Weekly digest of pictures added to Hull Photos and my comments from Facebook on them.
2nd March 2017
These houses have quite a distinctive doorway, which is found in several streets around this area, and that and the fenestration eventually allowed me to match this up with Perth St, though it took quite a lot of searching. Unfortunately the street sign on the house side at right is just too small to be legible on the negative, but once you know it is Lanark Street can just be seen – and the name is still in the same place now.
I can’t find any trace of Val Halla Entertainment Services, although a number of organisations around the world have use the name Valhalla, the Norse hall of the gods ruled over by Odin. The Vikings were of course frequent visitors to Yorkshire from the 8th century, with boats coming up the Humber and along the Ouse to York, and Yorkshire was a Danish Kingdom from around 866 to 954 Ad, when the English retook it. Some still sail their boats into Hull Marina, or arrive on North Sea Ferries, though with less rape and pillage than in earlier days.
This street view has changed little, though it is now usually full of parked vehicles on both sides.
28o34: Val Halla trailer, Perth St, 1981 – Springbank area
3rd March 2017
J Hawkins Newsagent was just off the Anlaby Rd in Midland St, opposite Paragon Station. It was in a block which was and still is the premises of Joynson’s who sell catering and related equipment. The newsagent’s is closed and no longer a shop, though you can still see the decorations and others on the side of the building at 45 Anlaby Rd.
There was a curious grid above the entrance, which appeared to restrict entrance to those customers of short stature or prepared to stoop a little for their newspaper, packet of fags, ice cream or sweets. I wasn’t sure if the section at the rear could at any point decide to fall and and impale the eager customer or perhaps those escaping surreptitiously with an unpaid for Mars Bar. In fact I think the back was fixed while the front section could be lowered when the shop was locked.
The Joynson’s building is locally listed and described (in part) as a “pleasing 3-storey mid-Victorian shop building that curves satisfyingly round the corner into Midland Street. Red brick with stone dressings. Attractive example of French Renaissance style architecture featuring a decorative string course, 7 festooned patera (bass-relief decorative circular ornaments) and heavy moulded window architrave.”
28p43: J Hawkins, Newsagent, Midland Rd, 1981 – City Centre
4th March 2017
Dark Birds Eye tobacco got its name from its appearance, being made from dark tobacco ‘whole leaf’ rather than strips, with the stem giving a ‘bird’s eye’ effect when it was cut. It is a strong tobacco and was a favourite with fishermen as its fine cut made it easier to light and keep burning in bad weather on board ship, doubtless why it was strongly featured in this Anlaby Rd shop window.
Most of the rest of the window is taken up by snuff, also traditionally favoured by fishermen – and fishwives. Scandinavian fishermen in particular were often heavy users, usually By mouth rather than sniffing, and the habit had the advantage of not being affected by wind or rain.
28p52: Dark Birds Eye, tobacconist’s window, Anlaby Rd, 1981 – City Centre
5th March 2017
The building closed in 1989 and stood unused for some years, but was demolished before 2008 and it and Goldstein’s next door replaced by an extremely dull-looking building, converted into Goodwin Community College around 2010. When built in 1902, the Icehouse Citadel had seating for 2,500.
The edge of the doorway at left is of the New York Hotel, demolished in 2015-2016 after a fire. It had opened around 1880 as Alfred Percy’s York Commercial and Temperance Hotel and Restaurant (known locally as Percy’s Cafe) was rebuilt in 1920 and altered in 1954. Its name changed to the New York Hotel and Ballroom, and then Jack’s Nightclub and Bar, and it had long abandoned its founding temperance principles. Derelict for over ten years before the fire, it found a place on the Hull Daily Mail’s 2014 list of the ‘The ten ugliest buildings in Hull’ though given the plentiful strong opposition it is hard to see why this relatively innocuous building was chosen, except for its long dilapidated state, because the owners could not afford to demolish it.
28p54: The Salvation Army, Icehouse Corps, Anlaby Rd, 1981 – City Centre
6th March 2017
Sharp St is on the west side of Newland Avenue, and the war memorial to those from the street who serverd in the ‘Great War’, one of several similar in Hull, was in fairly good condition in 1981, though difficult to photograph because of the reflections. Originally on Beal’s Joinery, when I took this picture it was then fixed to the side of the more recent building for Goodfellows on the site, which was demolished around 2010 when the memorial was put into store by the council.
The memorial has been restored by Lincoln University and reinstated in March 2014 inside a new case on the side of Eden Floral Boutique on the corner of Sharp St and Newland Avenue.
The memorial was made by James William Robinson (1876-1924) a carver and cabinet maker at W H Beal Limited who lived at 112 Sharp Street and lists the names of all 139 men in the street who joined up, with the 10 who were killed listed in the centre under the heading ‘Fallen’.
There were over 37,000 such street memorials across the country, including many in Hull, but relatively few have survived – only five in Hull.
28p62: Sharp St roll of Honour, Sharp St, 1981 – Beverley Rd area
7th March 2017
Another picture of Queen Victoria standing above the public lavatories in Queen Victoria Square with the City Hall behind her, this time from the view enjoyed by gentlemen entering the public conveniences. All three are listed, City Hall as Grade II*, the statue and conveniences Grade II.
28q01: Public conveniences, Queen Victoria and City Hall, Queen Victoria Square, 1981 – City Centre
8th March 2017
The view from Monument Bridge across Princes Dock with the warehouses beside Railway Dock in the distance before the shopping centre (one of Hull’s major carbuncles) was built. The warehouses on Kingston St are still there but the shopping centre obscures them, as well as covering much of the dock, and the fence still stops you falling in the river, but instead of phone boxes you squeeze your way through narrow paths between barriers around the various road and paving works that seem to permanently block your way.
The four curved roofs of the phone box seemed to me to be communicating with the four triangles on top of the Kingston Road warehouses, which seem rather closer than they should be, thanks to the moderate telephoto lens used (unlike most of my pictures which are made with a wide-angle.)
Hull’s distinctive cream telephone boxes are well-known, and this was a fine opportunity to showcase them; as well as colour they also lack the crown of their otherwise identical Post Office K6 designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935 for King George V’s Silver Jubilee, and the word ‘TELEPHONE’ is in a bolder font.
Hull was one of six municipalities which took advantage of the Telegraph Act 1899 to set up its own telephone service, and opened its first exchange in 1904. By 1913 the other five had all given up, but Hull kept on, and remained technically ahead of the rest of the country and with cheaper calls – people in Hull would speak for hours on the phone before the invention of mobiles. The council set up a separate company to run the phones in 1987, and Kingston Communications was floated on the Stock Exchange in 1999 with the council retaining a large stake in KCOM PLC, which was all sold by 2007.
28q15: Phone boxes, Princes Dock and Railway Dock warehouses, Monument Bridge, 1981 – City Centre
======================================
You can see the new pictures added each day at Hull Photos, and I post them with the short comments above on Facebook.
Comments and corrections to captions are welcome here or on Facebook.
______________________________________________________
There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.
My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.