Posts Tagged ‘Wincolmlee’

More River Hull, Lime St and Wincolmlee 1989

Monday, March 25th, 2024

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
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
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
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
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
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.


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Hull – More Than The Deep: 2017

Monday, February 19th, 2024

Hull – More Than The Deep: I haven’t often posted about Hull on here, but it was the city where I first carried out a serious photographic project which was shown at the city’s art gallery in 1983, and one I have continued to photograph over the years, though rather less regularly since 2000.

Hull - More Than The Deep

I didn’t really choose to photograph Hull, but I did chose to marry a woman who had grown up in the city and whose family home was still there, and it was a place where I found myself with time on my hands when visiting her parents usually for a couple of weeks most summers and often for shorter periods at Christmas or Easter.

Hull - More Than The Deep

We still have a few friends in the city, although most have now died, and our visits are less frequent. Back in 2017 Hull was enjoying its year as UK City of Culture and we were visiting partly to enjoy some of that but also to meet a few friends. I was also trying to generate some interest in my pictures of the city from the 1970s and 1980s, but plans for a show fell through.

Hull - More Than The Deep

Sunday 19th February 2017 was also a day when we met with some of our family who had come to Hull both to meet us and to visit Hull’s major tourist attraction, The Deep and we met them for lunch there and I took a few pictures from its viewing platform.

Hull - More Than The Deep

I’d gone out immediately after breakfast for a long walk around some of my favourite areas of the city which I had photographed in earlier years. Then I had been working mainly with black and white film, interested in the changes taking place in the city and surprised at the way it seemed to be disregarding much of its heritage, and recording aspects that seemed unlikely to survive. I’d also taken some colour pictures and had included some in my show there, but they perhaps more reflected my interest in colour than my interest in the city.

But in 2017 I was working only on digital, so everything was colour and I was also making some panoramic colour images – again digital.

It was late afternoon by the time we said goodbye to our family, and Linda decided she would like to go for a walk around Beverley, a town seven miles away. The bus service to there is slow and infrequent, but as I wrote “it has the advantage of setting you down at the bus station immediately next door to Nellie’s.”

Beverley is an old market town, well known for its Minster and full of old buildings. It was too late for us to visit the Minster, but not for a visit to one of its Grade II* listed buildings, The White Horse Inn, generally known as Nellies, taken over by Samuel Smith’s brewery in 1976. And although they have modernised the pub in some ways, much remains as it was – and my pictures were taken using its rather dim gas lighting. It’s a place people come from around the world to see, though fortunately not in such large numbers to swamp it.

Afterwards we still had some time before the last bus back to Hull left and went for a walk around the town including Beverley Bar, the Minster and the Monk’s Walk and I made a few pictures, all hand-held.

Back in Hull we had a walk through the town, mainly deserted at night to the house where we were staying in Victoria Dock Village, and there was time for a few more pictures.

There are many more pictures from the day on My London Diary, and many have captions too:
Beverley and Nellie’s
Around the Town
The Deep
More Hull Panoramic
Wincolmlee and Lime St


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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Christmas Greetings From My Flickr Albums

Monday, December 25th, 2023

Christmas Greetings From My Flickr Albums – There are only 17 pictures out of the roughly 30,000 on my Flickr account which have the tag ‘Christmas‘, and some of those are only because I’ve mentioned the festival in my description rather than for anything in the picture. Although I’ve taken many pictures of Santas on the streets of London, almost all of these have been in the last 25 years, and so far I’ve mainly put pictures from earlier times onto Flickr – mostly from 1970-1994 and mainly of London. Wishing you all a happy Christmas. But if you get too fed up with the nonsense on TV or even with family and friends there are plenty of pictures on-line to look at!


Former Cobblers, Hackney Road, Cambridge Heath, Tower Hamlets. 1983 36u-62
Former Cobblers, Hackney Road, Cambridge Heath, Tower Hamlets, 1983 36u-62

I took this in 1983, looking through the window of a cobblers shop which had recently closed but still had posters with the message ‘It wouldn’t be Christmas without Pirelli’. Santa Claus wasn’t entirely the invention of Coca-Cola though his popularity and appearance owes much to their Christmas advertising from the 1930s. The article on the link to Wikipedia above has more about Santa than you will ever want to know. This year I produced a short run of poorly printed versions of this picture as Christmas cards for selected personal friends, mainly photographers. This picture is in my album London 1983 and also appears in Tower Hamlets – Black and White.

Auto-Sparks Ltd, Electric Harness Manufacturers, Wincolmlee, Hull, 1982 33g21
Auto-Sparks Ltd, Electric Harness Manufacturers, Wincolmlee, Hull, 1982 33g21

In my Hull Black and White album you can find this picture and the long description below:

An unprepossessing 20th century industrial building on or close to Wincolmlee where electrical harnesses – bundles of cables and connectors – for various makes of cars and other vehicles were made. Apparently Auto-Sparks Ltd Hull dates back to an electrical business founded by Mr Henry Colomb on Beverley Rd in the 1920s. Auto-Sparks Ltd was incorporated in April 1942 and a history page on the web site of its successor company, Autosparks reproduces the original company logo from 1954 when it was registered as a trade mark.

After the original owner and manager retired in the 1980s Auto-Sparks got into difficulties and collapsed in 1991. It was bought and moved to Sandiacre Nottingham by R D Components who were specialists in classic motorbike and car harnesses and they took over the name as Autosparks, and in 2005 became Autosparks Ltd.

This picture was taken in December, and my attention was drawn to the building by the Christmas decorations drawn on its first-floor windows. And by wondering whatever an electric harness was.

Hull Black and White

The SI unit of electric charge is of course the Coulomb, named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, so this electical business founded by Mr Henry Colomb would appear to be a remarkable example of nominative determinism.

Father Christmas, High Rd, Willesden, Brent, 1990, 90-12c-55
Father Christmas, High Rd, Willesden, Brent, 1990, 90-12c-55

In 1990 in Brent I took two Christmas pictures in 1990, one in black and white in the album 1990 London Photos of a Santa holding a number of figures and with a Harrods tag ‘£22’ standing on a box containing a caravan TV aerial kit.

Café, Christmas, Harlesden, Brent, 1990, 90c12-01b-41
Café, Christmas, Harlesden, Brent, 1990, 90c12-01b-41

The second picture from 1990 Brent was a café window in colour with Christmas decorations and an advert posted in it for flats to let in Station Road. Also in the window is a poster for Sickle Cell Awareness Day, 15th December 1990, to the left of which you can see part of me reflected as I made the image, along with reflections of a parked van and the shops and flats on the opposite side of the road. This is one of many pictures in my album 1990 London Colour.

Christmas, Car Sales, High St, Norwood, Croydon, 1991, 91-1b-22
Christmas, Car Sales, High St, Norwood, Croydon, 1991, 91-1b-22

From a South London used car showroom in the album 1991 London Photos is a 1987 car with its features and price described in notices on the windscreen complete with Christmas decorations. Usually when photographing interiors through windows I tried to work close to the glass and eliminate reflections so far as possible, but here I deliberately moved the black glove I was wearing to include the church across the road.

Christmas Lights, West End, Westminster, London, 1986, 86c123-32
Christmas Lights, West End, Westminster, London, 1986, 86c123-32

In 1986 I took a few colour photographs at night around Piccadilly Circus just before Christmas which are in both 1986 Colour – London & the Thames and in Westminster – Colour 1985-92.

Pictures at night are so much easier now with digital cameras as you can work with much shorter exposures – this was probably taken on ISO400 film, while now at night I often work and get better results at 4 stops faster – the ISO6400 setting on my camera. Also being able to see what you have taken immediately makes it much easier than having to wait until the film was processed and printed.

Eros, Christmas, Piccadilly Circus, Westminster, 1986, 86c123-43
Eros, Christmas, Piccadilly Circus, Westminster, 1986, 86c123-43

In the same albums and taken within a minute or two of the previous picture was this picture of Eros and the advertising display. The clock tells us that I made this at 16.06, around 15 minutes after sunset. Of course Eros isn’t really Eros, but Anteros, designed by Sir Alfred Gilbert to commemorate the philanthropic work of Lord Shaftesbury and called by him ‘The God of Selfless Love‘ – “as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant.”

But Piccadilly is a place at Christmas where some like to come and celebrate drunkenly and Anteros needs boarding up for protection and instead of seeing the fountain we see the hoardings with vintage Christmas images and greetings from The London Standard which featured Eros on its masthead.

Christmas, Shop window, Shepherds Bush, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1988, 88c1-01-61
Christmas, Shop window, Shepherds Bush, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1988, 88c1-01-61

Finally in 1988 in Shepherds Bush and now the first image in my album 1988 London Colour. This shop was a pet shop and the window is full of Christmas Stockings for cats and dogs and boxes of ‘Good Boy’ treats. Even the scratching post has some green ribbon attached. Along with some rather horrible artificial tree-like objects complete with blue and silver hanging balls. It seemed a particularly bleak image of the capitalist commercialisation of a religious festival.


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Hull City of Culture 2017

Saturday, February 19th, 2022

Hull City of Culture 2017. I spent a few days in Hull in February 2017, while the city was celebrating its year as UK City of Culture.

Hull was important to me in my early years as a photographer, and was also where my wife grew up, and we made our trip partly to celebrate her birthday in the city, as well as for a little promotion of my photographs from the 1970s and 80s and also to work on a new photographic project.

I had my first – and still my largest – one person show in Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery in 1983, and much later self-published a book, Still Occupied: A View of Hull 1977-85. It’s still available, but at a silly price – and for some reason the hardcover imagewrap version is now cheaper than the paperback version. I’d always suggest getting the PDF version at £4.50, as the images are at just a tad better quality than in print and good enough to make a print should you wish (and I’ll pardon any small breaches of copyright.) The book has around 270 black and white photographs, some reproduced rather small, on its 120 pages. First published in 2011 it was republished with minor corrections to captions for the 2017 Hull UK City of Culture.

Two rather more reasonably priced 36 page black and white booklets were later published by Cafe Royal Books, one on the River Hull, and the second, The Streets of Hull. I promised another on the docks but have not yet got around to it.

Hull from The Deep

I also set up a new web site on Hull for its year as City of Culture, finding much to my surprise that the domain hullphotos.co.uk was still available. I began this with a couple of hundred pictures at the end of 2016 and then added one every day through the whole of 2017. There are now over 600 black and white images on the site. A search of my images on Flickr reveals rather more than twice as many, including a large number in colour.

The Blade in front of City Hall

I had some disappointments during the 5 days I was in Hull in February 2017, and I found many other photographers and others in Hull who were also upset at the lack of opportunities the year had provided for local artists, instead concentrating on buying in talent from elsewhere. There is no shortage of talent in Hull and it would have been good for more of it to be showcased during the year. Plans for a small exhibition of my own work unfortunately fell through.

Self-portrait by gas light in Nellie’s in Beverley

But it was a good 5 days, with plenty to do and to seem and I was pleased with some of the panoramas I was able to make, though I’ve not yet got around to creating a show of these together with my old black and whites from the same locations. We also enjoyed a family celebration of Linda’s birthday,

Scale Lane footbridge

The pictures in this post were all taken on Sunday 19th February 2017, where I got up fairly early for a long walk in the area close to the River Hull before meeting family for lunch, then took a bus to Beverley, where we walked around the town before having a drink in Nellie’s, one of the country’s more remarkable pubs and then catching the bus back to Hull, and then walking back through an empty city to the house we were staying in on the Victoria Dock estate.

Here’s the full list of links to our five days in Hull:
Hull 2017 City of Culture
    Sculcoates & River Hull
    City Centre & Beverley Rd
    Ropery St & St Mark’s Square
    St Andrew’s Dock
    Hessle Rd
    Gipsyville
    Beverley and Nellie’s
    Around the Town
    The Deep
    More Hull Panoramic
    Wincolmlee and Lime St
    Evening in the City
    Old Town
    A ride on Scale Lane Bridge
    Around the City Centre
    Hullywood Opening
    East Hull & Garden Village
    Albert Dock
    Old Town & City Centre
    River Hull
    Night in the Old Town
    Victoria Dock Promenade