2020 is a year I don’t think I want to look back on, so I’ll eschew that traditional filler and instead look back rather further to continue my series on walks in the Lea valley in the 1980s.
This time of year it has been a tradition for at least some of my family to get together to go on sometimes fairly lengthy walks, usually somewhere in the country. It’s something that has rather tailed off over the years, with both my sons now having young children, and also as my own legs getting old and tired, making anything over six or seven miles something of an ordeal.
This year things have become even more difficult, with us all under Tier 4 restrictions on travel etc and in different parts of the country, so our meetings have only been virtual. And although Linda and I have managed some short walks – around 5 miles on Boxing Day – these have all started and finished at our home. But at least I can take a digital walk in the Lea Valley.
These pictures were not all taken on the same walk, which is one I did several times when working on my Lea Valley project and have repeated parts of rather more times since, sometimes riding on my Brompton folder. Parts of it have changed dramatically over the years, and wherever in these pictures you see a timber yard, factory or power station there is probably now several blocks of flats.
So many changes make it difficult for me to pinpoint the exact locations of some of these pictures, though others have very recognisable landmarks – such as the railway viaduct in the background above, now with a blue plaque celebrating the work of Alliott Verdon Roe, the first man to build and fly an entirely British aeroplane, built here in one of its arches, back in 1909.
But Latham Timber is long gone, along with its neighbouring yard and the fences on which ‘The Gruesome’ staked their territorial claim and on which P & R pledged their ‘Forever True’ love in white paint on 16-8-82. Where are they now I wonder as I look at these pictures? Though so far as I’m aware I never saw any of them back in 1982 either.
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.
Continuing with pictures from my walk along the Greenwich Meridian in Greater London in 1984-6.
Stratford Bus Station – Peter Marshall, 1995
My walks took me as close to the line of the Meridian I had pencilled on my 1983 1:25000 OS map as possible, though that line may not have been quite exact. I think it goes through the area at the extreme left of the picture above, here just a few yards east of the roadway. My series of walks kept as close as possible to the pencil line, but it often runs through private property, buildings, across rivers etc and many detours, some quite lengthy were required.
Barge carries contaminated earth from Poplar gasworks site, Peter Marshall, 2011
One of those fairly lengthy detours was north from Poplar, where the line ran through the gas works site and across Bow Creek. It wasn’t until 2011 that I was able to go onto the former gas works site, having been engaged to photograph the use of a barge to carry away the heavily contaminated soil from the site. The line crosses the river here, going through the left end of the large shed close to the opposite bank, near to Cody Dock. This is also part of a private business estate, though you can now walk along the roadways in it. There are several such areas I have been able to photograph in later years, but I won’t add any other later pictures to these posts.
Stratford Station – Peter Marshall, 1995
The line continues through the east end of Stratford Station.
Thinking of the line of the Meridian, I had decided it was appropriate to use a panoramic format, and these pictures were all taken with a swing lens panoramic camera. I think at the time I owned two such cameras, an expensive Japanese model and a cheap Russian one. The Russian was a little more temperamental and it was sometimes difficult to wind on the film, but had a much better viewfinder and I think was probably used for most of these. Both give negatives which are roughly the width of medium format film – 55-58mm – but only 24mm high, the limit of 35mm film, giving a roughly 2.3:1 aspect ratio. There is no discernible difference in image quality.
Langthorne Rd, Leyton – Peter Marshall, 1995
Both used 35mm film and curve it in the horizontal plane around a little over a third of the outside of a circle, with the lens pivoting roughly 130 degrees around the centre of that circle during the exposure. This keeps the distance between the centre of the lens and film constant, avoiding the distortion produced by using flat film, where the edges of the film are further from the lens node. This gives a very noticeable distortion with ultra-wide lenses, limiting them to an angle of view (horizontal) of roughly 100 degrees.
St Patrick’s Cemetery, Leyton
Swing lens cameras are limited in angle of view only by the mechanical limitations and can generally cover 130-140 degrees. But the curvature of the film does produce its own unique view. Assuming you keep the camera upright, straight vertical lines remain straight as the film is not curved vertically, but non-vertical lines show curvature, increasingly so as you move away from the centre of the film. You can see this clearly in the shop window in Langthorne Rd.
Time for the last post on my series of colour pictures from Hull in my Flickr album which covers the period up to 1985. I didn’t stop photographing Hull then, but I did stop using slide film around the middle of that year, and some of the pictures in the album from 1985 were made using colour negative film. Although this made it easier to get good prints and allowed me to work with a wider range of subjects, it does make the images harder to digitise. I’ll write more about this at a later date. The first few images here are from slides and later ones from negatives.
Barge moored in River Hull, Hull 1983
As well as the colour I was attracted by the seemingly random numbers on the building and the ordered line of them on the prow of the barge, indicating the draught – the distance from the waterline to the lowest part of the hull. This barge, R38, is more or less empty and I think floating, its draught below the lowest mark of 4 (I think in feet), but when fully loaded would be at 9 or a little above. The slide mount crops the image rather more than I intended when making this picture.
Factory, River Hull, 1983
There are new industries on land adjoining the River Hull, particularly on the northern outskirts of the city, around Stockholm Rd, Malmo Rd and Bergen Way, names reflecting the traditional trade, still continuing across the North Sea into the port of Hull. I think this picture was probably made just to the north of Sutton Road bridge.
For me the bank of reeds expressed that these new industries have turned their backs to the river, while traditionally Hull’s industries had been on wharves and dependent on the River Hull for the transport in of raw materials – whale oil, agricultural products and later petroleum products and sometimes the export of bulk products such as edible oils. Now everything moves by lorry.
It is just possible still to recognise this as the view looking upstream from Chapman St Bridge, as the low sheds at left are still standing (or at least were in 2019) but I think most of the rest of the buildings in this view have disappeared and ships such as the Lee Shore and the other vessel upstream on the left bank no longer moor here.
The cocoa works on the right bank was razed to the ground around 10 years ago, and is now Energy Works, a renewable energy site built with the aid of a grant of almost £20 million from the European Regional Development Fund which will power 43,000 homes from waste and develop innovative technologies together with the University of Hull.
S Low’s laundry had long amused me as I regularly travelled along Spring Bank either on foot or more often on the top deck of a Hull Corporation Bus, and I photographed it a number of times. This was the first I had taken on colour negative film and I’m not sure that the colour is as accurate as on the two different versions on slide film you can also see in the album.
This building is still there on Spring Bank, now painted very drably grey and no longer a shop.
Humber Dock Side/Blanket Row, Hull 1985
I apologise for the green cast in this image which I should really correct, but it is perhaps appropriate given that this location, now the Humber Dock Bar and Grill overlooking the marina, describes itself as “Formerly the Green Bricks”.
The picture shows that before becoming a pub and restaurant the area was home to Charles Batte and the Kingston Fruit Co and along the street a number of other businesses, and the green glazed bricks of the pub, opened in 1806 as the New Dock Tavern and around 1838 renamed as the Humber Dock Tavern, taller than the rest of the row, are only just visible above the parked blue van. The green bricks by the Leeds Fireclay Co. Ltd probably date from 1907 and the pub was locally listed in 2006.
This was the final picture from Hull in the album Hull Colour 1972-85 (though I may add more later) which ends with some pictures from Goole.
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.
I think that Paull was one of the places we may have walked to during one of our stays in Hull, taking a bus to somewhere outside the city to a suitable starting point. There were a couple of time I hired a car, but I think only to go for holiday weeks elsewhere in Yorkshire. The last time I hired one I managed to drive it off the road into a ploughed field at some speed somewhere near Meaux (which despite the name is on the outskirts of Hull) and decided the time had come for me to give up driving.
Strangely given that back in 1965 when I first visited Hull was a city full of bicycles it was over 35 years before I ever cycled around the city. And when I did in 2003, I visited Paull for a second time, though actually riding there from Hornsea.
Paull is a riverside village on the north bank of the Humber a few miles south-east of Hull, just beyond Hedon Haven. Neither Paull nor Hedon grew as ports because sandbanks in the Humber made them unsuitable for larger ships, while a deepwater channel led towards the mouth of the River Hull.
Navigation in and out of Hull was tricky, and in 1836 Trinity House built the lighthouse at Paull for ships leaving Hull to steer towards, before picking up other lights on the south side of the estuary. Unfortunately the channel soon moved and by around 1870 this lighthouse was obsolete and was replaced by two ‘leading lights’ a little further downstream at Thorngumbald Clough.
This extensive Grade II listed property was offered for sale in 2013 for £169,950 though it is unclear if it was sold and a rather lower bid was considered. For those of us used to London prices it seems excessively cheap.
This picture amused me after photographing the Humber Bridge and I think I captioned it at the time as “Not the Humber Bridge” . The view is actually of both the River Hull, coming in from the left and the Humber across the top of the image, and the spit of mud and sand is Sammy’s Point, where Hull’s major tourist attraction, ‘The Deep’ now stands, a little back from the point here.
This was a short gangway leading out to a iron-sheathed concrete dolphin at the mouth of the River Hull from the end of Nelson St. The dolphin, designed as a temporary mooring in deep water for vessels waiting for the tide to go up the River Hull (and perhaps to protect the bank from vessels off course) is still there, but the promenade has been rebuilt to stretch to the dolphin, and a footpath now leads north from it beside the Hull.
Alley in Old Town, Hull 1981
I can’t remember precisely where this was, but the view through it is to the wholesale fruit and vegetable traders, probably on Humber St, though possibly on Wellington St. I think this may have been an alley leading from Blanket Row, but the area has changed too much for me to now be sure.
Clearly I was attracted by both the atmosphere of the alley leading to the street and by the colour, particularly the three areas of blue against the muted yellows. Blue mixed with yellow in my paintbox to make greens and green is the only other colour in this image.
Barge R57 moored at wharf north of Ferry Lane, Hull 1981
The last time I was in Hull I sat eating a lunchtime snack beside the River Hull here, though the scene had changed a little.
There was actually a barge moored a little downstream, though looking rather derelict, but I was surprised to find that there were still a couple of buildings from the earlier image remaining.
East Hull Ladder Works, Hull 1981
I don’t know the name of the dog or the name of the street where the East Hull Ladder Works then stood, but am fairly sure that it and the houses along the street either fell down or were demolished not long after I made the picture.
Probably this was a side-street off of Holderness Rd, well-placed for timber which came into Hull’s Victoria Dock. The rapid growth of Hull during the 19th century with its tremendous boom in house building will have created considerable demand for ladders.
Holderness Rd, 1977 – East Hull
And there were certainly plenty of them for sale on the Holderness Road as this picture from my web site ‘Still Occupied – A View of Hull‘ shows.
Sisson’s Paints were another famous brand from Hull, and their advertising often used their 1910 trademark of two painters carrying cans of paint and a plank. Sisson’s won a court case against a far-eastern company that copied it, replacing the plank with a ladder, but now Sissons Paints Malaysia, one of several foreign companies that continue its name, uses it with a ladder. In the early years adverts using it had the plank carrying the text ‘Hall’s. Distemper’, a product responsible for many gloomy hallways across the world, which over the years I’ve cleaned laboriously from several walls.
Sisson’s extensive works were beside the River Hull at Bankside and had this mosaic installed in 1953 (their 150th anniversary) when they were rebuilt after wartime bombing. The company was bought by Reckitt and Colman in 1964, sold on to the Donald Macpherson Group in 1968 and taken over by Finland’s largest paint manufacturer Tikkurila Oy in 1984, though production in Hull had I think ceased before this and the plant looked derelict when I took this picture. It was demolished in the early 1990s and the mosaic lost. All that remains is the gates.
Part of the large area occupied by the factory is now more colourful than ever as a part of the Bankside Gallery which sprung up following Banksy’s addition ‘Draw The Raised Bridge’ on Scott Street bridge in January 2018.
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.
I’ve photographed this listed railway swing bridge across the River Hull many times, but I like this particular detail image not just because it gets away from a more standard view and for its colour, but because of the way it puts the bridge into its now largely gone industrial context.
The bridge was built to carry the lines from Hull east to the two North Sea seaside towns of Hornsea and Withernsea. Coming out from Hull Paragon the line turned north to a level crossing at the end of Spring Bank, close to the junction of Princes Avenue. Next to this was Botanic Station, where my wife in her youth would catch a train to Hornsea for the family’s annual week at the seaside. The line then swung east to Stepney Station, close to Stepney Lane on Beverley Road and then on to this bridge across the RIver Hull. The lines to Withernsea and Hornsea diverged on the other side of the river.
Sadly, Dr Beeching, an firm evangelist for the car and the motor trade, put an end to all that and both lines closed to passenger services in October 1964, a few months before my first trip to Hull. Goods services continued to use the bridge and track as far as Hedon until 1968, and all too often I found myself sitting on the top of a bus waiting for the crossing gates to open. In front of me during the evening rush hour then would be hundreds of men on bicycles on their way home.
Nowadays the bridge seldom swings for traffic along the river, though it remains in working order and will do so when necessary. And although there are no trains, the bridge is still in use for cyclists and pedestrians.
Sculcoates, Hull 1980
An evening glow lights up this view of Sculcoates, with the cabin of the Wilmington Bridge at its right-hand edge and the tall silo of the British Extracting Company Ltd at its left. I’ve not been able to find out why the water tank on its roof has a logo with a crown on top of a stylised letter R – please let me know if you know.
I think this view is from the embankment of another disused railway line which took the Hull, Barnsley and West Riding Junction Railway and Dock Company line to its Hull terminus at Cannon St. This had been intended simply as a goods station, but the company (later more simply known as the Hull and Barnsley railway) ran out of money to construct a passenger station closer to the city centre. The line which ran here on the west side of the Beverley and Barmston Drain was a short spur down from Beverley Road Junction on the line still in use for traffic to the eastern docks.
Barges in Old Harbour, Hull 1981
Another view of barges moored in the Old Harbour of the River Hull, secured to each other by some bright orange ropes. I’m sure that some of my more imaginative psychogeographic friends would see it as some kind of weird psychic circuitry.
Red Doors, Pattern Store, Hull 1981
I like the idea of a ‘pattern store’. If you ‘Google’ it you will mainly get sewing patterns, but I think this one will have been at some kind of engineering works. Patternmakers were particularly important in shipbuilding, railway works and foundries, and the patterns they made were usually wooden cut-out shapes which recorded the exact size and shape to which metal had to be cut or cast for a particular purpose. Pattern stores might also be used to hold plans and drawings.
McGrath Bros, Fish Curers, St Mark’s Sq, St James Street, 1981
Unlike the previous picture which I have no idea of where I took it, I can locate this painted gate fairly precisely to St Mark’s Square. Off St James’s St, which is off the Hessle Rd, this bears little resemblance to its Venetian namesake, but is rather more accurately a square, though only two sides carry its name.
McGraths, later ‘Shears (McGraths)’ was a member of the HULL Fish Merchants Protection Association, and although the Cod Wars had more or less killed Hull’s fishing industry, when I took this picture the auctions at the fish dock were still the largest fresh fish auctions in the country, handling over two thirds of our Icelandic fish imports as well as the smaller amounts landed by trawlers still operating from Hull and fish brought by lorry from other ports. Hull got a new state-of-the-art fish fishmarket in 2001, but in 2011 Icelandic fish agent Atlantic Fresh abandoned Hull’s Fishgate for Grimsby.
I love the pointing hand with its flourish directing the reader to the company’s Office.
Barge Torcha and River Hull, Bankside, Hull 1981
I read the name of the barge incorrectly from a black and white version of this picture as it is TORCHA and not TORCH , but here is what I wrote about it.
A little downstream from the Hull Exhaust Centre, visible at left was another viewpoint, I think from a derelict wharf on the River Hull. This image, looking upstream, shows barge Torch, with number 22, owned by Hull’s Gillyott and Scott, a major tug and lighter owner formed in 1964 by amalgamation of the five companies of William Gilyott, John A. Scott, T.F. Wood, Furleys and John Deheer. Gilyott and Scott (Transport) Ltd also owned lorries. The barges are said to have been sold to Dave Hornshaw of Hornshaw Water Transport in Goole. The buildings on the East bank are some of those on the Morley Street ultramarine works, then still part of Reckitt’s – with Hull’s tallest chimney a little out of the frame to the right. Most or all have now been demolished.
Torcha is Spanish for torch, and according to one dictionary in English is a mixture of mud with straw and cob used for roofing. It’s not a word I’ve heard used but the connection with mud would certainly be appropriate for a barge the the River Hull or Humber. Cob is a more usual term of the the mix of clay, sand and straw used in building, the daub in wattle and daub which often also contained cow dung.
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.
