Still catching up with putting these weekly digests on line. You can keep up to date by following my daily posts on Facebook, and can of course see the pictures but not the texts on the intro page at Hull Photos. Comments and corrections to the captions and texts about the pictures are always welcome here or on Facebook.
3rd November
A group of three youngsters on bikes at the end of Essex St, with Cawoods (Fish Curers) smoke house behind them. They saw me taking pictures and were keen to have their picture taken. I’ve written more about Cawoods in earlier comments.
85-10j-26: Cawoods, Essex St, Gipsyville, 1985 – Hessle Rd
4th November
There is still an HB Motors in Hull, with a shop-front since around 2010 on Anlaby Rd, but these premises were a short distance away on Hawthorne Avenue, filling the area between the level crossing and Haddon St. This whole area has been extensively redeveloped this century.
85-10j-32: HB Motors, Haddon St/Hawthorn Ave, 1985 – Hessle Rd
5th November
Bentleys Snowflake Laundry was a family firm established in Hull in 1890, becoming a private limited company in 1917 and changing its name to Bentley’s Industrial Services Ltd in 1979. It became one of the UK’s leading commercial laundry companies. The company, at one time in Plane St, by 2005 had large works on Harrow St and 140 employees, was sold up then with its three divisions going separately to different laundry operators. Thanks to a number of people on the Facebook group ‘Hull: The Good Old Days’ who worked at or lived near the laundry I can confirm that this shed was on Greek St. The whole site, which had its main entrance on Plane St, was redeveloped as a small housing estate a few years after I took this picture.
Presumably the name was intended as a reference to their service making linen as white as snow, but they share their name with the man from Vermont, USA who dedicated much of his like to making photographic images of snowflakes, Wilson Alwyn “Snowflake” Bentley (1865-1931). Probably the first person to successfully photograph them, he made thousands of pictures which showed every snowflake to be different, and his work established the six-armed dendritic pattern which has become synonymous with our idea of snowflakes, though it is only one of possibly over 80 forms they take.
85-10j-42: Bentleys Snowflake Laundry, Greek St, 1985 – Hessle Rd
6th November
A shop door at No 95 almost certainly on Greek St, on the corner of Carlton Villas. The shop was closed, possibly for good and seemed rather in need of the repair which was stated to be its speciality. Most of this area was demolished around 2012, but few of the streets were long enough to have a No 95 on them.
85-10j-43: Repair A Speciality, Greek St, 1985 – Hessle Rd
7th November
This shop on the corner of Greek St and Hawthorne Avenue was not demolished until around 2013. A helpful street sign in the image makes it easy to locate.
There were extensive demolitions in the area as a part of a government backed ‘Gateway Pathfinder’ scheme, started in 2002. The Hull and East Riding Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder was the last of nine schemes to be granted funding, and by the end of 2009 had received £113m, and a scheme for a further £400m to be spent in West Hull had been approved in principle, but the scheme was ended by the coalition government and ended early in 2011, with considerable hardship for many who lived in the area.
The letters B, B, E, C on the wall were something of a mystery to me when I took this, but are the initial letters of items the shop sold, and there are very faint traces of other letters in a darker paint, though it requires a little guesswork. Going down vertically at left was I think BACON, while the larger sign was for BUTTER EGGS and CHEESE.
85-10j-46: Shop, corner of Greek St/Hawthorne Avenue, 1985 – Hessle Rd
8th November
These sheds on the Hull Fair site in Walton St were demolished in 2009.
Hull Fair is one of the largest travelling funfairs in Europe, and the largest in England and it comes to this site for 8 days around 11th October each year. The first charter for the fair was granted in 1278, but the city celebrated the 700th anniversary in 1993, probably for good historical reasons – or perhaps they just didn’t notice it fifteen years earlier. Back in 1294 the fair – largely a market – lasted 6 weeks. It moved to the present 16 acre site in 1888.
85-10j-52: Hull Fair Site, Walton St, 1985 – Argyle St
9th November
One of many small businesses in Hull, Modern Systems would appear to have seen better days. A smaller notice on the gate at left gives the name J A Drury ‘Building Joinery Plumbing Free Estimates’.
The photograph was taken on one of my long and often rambling walks in West Hull, probably somewhere between Anlaby Road and Hessle Rd, and this property has been demolished and I was not able to find any trace of it or the business on-line.
But posting it in the Facebook group Hull: The good old days, Liz Cook immediately came up with a suggestion that I could quickly confirm. This building was indeed on Arthur St, and I could recognise the row of houses whose backs are behind it as being on Plane St. There is still a lamp post in the same place (though a different post), but the business has been replaced by a more modern semi-detached house.
I photographed in Arthur St on at least one other occasion, and probably went down it because I knew it was the street where my father-in-law had grown up and lived, one of a large family of Hoults, around the time of the First World War. In June 1907, the Hull Coroner Colonel A. Thorney concluded at an inquest “Congestion the lungs consequent upon measles, was the cause of the death of the seventeen months old child of Mary Hoult, wife of a boilermaker, of 57, Arthur-street” and a verdict of death from natural causes was returned.
85-10j-55: Modern Systems Building Plumbing, Arthur St, 1985 – Hessle Rd
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.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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