"Even the mud is beautiful." Yeah, right ...

Here, for completeness, is the view from the new swing bridge looking south towards Myton Bridge and the flood defence thingy. 

I've heard of plays, films and books and so on being reviewed but never a bridge; that is until I came across a piece on the Guardian website reviewing the new Scale Lane Bridge. It's full of the usual meaningless reviewspeak phrases, "As well as being a place, it's an event ..."(?), "Scale Lane bridge is not just a way of getting from A to B, but something in itself. "(???) and the usual 'Hull is really a dump but we're not allowed to say so' comments, "Hull is the city whose misfortune is to sit on a word ladder between dull and hell, and whose associations with Philip Larkin and John Prescott link it to misery and unloveliness, most of which negativity is unfair."(Oh no it's not!) What is missing is any sense of the sheer ugliness of the thing, the massive waste of money and it's complete and utter uselessness apart from being a place to take pictures like this. 

OK rant over.

Arctic Corsair

Here's another view of the old trawler Arctic Corsair moored, if that's the right word for a boat that's firmly stuck in the mud, by the museum quarter. This is taken from Hull's new swing bridge which has already acquired its own reputation for attracting ne'er-do-wells; some have been reported jumping into the river during hot weather. Personally I say leave them there, better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown.

Propping up the bank

This former bank on the corner of Pendrill Street and Beverley Road has been empty for years. It's been propped up even longer ever since a bomb landed next door during that little local difficulty we had with our German friends some time back. For those who like a sense of geographical completeness this is opposite the Aldi store I posted last week.

More marble and mosaic

Well here's the picture I was taking the other day when I was interrupted by our friends from eastern Europe. This is yet another old Jackson's store, now Sainsbury's, showing the marble and mosaic facade that was such a common feature of these stores. There I told you it was boring.

You take our picture?

So I'm taking a fairly boring picture on Newland Avenue when suddenly my camera, which has face recognition, goes crazy as these two guys were bobbing up and down in front of me. Would I take their picture? Why, of course! Turns out they were Polish and had clearly been enjoying a Friday afternoon in July and might have little recollection of this. 

I'll show the boring picture tomorrow.

Capital P

At the corner of Princes Avenue and Spring Bank the newly painted and recently relaunched Pearsons pub is all that it appears to be. A late 1990's attempt at the 1870's Victorian look that fails miserably; so that what was an attempt to blend in becomes quite an eyesore. Better to have built something modern than this throwback. The pub originally opened as the Old Zoological which was also a bit cheeky considering the original Zoological built in about 1840/50 (and a right old dive if ever there was one) was demolished several years before this newcomer.

The Weekend in Black and White begins here.

Trojan

I saw this on Anlaby Road and thought how our American friends might smile at how we are divided by a common language.

High Street

I have posted several of the buildings on this street so it's about time for a wider view. This narrow little street was once the busy centre of the city of Hull before the docks were built. The river and old harbour lie behind the buildings on the left. It's always had a reputation as a lively place, in olden days with merchants, sailors, prostitutes and press gangs and nowadays with the Friday and Saturday night revellers who throng the many bars and pubs in the area.

There is no grass on Terry Street

Here's the Aldi store on Terry Street. It opened in the mid 1990's, I used to live in a flat directly behind it. In contrast to the Jackson's store I posted the other day this lacks any fine ornamentation, it's just a very large brick shed. What it lacks in finery though it massively gains in the vast array of goods on sale, far more than Jackson's almost pokey little shop could possibly hope to offer and cheaper too. Living on a tight budget I think I can do without the marble and the mosaic and, any way, I no longer have to look at this shop every day.

If the title has got you wondering if I've gone a bit mad in all this heat it's from A Removal from Terry Street by Douglas Dunn. The line always used to make me laugh because, when I first moved to Hull, this site used to be a large grassy area, indeed there was little but grass on Terry Street in those days after demolition and before the rebuild. 

The Avenues

Not Hull's better known Avenues, that collection of tree-lined Victorian streets to the west of Pearson Park, these avenues lack trees or even a road. This pair of 'avenues' are to be found on High Street and consist of an L-shaped properties that wrap around a  corner building. I supposed they were developed from the alley ways that pervade this area. The one above is near Bishop Lane while the one below is next to the Olde Black Boy on the corner of Scale Lane.

Food Experts

One of the 114 Jackson's stores sold off to Sainsubury's in 2004. This one on Inglemire Lane was surplus to requirements and promptly closed. The marbled facade with mosaic signage was a feature of many of these stores though here it seems not to have impressed the local vandals.

Meditations on Mud and Myton Bridge

One of the features of the river Hull as it approaches the Humber is the large accumulations of muddy silt on the banks. Presumably when the river was busier this would have been dredged but as hardly anything of any size now uses the river it has been left to its own devices with the result you see here. Upstream the silting means that there is barely room for one barge to navigate the channel. Clearly if the river is going to feature as an attraction this cannot go on. The mud banks are impressive but they are a worrying symptom of neglect. Understandably there is little incentive to clear up the river any  time soon but there is really no time to lose to clear up the mess that is Castle Street which crosses the river here at Myton Bridge. The Government has said the money is available and plans are being drawn up and work will start, if ever, in 2015 and last for  four years.(Imagine four years of road works on one of the busiest roads in the country, that is even now prone to gridlock at the drop of a hub cap.) I think Hull might have been consumed by the mud before that particular problem is solved.

For more monochrome delights visit the Weekend in Black and White.

Cop Shop

Here's the facade of Humberside Police's new headquarters. If (and it's a big if) we are to believe the figures issued just yesterday Humberside has one of the highest crimes rates in the country, but the number of crimes fell by an astonishing 11% last year. Just as well that they did because Humberside Police now has its lowest number of officers since it started, losing 60 in the last six months. A cynic might correlate the fall in crime with the fall in police numbers but I'm not that sort of guy, no sir ...Oh and we are promised even more cuts in funding at this rate crime will simply be unfunded out of existence. 

Maister House

Maister House on High Street is an 18th century merchants house. Built, or rather rebuilt, in 1743 after a fire. The rather plain facade is, I'm reliably informed, a typical feature of Palladian architecture. It is owned by the National Trust and you can go inside and look at the staircase and other bits and bobs should that be your desire. OK, I confess most of this comes from a neat little web page here which has more information including pictures of inside the building. One day I might step inside and see what's what.

Anyone lost a glove?

Taken by Margot K Juby

Who wears gloves like this in July? Maybe the owner's hands got too hot or they could no longer abide the sheer vibrant purpleyness of them. Anyhow this glove sits on a fence and points skywards, lost and unwanted.

Reach for the stars

Taken by Margot K Juby

A graffito on a house wall on Cottingham Road.

Risqué

The Ann Summers emporium on Whitefriargate is having a sale with their customary salacious advertising. 

Arms and the man

The arms I'm guessing are those of the Charterhouse because the man, George Moore Carrick, was master of Charterhouse from 1847 to 1849 when he died aged 48. Hull Charterhouse had owned this site, 4,5 and 6 Silver Street, since the 15^th century but decided to sell it earlier this year. It's right next door to yesterday's posting.

Beehive

This ornate carving is over the doorway of a former bank on Silver Street. The beehive, a symbol of industry, was the sign of Lloyds bank until 1884 when Lloyds took over a bank called Barnett, Hoares & Co who had a black horse as their sign. Lloyds kept the black horse sign as its symbol (which you can just about see in this post here). I much prefer the beehive.

The Weekend in Black & White is here.

Rusty

In need of a bit of restoration is this plaque on the Drypool Bridge. The date 1888 refers to the opening of an older swing bridge which bore this plaque and which was replaced in the 1960's by the current bridge[ 1  2].

Congratulations to all those graduates

Well it's that time of year again: Graduation Day. A day for dressing up, hiring the gowns from Ede & Ravenscroft and parading round town wearing a silly hat with your ever so proud parents. And, well, why not?

and dad can dress up too!

The guy in green is Michael Wood, a world champion town crier no less, possessed of an exceedingly loud and powerful voice.

They never had music in my day, mind you I didn't go to Hull University, my loss I suppose. Here a quartet played some baroque and roll and were ignored by all.

Poppies

Usually the Council are zealous in their extermination of weeds, sending out a small army of  workers with tanks of weed killer spraying every nook and cranny. Whether it's austerity or just plain bad management (at which the Council excels) this year there seem to be more wild flowers in unexpected places. I'm not complaining.

Spiral Path

This spiral ramp takes you up to the east side of Myton Bridge or down to the east bank of the river depends which way you want to look at it.

Twowheels

Here's a pretty sight to cheer you up on a Monday morning. Another boarded up shop, victim not of this recession but of some long forgotten down turn about twenty years ago. The building's odd appearance ( it was clearly part of a terrace) is no doubt due to high explosives dropped by some passing German in May 1941 demolishing the neighbours and creating space many years later for a police station where our hard working constables can make themselves a brew and put their feet up.

The Tenth Circle

Of Hell that is. Cottingham Day on a hot Saturday in July with thousands milling around like the living dead gawping at this and that and nothing in particular. And it was like Groundhog Day all over again exactly the same as last year and the year before that, vintage cars here, motocycle display there, hot and tired looking birds of prey display over there, an aged rock and roll show on the Green, art and crafts in the Derby and Jones Hall (try to look interested) and so on and so on. So nothing new to show for it all save this oddly placed mannequin advertising ice cream. I won't be going next year I've seen it all before. Still Snuff Mill Lane on the way home was looking at its Summer best

Sheep may safely graze ...

...but not on this pasture. If you peer closely you may see the Mayfair cinema reflected in the windows of this  shop on Beverley Road. The sheep has also starred in this blog before when the shop temporarily shifted into town. [ 1 ]. If you think this a tad odd I've seen cows, pigs and sheepdogs for sale here in the not too distant past, people buy the oddest things.

Weekend Reflections is here.

Mayfair meets Hollywood and Vine

Here are the mortal remains of the Mayfair cinema on a rather dull day. For thirty five years it showed the celluloid products of the movie industry before the little shiny box in the corner of the sitting room finally shut it down in 1964. Still there was life in the old building and it reopened the next year as a bingo hall. So for a while it was the mecca for pairs of fat ladies but even this business moved onto bigger and newer premises on Clough Road of all places. Then came the relaxed licencing laws and a boom in pub openings so it was turned into the Hogshead pub in 1998. At the height of this booze craze there about half a dozen new pubs in a half mile stretch on Beverley Road. A classic bubble that has now gone well and truly bust. I think only two are still open. Things were clearly not going too well when the name changed to Hollywood and Vine in 2011 (the sillier a pub name the sooner it goes belly-up). And now it's for sale. Surely this can't be the final reel in this story.

The Station, Stepney

Across the road from yesterday's post stands this pub. Now regular readers will note straight away the mock Tudor facade common to many pubs and probably applied in the 1920's or 30's. The pub presumably dates back to the 1850's  or 60's when the railway arrived. The little passageway to the left of the building has the grand name of  Kottingham Avenue. No-one is quite sure why it is spelt with a K nor indeed why it changed to this from Prague Terrace which it used go by.

Stepney, it turns out (OK it was news to me), was once a small village quite separate from the city of Hull. The local primary school had a rather neat little history prepared which you can read here, if such things interest you. 

Old Stepney Station

That's Stepney on Beverley Road not London E1. Hard to imagine now that there were once two railway stations on Beverley Road, one a bit further up on Fitzroy Street closed in 1924 while this one closed after the Beeching cuts in the 1960's. It was opened in the 1850's originally serving Victoria Dock and then as part of the line to Withernsea out on the coast. When I first came across this place in the early 80's it was in a terrible state of neglect, the platform was falling apart and the old track was a place frequented by drunks and people with their own unique view on how to live their lives. It was not the sort of place you would want to frequent. Anyhow a bit of money was spent repairing and turning the track into a foot/cycle path that runs across town. The station building is used as a language school, I believe, though I've never seen anyone going in or out. There are still a few drunks but their heart's not in it any more.

There's a lot more about this place on this webpage.

Today's picture is a composite of eight shots stitched together, normally I would have cropped it but I rather like the black frame. 

Pavement Parkers

From the Highway Code:

243
DO NOT stop or park
....
in front of an entrance to a property
....
where you would obstruct cyclists’ use of cycle facilities except when forced to do so by stationary traffic.
244

You MUST NOT park partially or wholly on the pavement in London, and should not do so elsewhere unless signs permit it. Parking on the pavement can obstruct and seriously inconvenience pedestrians, people in wheelchairs or with visual impairments and people with prams or pushchairs.

Law GL(GP)A sect 15

Alas no-one takes any notice of this once they've got their licence. This naughty pair in Cottingham are not just parking on the pavement in front of an entrance but also blocking a cycle lane: go straight to jail and do not collect £200 .... Seriously though there seems to be an attitude problem with some people who think they can just dump their cars where it suits them and us poor pedestrians have to make do.

6 Posterngate

After considerable investigative research (OK it's written in big letters on the building) I found this to be the parochial offices of Holy Trinity and St Mary's and it was built in 1864. What use it has put to since then I really can't say other than in the '90s it was an art gallery then an office of Yorkshire and Humberside Arts, a quango who doled out grants for arty ventures such as publishing poetry magazines (very nice people). YHA are long gone, along with Humberside and all regionally controlled arts funding. Nowadays this building holds an office for refugees and asylum seekers.

Over at City Daily Photo the theme day features facades.