Hull Photos: 4/8/17 – 10/8/17

I’ve managed to keep posting an image a day over the holiday period, despite some problems with accessing WiFi when away from home, but I’ve rather got behind in posting the weekly digests of posts. So this is the first of several posts in an attempt to catch up over the next few days.

4th August 2017

One of the upper rooms in the Pilot Office on the corner of Nelson St and Queen St was built to give the pilots a clear view up the Humber for incoming vessels, and doubtless they would sit or stand there with a telescope waiting for their turn to go out in the pilot boat to meet them. But on this occasion the launch had been out in the Humber and had then come in and was waiting at the riverside, next to the horse wash before setting off to meet the ship. The view out from the Pilot Office along the estuary is now blocked by The Deep.

The ship’s name appears to be Simone, and there are several ships of that name, but all I can find details of were built after I took this picture in 1983. She has the letters RNO large amidships.


36i24: Humber pilot boat Camilla speeds off provide a pilot, 1983 – Old Town

5th August 2017

This area close to the mouth of the River Hull was Hull’s ‘Old Harbour’, lined with warehouses and wharves. I was standing close to the end of Scale Lane – where the new footbridge is to take this picture. There are more boats behind these front four, including I think a couple of the redundant lightships from the Whitton Sands, replaced a year or two earlier by solar-powered unmanned lights.

A crane is mounted on a platform jutting out from one of the warehouses, but I think will no longer have been in use. The river walkway is still there but the varied buildings which made for an interesting townscape have been replaced by an anodyne apartment development, unpleasant though not particularly ugly but lacking in character

From left to right the four boats are named Onward Pioneer, Maureen Anne W, Iveco and a crudely written SFS. The Maureen Anne W was built in 1964 at Hessle or Thorne by Dunston’s as the Hessle Flyer II, used as tranport between their two yards, and renamed Maureen Anne W in 1978. Around 2010 the tarpaulin covered open hold was converted into living accommodation and the wheelhouse rebuilt in Hartlepool.


36i31: Boats in Old Harbour, Myton Bridge and Tidal Barrier, River Hull, 1983 – River Hull


6th August 2017

A man stands on a curious lump in the River Hull looking at the swirling water and I hoped he was not about to jump in. I decided not to follow him out on the rather flimsy looking bridge from the end of Nelson St.

Proba from George Town in the Dry Dock was a sizeable ship of around 1500 tons, around 268ft long and 40 ft wide, a coaster built by Ailsa Perth Shipbuilders at Troon for Wm.Robertson Shipowners Gem Line in 1962 and seemed to pretty well fill the dry dock. I think she was floating when I took this picture and soon to leave to pick up cargo in the King George V dock. She was named Tourmaline until 1982 when she became Proba until 1986, then had a string of names – Fergus H, Socotra, Sorocco and finally in 1993, Akram V, under which name she was converted into a tanker. At the time of the photograph she was owned by Concord Leasing Ltd of Brentford in West London but registered at Georgetown in the Cayman Islands. The ship was stranded off Malaysia in 2009 and is thought to have been broken up at Chittagong in 2011.

The dry dock is now the event venue Stage@TheDock, where the Proms did an afternoon concert last month. I think the stage is actually above the dock, which is still visible at each end. Also last month the Tidal Barrier was one of several building given Grade II listed status.

The bank to the right of the picture is Sammy’s Point and from 1849-1864 the site of Martin Samuelson and Co one of Hull’s best-known shipbuilding yards which built around a hundred iron ships in 10 years and was one of the pioneers in using steel for shipbuilding. It later became a timber yard for Victoria Dock and appears to have a number of buoys stored. This is now the site of Hull’s popular visitor attraction The Deep.

36i35: Mouth of the River Hull, Tidal Barrier and Hull Central Drydock from Nelson St, 1983 – Old Town

7th August 2017

Although there was still some river traffic on the Hull, many of these vessels were apparently moored here awaiting disposal

The Humber Princess, the largest vessel in the picture, moored on the far bank, a 380 ton Oil Products Tanker built in 1979 for John H Whitaker (Tankers) Ltd of Hull (“Industry leaders in bunker logistics for over 120 years”) is apparently still in service, her last reported position in Stanhope Dock, Goole a day ago. She was built just a little upriver in Hull at the Yorkshire Dry Dock.

Some of the other vessels will have been sold and converted into houseboats and others simply broken up.

None of the buildings on the far shore have survived, with the exception of the large light-coloured shed, which I think is still there though rather altered, the premises of John H Whitaker (Holdings) Ltd on Tower St.


36i41: The Old Harbour, River Hull, 1983 – River Hull


8th August 2017

Both the Pease Warehouse, tastefully converted into flats and Drypool Bridge, recently given a paint makeover to celebrate mathematician John Venn, born in Hull but who moved away almost as soon as he could walk, are listed buildings and have survived.

Unfortunately Joseph Rank’s Clarence Mill, rebuilt after wartime bombing was not listed and was demolished early in 2016, despite being one of Hull’s best-known landmarks. A solid building which could well have been converted to other uses – like the warehouse opposite – it was to have been replaced by an ugly hotel in time for Hull’s year as UK CIty of Culture, but that failed to materialise and the site remains empty and the riverside path fenced off. The half of the Rank’s site on the other side of the bridge which was manufacturing animal feed under the trade name Blue Cross still remains, now making shotgun cartridges.


36i55: Drypool Bridge, River Hull and Clarence Flour Mill, 1983 – River Hull

9th August 2017

This was a fairly typical sight in the Old Harbour on the River Hull back in 1983, with barges moored along the wharves at the rear of the High St. On the East bank of the river in front of a sand and gravel wharf is Bowprince, a 1,485 ton suction dredger, built by Ailsa at Troon in 1964 and in 1983 London registerd and owned by British Dredging (Sand & Gravel) Co Ltd. Like so many of the ships in my pictures she came to an unfortunate end; after being sold to Madeira Island in 1991, where her name was changed to Bom Príncipe she sank and was lost there. This was apparently not her first sinking – she had in around 1968 sunk in the Thames above Greenwich after a collision with the coal coaster Blackwall Point.

Gilyott And Scott Ltd were incorporated as a company in 1901 and liquidated around 1993. John Scott was born in Beeford, a village between Bridlington and Hull, in 1827 and was a lighter owner long before the company was formed. For a time the company also operated a fleet of lorries. They were a major owner of tugs and lighters in Hull certainly after 1964 when they brought together the companies of William Gilyott, John A. Scott, T.F. Wood, Furleys and John Deheer.

There were a number of barges in the Poem series, and several others appear in my Hull photos. Twite was one of a class named after bird species.


36i56: Poem 21, Bow Prince and Twite in the Old Harbour, 1983 – River Hull

10th August 2017

The Neptune Inn was first recorded in 1817 and closed in 1979 and was boarded up awaiting demolition – which finally took place a couple of years after I photographed it. The name of the licensee, J A Lancaster was still written above the door which bears the single word ‘BAR’. Previously an older picture by another photographer shows rather more ornate doors on both sides in keeping with the pub frontage.

The pub – taken over from a local brewery chain by Worthingtons in 1897, was known as the ‘Little Neppy’, perhaps not just because of its diminutive size, but also because there was from 1797 a Neptune Hotel in Whitefriargate, built by Hull’s Trinity House for merchants landing at the newly built dock, opened in 1778 and now Queen’s Dock Gardens.

That Georgian building survives, with a blue plaque about its history, though it soon failed as a hotel being too grand and too expensive for Hull, and it was Hull’s Custom House from 1815-1912. Since the 1930s it has been leased by Boots and the staff canteen was in the former Banqueting Hall.

Neptune St is still there, leading to the Albert Dock but I don’t recall where on it this pub once stood. A small and homely pub, it used to be popular, certainly up to the 1970s, being close to the docks, Smith & Nephews, Sanderson’s paint works and various fish dealers.


36k-34: Neptune Pub, Neptune St, 1983 – Hessle Rd


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