanted to close this Grade II listed hydraulic double leaf bascule bridge and had deliberately failed to maintain it, allowing salt water to corrode its mechanism. Finally in 1994 they pronounced it unsafe.
It hit the national headlines in January 2018, when Banksy came to to Hull and drew a figure of a young boy brandishing a pencil for a sword called “Draw the Raised Bridge”. The council removed the Banksy in October 2019 and then demolished the bridge completely. Some noises were made by the council about replacing it with a replica, but don’t hold your breath.
Pauls Agriculture Ltd, Wincolmlee, Hull, 1989 89-8f-42
A man cycles down the Scott Street Bridge approach with its warning lights for bridge openind. On the other side of the long railing is Wincolmlee, the street which follows the River Hull on its west side.Two Buildings belonging to Pauls Agriculture Ltd are linked across the street by a bridge.
Pauls Agriculture was founded in Ipswich in the early 19th century initially as traders in malt and barley, but by the twentieth century there main business as in maize, which they crushed to produce vegetable oils for soap and other industrial uses with the remaining oil cake being used to produce animal feeds. In 1992 they merged with BOCM.
Much of the maize was imported, from the USA and elsewhere, so a riverside site made sense. But when transport by road took over it made more sense to site crushing mills in agricultural areas.
More to follow from Hull in August 1989 – and there are more pictures on Flickr in both black and white and colour.
River Hull 1989: I always enjoy a walk by the River Hull and back in the 1970s-90s there was always plenty to photograph, though it is rather less interesting now. My problem then was always to drag myself away and move to a different location. If you click on any of these pictures it will take you to a larger image on Flickr and you can then move forward or backward through the whole set I’ve put on-line.
Drypool Bridge, River Hull, Hull, 1989 89-8e-52
Looking upstream from Drypool Bridge you can see an industrial landscape, most of which has now disappeared, as well as several vessels on the river.
River Hull, downstream, Drypool Bridge, Hull, 1989, 89-8e-53
Turning around and looking out towards the Humber this was the view, one that I’d taken many times in earlier years when the river had been far more crowded. At left is the disused entrance to Victoria Dock and further down the Northern Divers building, sand and gravel works, warehouses and the Myton Swing Bridge built in 1979 to take the A63 leading to Hull Docks. Before then the traffic had gone various Hull ring roads and and the decision to put it through here, splitting off the city centre from the old town was something of a disaster for the city.
Burdalen, Ranks, Clarence Mill, River Hull, Hull, 1989 89-8e-43
Rank’s Clarence Mill on the east bank of the river just downstream of Drypool Bridge had introduced improved methods of bulk handling, sucking up grain from barges moored at the jetty on which I was standing to make this picture.
Although the Victoria Docks had closed in 1979, the entrance to them here remained in use as the only place the River Hull was wide enough to swing vessels like this Rix coastal tanker around. It will have gone up forward to the Rix depot a little over a mile away on Wincolmlee, and then come backwards downriver on the tide until here, where it could turn and then proceed forwards to the Humber. I took a whole series of the Burdalen turning and you can see a few more on Flickr.
Drypool Bridge, Clarence Mill, River Hull, Hull, 1989 89-8e-44
Drypool Bridge and North Bridge are both Scherzer Rolling Bascule Bridges with a large counterweight at the left-hand end in my picture and a curved track below that which rolls on rails at ground level. Because of the counterweight relatively little force is needed to raise the bridge to allow river traffic to pass through. River traffic was heavily dependent on the tides, and the bridge always seemed to block road traffic at the most inconvenient times.
When the mill was in use the pipes at the top of the image could be lowered into the holds of the barges moored below.
A riverside walk led north along the east side of the River Hull, though in 1989 it was largely covered by large amounts of scrap iron at the end of the Union Dry Dock on Great Union St, Hull. The Drypool Engineering and Dry Dock Company Limited of Hull had a number of sites around the city and in Selby by went bust in 1976.
Clarence Mill, Joseph Rank’s great flour mill in Hull was rebuilt after wartime damage and was only finally closed in 2005. With the City Council’s usual disregard for Hull’s heritage it was demolished in 2015 to make way for a hotel which was never built. The site was still undeveloped in 2022.
Pipes, Dry Dock, River Hull, Hull, 1989 89-8e-33
More of the scrap metal which partly blocked the riverside path, including a anchor.
And another view of the mills over the pipes at the Union Dry Dock. The closer building is the Shotwell Mill, still standing. Gamebore Cartridges makes shotgun catridges here, and should not be confused with the Hull Cartridge Company Limited who also make cartridges and sporting goods in Bontoft Ave, Hull. I’ve never owned a shotgun and certainly can’t comment on the relative merits.
Salisbury Street & Spring Bank – more pictures from my walks in Hull in August 1989.
House, Salisbury St, Park Avenue, Hull, 1989 89-8n-54
During my visits to Hull until around 2000 we stayed at my parent’s-in-law’s home in Loveridge Avenue, which runs from Bricknell Road and Chanterlands Avenue and I often walked through the Avenues, and occasionally stopped to take a photograph on my way elsewhere. All the houses on this section of Salisbury Street along with thw two corner houses on Westbourne Avenue and Park Avenue are Grade II listed.
These houses, at the centre of Westbourne Park Estate, now known as The Avenues, were built shortly after the estate was begun in 1877-79, though by the time I first saw them in the 1960s most were in very poor condition and have since been restored. The listing say these Queen Anne style buildings were by George Gilbert Scott Junior for John Spyvee Cooper.
In 1974 the Architectural Review published Keep it up: George Gilbert Scott junior’s houses by Colin Amery and Dan Cruickshank (republished in 2023) calling for Hull Council to restore these buildings which had been Grade II listed the previous year. In it the write: “several are mutilated; the houses on the corners of Westbourne Avenue and Park Street have lost their turrets and some are in deplorable condition” and they comment that they “are in one of Hull”s reluctantly created conservation areas. Hull Council still believe in the modern vision of a new city and object to paying money towards ‘gentrification’. “
Terrace, Myrtle Villas, Spring Bank, Hull, 1989 89-8d-16
Emerging from the Princes Avenue at Botanic I walked up Spring Bank towards the town centre, pausing to make this picture of one of the short terraces leading off the main road which are a feature of many streets in Hull. Myrtle Terrace is even shorter than most and over the brick wall are the back yards of the houses in Percy Cottages, Victoria Avenue, Alexandra Avenues and Beta Villas, short terraces from Mayfield Street in a remarkably dense block of late Victorian development.
George’s Bargain Centre, 178, Spring Bank, Hull, 1989 89-8e-62
There is now a George’s Bargains and George’s Removals on Spring Bank, but one shop to the west at 180. Rosemount Villa at 178 was, at least in May 2022, the latest image on Google Street View, occupied by Adam Food Store. Their display of fruit and veg has replaced the household appliances on the pavement but their shop and that of Adam Hall Butcher are still the same crude front extension on two of the five late Victorian Villas in this block ending at the corner of Albany Street. Rosemount, Melrose and Leicester Villas all retain their original doorways – that of Rosemount Villa is in my photograph.
In March 2023 Historic England gave Hull City Council £11,900 to develop a regeneration plan for the Spring Bank area of the city. This is currenly out for public consultation until April 7th 2024 and you can see the extremely thorough Character Appraisal on-line.
Practical Motorist’s (Hull), 167, Spring Bank, Hull, 1989 89-8e-63
Practical Motorist’s was on the corner of West Parade and is long gone. The conservation appraisal considers this building to be one of many “Neutral buildings. Many of these buildings could contribute positively to the Conservation Area through investment, restoration and essential repair“, but I think that the upper storeys of this and the neighbouring pawnbrokers at 165 and the side of the building along West Parade deserve a rather more positive appraisal.
The shopfront when I made this photograph was also I think much more sympathetic to the building than most, though it has since been modified. There seem to have been a number of Practical Motorist’s shops around Hull. This one is now a Russian-style sauna.
Spring Bank Jewellers, 165, Spring Bank, Hull, 1989 89-8e-64
The three balls are the traditional sign of the pawnbrokers whose notice lists some of the gold, silver or even platinum items they “urgently require” and offers a free testing service with “TOP PRICES PAID Cash!” and “All Enquiries & Dealings COURTEOUS & CONFIDENTIAL“.
The two young women peering intently into the window are casually dressed but still in in high heels. Behind them is one of Hull’s cream painted telephone boxes. The Hull Municipal Corporation set up its telephone service in 1904 and by 1913 it was the only remaining council owned telephone service, all others have been taken over the the Government. K6 boxes like this were first installed in Hull in 1936 and lack the crown on the red versions installed elsewhere across Britain. In 1987 the Hull Telephone Department became Kingston Communications (HULL) PLC. The City finally sold its shareholding in the company in 2007 and the company changed its name to KCOM Group PLC.
Three boys, Spring Bank, Hull, 1989 89-8e-65
These lads saw my camera and insisted I take their picture, which they were sure would be published in the Hull Daily Mail, though I told them it would certainly not be. Perhaps they will now see themsleves in this post 35 years later. And should the Hull Daily Mail now wish to publish any of my pictures I’d be happy to supply them at my normal NUJ recommended rates.
