Banksy | >Re-PHOTO

Hull’s River Bridges

Hull’s River Bridges: Rich & Lou Duffy Howard began their ‘A River Full of Stories‘ project when they produced ‘Open Bridges’ as one of the most interesting events of Hull’s 2017 year as UK City of Culture.

Scott St, Bridge, River Hull, Hull, 1992, 92c8-01-31

Unlike most of the events in that year, this was one that was truly based on Hull and produced by people from Hull rather than put on by a team who largely came up from London to organise the year. Although that team received around 200 proposals from local artists for the year, virtually all these were turned down in favour of imported ‘culture’.

Scott St, Bridge, River Hull, Hull, 1992, 92c8-01-43

We are familiar with ‘taking coals to Newcastle’ but after what happened in 2017, we could replace this idiom by ‘taking culture to Hull’.

Scott St, Bridge, River Hull, Hull, 1992, 92c8-01-42

As I learnt when I met Rich and Lou for the first time in August this year, the support for including ‘Open Bridges’ was more than somewhat grudging and it required a considerable effort to get it included in the official programme, with some ingenious overcoming of problems raised.

Chambers & Fargus, River Hull, Scott St Bridge, Hull, 1986, 86c82-24

I wrote about Open Bridges here in 2019 when as a follow up to it Rich & Lou – with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund – produced “a film, exhibition, website and a book which will be given to each library and museum in Hull and the East Riding.” And those outside the area can see the book using our inter-library loan system. It would be good to see it published more widely – and perhaps one day there might be a paperback edition on sale, though its sheer size makes this difficult.

Downstream view, Scott St, River Hull, Hull 85-10c3-22_2400

On their Open Bridges 2017 web site they write “Open Bridges made history when for the first, and only time, all the bridges over the River Hull were raised, swung or closed simultaneously splitting the city in two at 20:17 hours on the autumn equinox, 22nd September 2017.”

The River Hull splits the city of Kingston upon Hull in two, with 13 bridges inside the city limits, all of which can be lifted or swung to allow navigation.

Shamefully despite its Grade II listing the City gave itself permission to demolish one of the, the Scott Street bridge (most of the pictures in this post are of it or from it.). It had been permanently raised since 1994, allowed to rot by the city authorities – which was brought to national attention by Banksy in early 2018 with his “Draw The Raised Bridge!” which may have been inspired by Open Bridges.

As well as drawing attention to the scandal of the bridge and continuing a debate about freedom of movement which ‘Open Bridges’ had also drawn attention to, Banksy’s intervention also sparked an incredible display of activity by Hull’s own fine muralists in what became the Bankside Gallery.

Anyway, at last I’ll get to the point. Here is a Facebook post by Lou Duffy-Howard on Friday 12th September:

” Today, Rich and I have launched a new Open Bridges project as part of Hull Heritage Open Days 2025 festival. Here is the link: https://openbridgeshull.com/hulls-river-bridges-25/

“‘Hull’s River Bridges’ is an online tour of all the bridges over the River Hull, past & present, inside & out. It explores the history of the bridges with previously unpublished original architectural plans and photographs, contemporary art and personal memories & stories.”
“There are contributions from many people. If you have a browse, we hope you enjoy it. And if you’d like to share it or pass on the link to anyone who might be interested we’d be grateful.”
——————

I’m proud to have some of my pictures again used in this project, particularly one of that scandalously lost Scott Street bridge. As well as photographs the site also has, maps and engineering drawings and a great deal more information about the bridges across the river and some of the people involved – including a portofolio of some of my work including my writing about the pictures featured.

In this post I’ve deliberately pictures which are not on the new web site – so do click on the links above to see more there – and of course not just my work.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

A Long Day Around Hull – 2018

A Long Day Around Hull: We were staying in Hull for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversary and on Friday 27 July 2018 we visited some old friends in Cottingham before walking to Oppy Wood in the morning. A bus took us back to the city centre where we bought sandwiches for lunch to a bus to Stoneferry where we sat on the bank of the River Hull to eat them before walking back towards the Wilmington Bridge and crossing here to view the extensive Bankside Gallery before going to the Whalebone pub to refresh ourselves before making our way back to the city centre for dinner and spending some time with family members at the Royal Hotel.

It had been a long and rather tiring day and I had taken a great many photographs, a few of which are included in this post, but rather more are on My London Diary – links in the separate sections below. In particular I had decided to make many panoramic images on our walk.

Hull, Cottingham & Oppy Wood – 2018

We set off early from our hotel in the city centre and took a roundabout route to Hull Interchange photographing a few of the interesting buildings on our way. I made a few pictures from the upper deck of the bus on the way to Cottingham and on the short walk to have morning coffee with old friends in their bungalow.

From there it was another walk to Oppy Wood, created by the Woodland Trust around 2004, after they had planted 18,000 trees as a living memorial for the 200 local men from the Hull Pals battalions who died in the Battle of Oppy Wood, near Arras, France on May 3rd, 1917. There is a permanent Kingston Upon Hull Memorial at Oppy unveiled there in 1927.

Unfortunately extensive work was going on in the area in a flood prevention scheme for the city and access to the site – usually open to the public – was much more limited than normal.

More at Hull, Cottingham.

Stoneferry, Wincolmlee & City Centre

Again I took a number of pictures from the bus as we travelled from the city centre to Anne Watson Street where we walked to a quiet spot by the River Hull to sit in the sun and eat our sandwich lunch, before making our way back towards the city centre.

Unfortunately there is only a short part of the walk beside the river and much of the time we were walking along a busy hot dusty road until we got to the footpath leading to Wilmington Bridge which used to take the railway lines to Hornsea and Withernsea across the river – but now only has cycle and footpaths.

We crossed the river mainly to photograph the ‘Bankside Gallery’ – pictures in a separate section – but there is also now a little more access to the river than before here. Hull Railway bridge was still taking goods to and from the docks.

We walked north to the end of the gallery, then made our way back down Air Street to Wincolmlee, still with many small businesses some in the old buildings in poor condition but now few making any use of the river.

We had got very hot and stopped for a drink at the Whalebone before making our way back to the city centre. There was still time to take a few more pictures there before going to meet family for a meal at the Royal Hotel at Paragon Station.

Much more at Stoneferry, Wincolmlee & City Centre.

Bankside Gallery

Hull has Banksy to thank for the Bankside Gallery. His ‘Draw The Raised Bridge‘ which appeared on Scott Street bridge on 26 January 2018 brought crowds to the area and inspired many to create murals on the many walls in the area, creating the extensive gallery.

The Grade II listed lifting bridge which has was closed to road traffic, its bascules permanently raised since 1995 was demolished in 2019-20. It had long been neglected by the city council both before and after closure.

Here I’ll post just three of the many images I took – there are many more at Bankside Gallery.

Hull Panoramas

On my visit to Hull in 2017 when it was UK City of Culture I had begun making a series of panoramic images in Hull, including many of the areas that I first photographed in black and white in the 1970s and 1980s for the work which became a show, ‘Still Occupied’ at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull in 1983, and later a self-published book of the same name and more recently in a couple of Café Royal zines.

Here are two of them – and there are another 16 on My London Diary that I made during this walk – at Hull Panoramas.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

St George’s Day 2005

St George’s Day – I’m not sure if I will be doing anything to celebrate St George’s Day today. Most of the celebrations around London seemed to be taking place on Sunday. I was planning to attend an event fairly close to where I live, but I started the day with one of my more impressive nose bleeds and decided to stay home rather than risk dripping blood over the streets.

So instead of pictures from a couple of days ago, today I’m posting some from 23rd April 2005, 19 years ago. I began that day with a visit to Tate Modern and a walk along to Clink Street where I photographed some stencilled graffiti -including one by Banksy – before crossing the river and heading to the celebrations taking place in Covent Garden.

St George's Day — *‘IT HAPPENED ANYWAY’ – Millions on the street failed to stop the Iraq invasion*

With the pictures is the rather tongue in cheek text that accompanied them in 2005 on My London Diary, edited to respect normal use of capital letters and any spelling errors. There are a few more pictures on My London Diary.

St George keeps busy as a patron saint of Canada, Catalonia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, Palestine and Portugal, as well as a number of cities including Moscow and Venice, a whole raft of trades including farmers and soldiers, as well as herpes and syphilis. It’s perhaps surprising he still has time for England, although until recently you would hardly have noticed it in any case.

St George Until recently was left to the nutters, football supporters and racists (three highly overlapping groups.) Those elites who run the country generally found patriotic display about Englishness rather beneath them – only our Celtic fringe and ethnic groups have a ‘culture’, the rest of us are too modern and intelligent for such primitivism.

Its the kind of thinking that led the Arts Council to refuse to support Morris Dancing, while pumping thousands into steel drums (as they should – but there is nothing wrong with supporting our English heritage as well.)

This year, the Royal Society Of St George (posh patriotic nutters with the Queen as their patron, started in our American colony around the 1770s) were organising celebrations in Covent Garden, and after a morning at Tate Modern I went to see.

Although I think Morris ought to be supported, I’m not a great fan of the dancers, though its OK outside the pub on a sunny day for half an hour a couple of times a year so long as I don’t have to take part.

The Moulton Morris, performing as a part of the event were more impressive than most, both for their costume and the dancing, and also for the half a dozen young people taking part. Somehow there seemed to be less beards and sandals than most sides.

More pictures on My London Diary

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

More River Hull, Lime St and Wincolmlee 1989

More River Hull, Lime St and Wincolmlee – pictures made in August 1989

*Clarence Mill, Drypool Bridge, Dry Dock, River Hull, Hull, 1989 89-8f-61*

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.

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.

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.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos