47 Queen Street

Here's yet another of those old riverside warehouses reused as offices, this one is next door to that C4DI building I showed the other day. It's also the offices of Wykeland the development company that is building the C4DI site so that's handy.

The weekend in black and white is here.

A bit of a mess

I'm afraid this post is a bit of a mess, basically just a pile of snaps of the ongoing demolition of the Clarence Mills. There's not a lot to add to what I've already said about this. So just excuse the mess and make of it what you will.

The weekend in black and white is here, all being well.

Top notch!

Slo-mo demolition

You've seen those demolition videos where a whole block comes down at the push of a button and lies in a neat little heap ready to be swept up and taken away; well this ain't like that at all. The old Clarence Mill is coming down but brick by brick and at this rate we'll still be here by Christmas. Complaints have been received that rubble is falling in the river and causing pollution. This is denied, of course, but the public walkway used to have a safety fence recently erected and that has been crushed by bricks so if some were to have fallen in the river it would hardly be a surprise. There's still a section of wall that runs along a busy road; it'll be fun pulling that down without injury or damage. I've recorded some graffiti for posterity, if you look real close you can see someone (SP) has even tagged the very top of the tower.

The iconic view from from Sammy's Point

I don't know if you local paper has a buzz word that it uses over and over despite the writer not having a clue what the word means. With the local rag here that word is 'iconic'. So every old building becomes iconic, bridges become iconic, fried mashed potato patties become iconic, the very snot from kid's noses is a runny green iconic splurge. So, in the manner of the iconic Hull Daily Mail, we have here on the left in the background the iconic Humber Bridge, moving across Hull's iconic water front, the soon-to-be iconic C4DI building, the obviously iconic Holy Trinity, the newly iconic Millennium Bridge and the gloriously iconic Tidal Barrier. I'm standing in front of the iconic Deep and I realise I forgot to mention the iconic River Hull and iconic Humber with attendant iconic mud. Those clouds passing by, yup, part of the iconic Hull sky ...

Saturday's Post

You know those sisyphean tasks that this town gets itself into, bridges that take years to build, piers that are never mended, roads that will never be upgraded, derelict buildings that defy both the Council and gravity; the list goes on and on. Well now that silt you can see in the background, well there's now a plan to shift it and all the other sediments from all the way up to Beverley, some eight or nine miles away, out into the Humber to aid river flow. What's that the poet says about a man's reach ...?

The monochrome fun goes on at the weekend in black and white here.

Blue barge

This old barge or lighter with the odd name of Poem 25 is a fixture in the old harbour of the river. I've shown it before here but that was before colour was invented.

Weekend Reflections are here

Stylish nonsense

As the winner of several design awards the Scale Lane bridge has many of the attributes of stylishness. It was hideously expensive, looks like someone's doodling made real and serves no useful purpose other than to amuse Hull's hardy tourists.

I noticed after I had taken this that the demolition of the Clarence flour mill in the background has begun, I was guilty of looking at the clouds and not at what was in front of my nose.

City Daily Photo's monthly theme is 'Stylish'

An interesting development

Well, turn your back for a few weeks and all kinds of things can happen. The skeleton of the new C4DI building at the river mouth has gone up like an enormous Meccano set. Plans and drawings are one thing but do not convey how imposing and impressive a building this will be, nor how it complements the Deep's angular construction on the other bank. I like it, it may not be everybody's taste but, no, I think it's just fine.

North Bridge

After two hundred and fifty years or so of going by ferry across the river the good citizens of Hull decided to move with the times and invest in the new-fangled technology, a bridge. As the bridge replaced the North Ferry it naturally became known as the North Bridge. Quite what the ferry men thought of this early example of displacement by new technology and subsequent loss of trade is not recorded. That was back in the boom times of 1541 and obviously the bridge has been rebuilt several times since then; the latest being in the late 1920's when this was put across a few yards further north than the previous bridge. The remains of that bridge are still just about visible next to this converted warehouse.

The Weekend in Black & White is here.

Humber Bore

I'm told that every tidal estuary has a bore, that is when the incoming water overcomes the outflowing water and surges upstream. In the UK the Severn bore is particualrly well known with brave souls surfing along it for miles. The Humber then also has a bore (apart from me) it's just not that noticeable near Hull. This is not to say that the tidal wave isn't rushing at great speed (25mph or so past Hull) and some violence up this narrowing inlet and indeed upstream there is, on the Trent, a bore known as the Aegir or Eagre. All these twice daily flows can and do shift sandbanks around causing shippping channels, at least upstream of Hull, to alter course, sometimes overnight. Which leads us to this little boat, the ABP survey vessel Humber Ranger, busy keeping an eye on things at the bottom of the stream and producing up to date navigation charts every two or three months.  

River Hull

From North Bridge the reflections look almost pleasant but they are, of course, virtual and inverted images of a not quite so attractive reality.

Weekend Reflections are here.

Making a start

The public pathway by the river has reopened now that they've finished knocking down whatever buildings stood in the way and work on the C4DI thing at the old dry dock goes on its merry way. Scaffolding down to the floor of the dock is a development though I'd be a tad wary of that dock gate patched up as it is with bits of wood and expanding foam. Still it's not visibly leaking. (The circus tent in the background was to do with the Freedom Festival event that this year attracted thousands more than ever before)

Rusty bits

 

This is part of the C4DI redevelopment of the dry dock that I've mentioned so many times you're probably bored by it. Since these pictures were taken the rusty leaking old lock gates have now been patched up and the dock is now dry at long last. Unfortunately the little pathway that runs around the river edge was closed as they take a dim view of hitting passing pedestrians on the noggin with flying debris. 

Today's first of the month theme for City Daily Photo is 'Rust and Ruins' .

Deep Brown Mud

Here's the local penguin farm and fish tank reflected in some glorious mud with yours truly in the shadows.

"He's fallen in da water ..."

Many years ago on the radio the Goon Show had a catch phrase or running joke, I suppose you might call it, where someone (little Jim?) would say (in a strange voice) "he's fallen in da water". This would for some reason have the audience in paroxysms of laughter. Ah those were the days, long ago, when there was probably some water to fall into at this point on the river, nowadays you'll most likely get a concussion from the mud and that's no joke.

River Traffic

Swinderby

You can go weeks without seeing anything moving on the old river then you get two barges together. Maybe they like to travel in pairs ...

Humber Princess

Open Season

Seen here reflected in the Transport Museum's window the Arctic Corsair, Hull’s last sidewinder trawler, is open to visitors from today. The museum runs guided tours round so if you're interested it's probably best to book a tour (here), also with the present parlous state of the Council's finances who knows how long this feature will be available. Did I mention it was free? Yeah, I know, why don't they charge?

The weekend reflections are here.

Millennium Bridge

There seems to have been a bit of  a bridge building craze at the fag of the last century with the result that there are lots of Millennium Bridges spanning rivers up and down the country. Some like the Gateshead Bridge have a stunning original design whilst another suffered well known design failings. Here in Hull we got a simple lift up bridge with a bright yellow counterbalance. I read in a recent article that looking at the bridge one could almost imagine being in Copenhagen. I don't know whether that's good thing or not.

The Weekend Reflections are here.

Upstream and down

From Drypool bridge to North bridge and vice versa.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Blaydes Yard

Next door to the old Dock Office that I showed a couple of days back sits this old shipyard belonging, at one time, to the Blaydes family. It's main (if not sole) claim to fame is that a merchant ship named Bethia was built here in 1784. 'Bethia?', I hear you say, 'never heard of it'. Well if I you told that the good ship Bethia was bought by the Royal Navy and renamed Bounty, a few bells might start ringing. Yes breadfruit, Captain Bligh, Fletcher Christian,  mutiny, Pitcairn Island, Charles Laughton and Clark Gable all that started here in this silted up dump. A more enterprising city with all that history lurking in its backyard might have made something of it, some tourist trap perhaps, but this sleepy back water prefers to leave it to silt up and rust away.

Here's Blaydes House, just along the road from the ship yard. It was the Blaydes family home but now houses a department of Hull University.