Sea of gold ...

alas no, just a fancy sunset on the Humber earlier this month.

Steps

This is the footbridge over the tracks at Beverley station. This is a posh bridge, it's covered, usually you're open to the elements as you cross.

There's a seat that shapes our ends, rough hewn though it may be...

Here an old tree is put to use as a resting place for tired beings in Cottingham Dean.

Old Church

This is St Mary's on Lowgate which I've shown bits of before( 1 & 2 ); here's the southern side.  The original church dates from early 14th century though it's been knocked about a bit by a local lord of the manor who thought it was spoiling his view. To me the tower looks to be out of proportion and it turns out it was added later and built across the pavement.

H & H 500 not out ...

Well if you were landing in Hull five hundred or more years ago here is where you would come ashore; Rotenhering Staith. The name is thought to derive, not from old fish as you might have thought, but from a family who went by this unfortunate name and lived nearby and quite possibly owned the staith as well. The sign is at a jaunty angle, typical of the style of so many signs in this town.

Blogger tells me this is the 500th post, when I started I didn't think there could possibly be five hundred things to say about the place. Ah well, 'til tomorrow then ....

Under the bridge

This is where the A63 gets lifted up and over High Street and the river Hull. The sloping ground is ideal for skateboarding and other nefarious activities. It also abounds in bollards.

Fetish

I think whoever designs the roads and pavements of this town has a unquestioning reverence bordering on an unhealthy fetish for bollards. They seem to crop up in the most unlikely places and appear to serve no purpose; and because one bollard by itself would look a wee bit dumb we get whole lines of them. Maybe they come down at night and play leapfrog.

17

... the number of bollards placed in a neat row by the foreshore for no particular reason that I can discern.

North Church Side

In 1860 one T J Smith started refining and bottling cod liver oil at 10 North Church Side, later he was joined by his nephew and the business growed like topsy. The company, Smith & Nephew, is now the fifth-largest health care products supplier in a worldwide market worth £5 billion. A Hull success story; there had to be one somewhere.

Not waving but drowning

Around the 'water play area' I showed sometime back there are these wavy seats where parents can oversee their 'delightful offspring' having watery fun.

It was all yellow

In another lifetime I posted how work had started on building a new bridge across the Hull (here and here). Since then there's been a change of government and as I've mentioned before all things grind to a halt, change their names and then start again under the 'new' management. So it was a pleasant surprise to see that some progress has been made. The bridge when completed (later this year we are 'promised') will allow pedestrians to remain on it whilst it opens for boats to pass under. Below is the 'arm' that will swing and, although it's under wraps now, I can tell you it's all yellow.

King W

We don't do military coups in Britain, at least not very often. The last one was in 1688 when a supposed fear of popery and all things Catholic was used as an excuse to bring in a mercenary and his Dutch army to oust the King and his followers. This hired thug was then made king; though the City of London with its financial power was the ultimate ruler of the country and still is to this day. Of course these events are never referred to as a putsch or an invasion, no, this is our 'Glorious Revolution'.

I've shown this adornment to a public urinal before (here) but there's no harm in posting a couple of new shots, is there?

Sunset at the Deep

I showed you the Deep some time back with views from across the river Hull. This time it's up close and personal. For those of you who don't know, the Deep is a submarium, in fact the world's only submarium. It's a massive tourist attraction with thousands of visitors every year. Needless to say I've not been inside it, I don't pay to watch fish swim round in circles.

Keep Out!

This starburst security featutre adds to the attractions of Hull's marina; well it's better than a plain fence anyway.

Lifeboats

Here's what is claimed to be the "finest dockside training facility in the UK" and who am I to argue? These colourful lifeboats are used to practice getting off offshore rigs and drilling platforms as quickly as possible. If you're interested in having a go the company has a website here.

Dockside Sculpture

I came across this the other day while I was wandering around the old docks. There's no little plaque to tell what it is or who made it; so if you know anything about do let me know.

Pop goes the weasel

In town the other day I noticed that not one but three pawnbrokers had sprung up on the same street within thirty yards of each other. On another street there were two more 'uncles'. They seem to be like vultures pecking at the rotting corpse of the economy.

Humber Barge

The Humber is a mile wide at this point but the navigable channel is tucked up near the foreshore which is handy if you want to see barges passing by. This barge is called the Seagull and for bargephiles there's more pictures here.

Up on the roof

There's been a path along the banks of the Humber for hundreds possibly thousands of years so when a warehouse was built on the foreshore at Albert Dock there was only place for the path to go: up on the roof. Whilst it can be a bit nerve wracking if you suffer from vertigo or if there's strong wind blowing the uninterrupted view of Hull and the Humber makes it all worthwhile.

Click to enlarge

Newland Avenue

The date on the bridge 1882 is when Hull incorporated the village of Newland and made the road passable to traffic, before then this was known as Mucky Peg Lane. Newland Avenue is a most interesting street whose activities attract people both day and night. There are greengrocers, butchers, a fishmonger, several bakers and other food shops, including Polish, Chinese and Asian ones, hairdressers, florists, various specialist shops, cafés and many charity shops. In the evenings the takeaways, café bars and late-opening convenience stores and the Piper continue to attract people. So you can get many things on Newland Avenue nowadays except mucky pegs.

Got the Blues

Taken from the top deck of a bus this is one of the busiest places in Hull. It's Britannia House, home of the Department for Work and Pensions, the dole office. Over a quarter of households in Hull have no one in employment and 30% of children are classified as living in poverty. There is no end in sight to this appalling state of affairs, if anything, it's going to get worse; a lot worse. Without this place and money flowing from it I shudder to think what a state we'd be in. 

On a lighter note the blue lumps and phallic pillar are testament to the folly (no other word will do, except perhaps, vanity) of a previous leader of the Council and who now happens to be Lord Mayor. He does like to dress up and make himself a laughing stock providing some comic relief in our dire straits.

Piper

The Piper club is on Newland Avenue, the centre of student-land and an excellent old fashioned shopping street. It's website claims to "have something for everyone, across the week, with our eclectic mix of nights, from iconic mid-week mash-ups to established indie nights and retro cocktail nights"; so you have been warned.

If your shoes need mending drop in on Billy at the Heel & Key Bar, he's been there thirty or more years and he's the best in town.

Golden Sun

This is a fire insurance mark, high up on the side of a building on High Street. It dates from the 1700s. In those days each insurance company had its own 'fire brigade'. When there was a fire the 'fire brigade'  would seek to extinguish the flames in those buildings with the company's markers first. Uninsured buildings would be left, often with disastrous consequences for neighbouring properties. It was similar to the present US health care system. This free market approach to fire fighting was incompatible with protecting property so municipal fire brigades grew up paid for by taxes. I guess it's easier to get people to pay to protect property than to protect health.

Wise Reflections

I know nothing of what this building is for so, as a wise man once said, if you have nothing to say, say nothing.

This is the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, part of the University of  Hull. You'll find it on High Street right next door to Wilberforce's house. There's almost certainly a website but you're all grown up now and know how to use Google™, so I'll leave to your own devices.

University House or what were they on?

Now when University House was built it was not this fantasy of glass and steel but a mere functional 'soviet-style' concrete box that you can see in the back. It worked perfectly well as the student union building with cafes and bars and so on. Obviously sometime in the eons since I left the place it became so unbearably ugly that it needed a makeover and what a makeover. It took me a while to realise that the canopy changes colour. It's pretty useless as a canopy but what the heck! In these days of cutbacks to universities this is an obscene monument to conspicuous consumption.

Out for a duck

Sometimes it gets eerily empty in the old town; just me and a duck have the place to ourselves.

Church and Market

I don't think I've shown the front of Holy Trinity church before as until recently it was obscured by two large trees. Unfortunately one of the trees succumbed to disease and was removed. Whilst it's sad to lose a large old tree it does clear a space for me to show you the impresseive windows of the church; now if only that sign wasn't there ....

The tower on the left belongs to the market, why they need a tower? I don't know.

Trinity

It's a public house, a place where intoxicating liquors may be sold for consumption on or off the premises. Oh, and it's on Trinity House Lane, hence the name, either that or there's a religious connection and I can't quite see that somehow.

Sunburst

This is the back of what used to be part of the University of Lincoln. I showed you the front sometime back (here)

If you want a potted history of how come the Univeristy of Lincoln came to be in Hull read on.

It started out as Hull College of Education and various other educational establishments in Hull. With the passage of time this became Humberside College of Higher Education with colleges in Grimsby as well. Then, not wishing to remain a mere college, it became Humberside Polytechnic. In came a change of government and all polytechnics were now to be called universities, so Humberside University it became. The city of Lincoln was without its own university, so the University of Humberside was approached to develop a new campus to the south west of the city centre. The University of  Lincolnshire and Humberside emerged from this. Now a strange thing happened, gradually the business tranferred to Lincoln, bit by bit, courses and departments shifted south of the river; it was called consolidation. And the name changed once again, to the University of Lincoln (hmmm). The last I heard this building is no longer part of the university and just about all buildings in Hull relating to the university have been sold off. 

Alleyway

Another of the many alleys that make the old town more interesting than the glass and steel new city.

Green

It may not be the best photo of 2011 but I like it.

Happy New Year!

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