Re-photo

23 March 2017

These railway tracks ran into the Neptune St Goods station of the Hull & Barnsley railway which opened in 1885. The company, full name The Hull Barnsley and West Riding Junction Railway and Dock Company had been backed by Hull Corporation to compete with the monopoly of the North Eastern Railway on traffic to the city and the docks. It opened its new Alexandra Dock the same year. After financial difficulties towards the end of the century it agreed to work with the NER over the building of a new jointly owned dock, opened in 1914 as the King George V Dock, and it merged with the NER in 1922, shortly before the 1923 grouping when this became part of the LNER.

The goods station was closed around 1960 and the yard was taken over Drapers to cut up steam locomotives for scrap around 1967 when they moved there from the old HBR Sculcoates Goods; around 578 engines ended their days at the two locations, and the pile of scrap past the wagons is probably some of their remains.

The large brick building left of centre is the HBR good shed and it and some of the Neptune St buildings remain. There is still a bridge, though completely rebuilt in concrete as a part of the construction of Clive Sullivan Way. The white building at left is the AJK Ltd (Andrew Johnson Knudtzon) Neptune Street bulk cold storage warehouse, 36,613 cubic metres of space for your frozen seafood, meat and other products close to Albert Dock.

28v41 Rail tracks under bridge to William Wright Dock, Goulton St, 1981 – Docks

24 March

Brenda’s Cafe was on a street corner somewhere on or close to Goulton St, but appears to have been boarded up when I took this picture, and I have no recollection of exactly where it was located. Almost certainly like most of the housing in this area it will have been demolished shortly after I made this and a second photograph concentrating on the message ‘THIS IS BRENDA’S CAFE’.

I liked the underlined ‘THIS IS’, written on a slant and then the careful alignment to the brick courses of ‘BRENDA’S CAFE’, provided with a correct apostrophe and a full stop but no acute accent. But I imagine Brenda’s was a cafe rather than a café.

28v42: Brenda’s Cafe, Goulton St area, 1981

Also:

28v43: Brenda’s Cafe, Goulton St area, 1981

25 March 2017

Above the doorway of the 1930’s brick building of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen’s Queen Mary Hostel (a building that is now the Hull Training Business Academy) in the 3 layers of stone facing above the stone door surround was a fairly lightly scratched bas-relief of two fishermen hauling nets aboard a small planked boat. The section at bottom right had suffered somewhat from erosion and the wheelhouse of the boat at top left was almost invisible.

I think my focus was possibly slightly out on this image, but the stone was also rather worn. A few years later this sculpture was painted to make the details clearer, but when I made this I think it was bare stone. When I last saw it, most of the paint had faded or flaked off and the work was reverting to its former state.

The building is a few yards to the west of the junction with Boulevard and on the north side of Goulton St.

28v44: Fishermen bas-relief, National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, Goulton St, 1981 – Hessle Rd

26 March 2017

This statue, I think in fibreglass, of a fisherman was in the reception area of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen., and could be seen clearly through the glass door and window, though the fine wire grid in the toughened glass.

I made several near-identical exposures through the right-hand window, and can be seen doing so in a reflection at the left of the picture, apparently from an interior glass divider.

I have been unable to find any information about this sculpture, or about its current location, though doubtless some people in Hull will know.

28v46: Fisherman, National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, Goulton St, 1981 – Hessle Rd

27 March 2017

Although my note on the contact sheet states ‘Boulevard’, I think this fine doorway was almost certainly in Coltman St, another of the streets I walked down on my way to Hessle Rd. You can still see a very similar example at the end of a row in Coltman St (I think at 194) on the west side fairly close to Anlaby Rd. There is a gap where two properties have been demolished, possibly following fire damage, a rather common fate for various reasons with derelict properties, particularly when listed. This may well have been one of those now missing.

There are around 15 houses in the street which were Grade II listed in 1973, and this example must surely have been one of these. The street was named after the Coltman family who owned the land and developed it from around 1840 starting at the south end on Hessle Rd, and it includes a number of houses in a ‘Greek Revival’ style from the 1850s.

28v53: Doorway, probably Coltman St, 1981 – Hessle Rd

28 March 2017

I photographed this shop window on several occasions. A small general store and sweet shop on Church St I think I went in and bought the occasional Mars Bar or can of drink to keep me going in an otherwise rather desolate area. The normal window was simply a few drink cans thrown in randomly and this was a special effort for the Royal Wedding , with the tray and carefully arranged cans.

Church St used to lead to St Peter’s Church, the parish church of Drypool a large building which replaced and incorporated parts of the earlier church in 1823, with seating for a thousand worshippers. This was destroyed by bombing in 1941, though its former churchyard is still there across from where Church St meets Great Union St. The site of the church is now occupied by Humber Galvanising and its car park.

28×12 Royal Wedding Window Display, Church St, 1981 – East Hull

29 March 2017

Like St Peter’s Church nearby, the Clarence Flour Mill was badly damaged during wartime bombing, with only the silo remaining from the original 1891 flour mill, but it was rebuilt and reopened in 1952, continuing in operation until 2005.

Hull’s most prominent landmark, it was demolished in 2015, supposedly to allow a remarkably ugly replacement, the Radisson Blu hotel, to be built in time for the 2017 City of Culture. When I walked past a month ago the site was still just an empty gap of ground-level rubble and brick, with no building work having started.

Joseph Rank was born on Holderness Rd, Hull into a milling family in 1854 and was running a small rented windmill by the time he was 21, but it failed to make money. He invested in a larger windmill which was profitable and a few years later after seeing them in action at another mill he realised the potential of using steel rollers and mechanical power to greatly increase output, building his Alexandra Mill in Williamson St off Holderness Rd in 1885, the first mill of its type in the UK.

The Clarence Flour Mill, as well as having roller mills with high capacity also led in other areas of technology, including the bulk handling of flour, discharging it in into barges on the River Hull.

As well as the large ‘JOSEPH’ at the top of the picture, my attention was also drawn to the much smaller message across two of the ground floor window panes, ‘HELP ME’. My younger son, Joseph, then three, may well have been with me when I made the exposure, and I certainly pointed out his name to him on various occasions as we went past, and I may well have felt in need of help myself. But somewhere inside this huge building, with its hundreds of panes of glass there was someone who felt trapped.

While now it would have been trivial to correct the perspective using a wider lens and computer software, it wasn’t possible to get it right in camera with a shift lens, nor to correct the slight distortion, and I have left these more or less as taken.

28×23: Joseph Rank’s Clarence Flour Mill, Clarence St, 1981 – River Hull

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16 March 2017

Parts of the Old Town first got electrical lights in 1880, but the private company failed to supply power consistently and the lights went off in 1884. In 1890 the corporation got the power to make power itself and built this Corporation Electric Lighting Station in 1892 in Dagger Lane. But, according to the Victoria County History, the service grew from the original 33 customers to 960 by 1898 and a new and larger generating station was opened in Sculcoates Lane.

The door states that it is a Boiler Store for B Danby & Co Ltd, a plumbing, heating and electrical merchants in the North of England, was founded in 1891 by West Riding businessman Benjamin Danby and still in business, but the building appeared to be empty and derelict, and I think was demolished a few years later.

28r51: Corporation Electric Lighting Station 1892, Dagger Lane, 1981 – Old Town

17 March 2017

The former warehouses beside Railway Dock were listed Grade II in 1970. The listed eastern wing was demolished in 1972 and later the remaining parts converted into offices, commercial premises and flats. Unfortunately the 1845/6 No 7 warehouse, architect J B Hartley, lower than these with five storeys but with nineteen bays, on the north side of Humber dock was demolished in 1971, a tragic loss to the cityscape, now scarred by a near-motorway.

Railway Dock warehouses were next to Hull’s first railway station, Manor House Street or Kingston Street station (on the opposite side of Kingston St, opened as the terminus of the Hull and Selby Railway in 1840, and remaining in use as a goods station after passenger traffic moved to Hull Paragon in 1848.) The station was demolished in 1959 but Wikipedia states some sidings there were in use until 1984 and the lines are shown on the map I was using when taking these pictures.

In the foreground is one of several wagon turntables on the dockside. These were just large enough to take both sets of wheels on a wagon coming from the warehouse which would then be turned through 90 degrees onto a railway line running along the dockside. The wagons would be hauled and turned either by horses or gangs of men, or in some places were moved by chains running around a capstan attached to an shunting engine.

28r64: Former Railway Dock warehouse, Railway St, 1981 – Old Town

18 March 2017

J.B. Mirrlees became a partner in a Glasgow engineering firm making cane sugar processing machinery in 1848. Mirrlees, Watson & Yaryan Company Limited were excited by the engine patented by Dr Rudolf Diesel and visited him in Germany in 1897, taking out an exclusive licence for manufacture and sale of diesel engines in Great Britain. Their first engine, only the third diesel engine in the world and now in the Science Museum was completed in 1897. Unable to sustain the heavy development costs of these engines, they sold the exclusive licence in exchange for a non-exclusive licence in 1899.

Mirrlees moved to Hazel Grove, Stockport to expand their manufacturing capacity and produced many innovative and successful engines, whose uses included powering WWI tanks as well as trains and ships and electricity generation. In 1969 they merged with Blackstone & Company, who had begun in the 1880s making agricultural implements in Lincolnshire. Both companies were a part of the Hawker Siddeley group. They became part of GEC-Alsthom in 1988 and disappeared in the early 2000s.

The office here was disused after the fishing industry moved from here to Albert Dock and St Andrew’s Dock was closed in 1975.

28v21: Mirrlees Blackstone Marine Diesel Engine posters, St Andrew’s Dock, 1981 – Docks

19 March 2017

The notice by the London and North Eastern Railway forbidding any unauthorized explosive materials being brought on to the docks was considerably the worse for wear. It had been there for some time, as it had been signed on behalf of the London and North Eastern Railway Company, which ceased to operate on nationalisation on 1 January 1948.

Explosive materials were of course vital in many ways for mariners, and included rockets and distress flares. The 1875 Act was not intended to prevent explosive materials being brought into the docks but to regulate their use and ensure safe handling.

28v24: Explosives Act 1875 Hull Docks Bye Law notice, St Andrew’s Dock, 1981 – Docks

20 March 2017

The World Championship Three Piece Suite, with a settee that ‘easily converts into a snooker table and is complete with all equipment‘ dominated the window display in a shop on the Hessle Road, and it wasn’t cheap at £799.95 – when the average UK wage was around £6000, and in Hull rather lower than that. At left a notice tells us that under the NARF credit plan it could be ours for only £79.95 deposit and 24 Monthly Payment of £38.40, an APR of 27.9%. Which takes up the total price to just over a thousand pounds, at a time when you could buy a freehold terraced house in the area for well under £10,000.

Living as most did in the area in small terraced houses, few would have had space for a snooker table, though the practicalities of using even this rather small table in a typical living room would have been tricky – it would need to be pulled into the centre of the room to allow players to move around all sides and pull back their cue to make a shot – and it would probably be tricky to keep the playing surface level in many houses even if the settee’s mechanism was sufficiently firm to support a player leaning on the outer edge, which seemed unlikely.

There was a good reason why there were Snooker Halls and tables in clubs. Few houses in Hull -or elsewhere – had the space for a proper full-size snooker table, though a friend’s house we often stayed at in later years in Newland Park did have a billiard room complete with full size table and bar. But there would have been few if any billiard rooms around the Hessle Rd.

I’m sure they sold a few of these on the Hessle Rd, though by 1981 the money from the fishing had mostly gone, but I’d be fairly sure too that those who bought them would have found them disappointing. I spent some time wondering whether the spelling of ‘LEASURE AND PLEASURE’ was deliberate and am still not sure. A notice by the dummy at right holding a cue informs us that his clothing is from the Leeds tailoring firm of Burras Peake who had a shop nearby at 266 Hessle Rd.

28v26: World Championship Three Piece Suite, Hessle Rd, 1981 – Hessle Rd

21 March 2017

This building at 82-4 Goulton St still stands and is now the Hull Training Business Academy, with the mosaic and a bas-relief above the door of the adjacent brick building. At the top of the mosaic is the message ‘serving the fishermen‘, an occupation then very much in decline thanks to the Cod Wars, though the lobby you can dimly see a statue of one, the subject of another of my pictures. The fishing boat is very much something from a different age to Hull’s trawler fleet.

Although the former Queen Mary Hostel of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen was only registered by them in 1957 (according to the Victoria County History) the brick building seems clearly from the 1920s or 30s and both its appearance and name suggests that it was built during the reign of George V who died in 1936 (although Queen Mary lived on until 1953.) The extension on which this mural is situated could be from the late 1950s or 60s.

Although I didn’t quite get the image upright and fully squared up when taking it, scanning and subsequent cropping has added a little more slant to this image, which I really should correct when I have time. Working as I did with a shift lens did usually enable me to correct verticals and horizontals in camera at a time when the kind of correction in software we now take for granted meant finicky darkroom work.

28v33: National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, Goulton St, 1981 – Hessle Rd

22 March 2017

I was photographing the cityscape and buildings and generally considered people likely to be a distraction from my subject, but as I wandered around the streets with a camera around my neck, people, especially children, would sometimes ask me to take their pictures, and I did as it seemed only polite, although with my camera set for photographing streets and buildings the results were sometimes blurred as people moved around rather faster than the buildings did.

This group of children were playing in a terrace off one of the streets soon to be demolished, and were sitting on the front step of a house which I think may already have become unoccupied. This, the second of two frames, is the sharper, except for the young girl who ran across as I made the exposure and a more interesting group.

At the time there was little of the exaggerated fear of strangers that some years later would have made stopping to take a picture like this without parental permission problematic. I and they knew that the were unlikely ever to see the picture I took; but perhaps now it is on-line they will see it – and I have posted it to one of the Hull Facebook groups for them.

28v36: Children on door step, West Dock Ave area, 1981 – Hessle Rd

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