Wake up and smell the ....

Newland Avenue, Hull

Readers of this blog will know that I am a tea man myself. It was not always so. I used to drink loads of coffee, just like the old proverb: black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love. But then about three years ago after a nasty encounter with the Norwalk virus (I've never heard of any pleasant encounters with this little life changer) I just couldn't face the stuff again. Now I can't even stand the smell. 

So tea, anyone? Shall I be mother?

The weekend in black and white is brewing up over here.

A twofer

Here's St Alban's V2.0 on Hall Road. The fairly hideous brick block building was started in 1938 and finished after a long delay in the 1950's. It was built to replace the temporary church built in the 1920's which still stands beside it as the church hall. From the amounts spent repairing the newer building it might have been a wiser move to stick with the first effort. It's Grade 2 listed, a testament to its ugliness.

Hall Road is not to be confused with nearby Hull Road, I mean, come on, Hall and Hull; two completely different words aren't they. Not to taxi drivers and the Royal Mail apparently grrrrrrrr! 

Dull is often underrated

I think there may have been a homesick Yorkshire Dalesman responsible for naming the streets immediately near to where I live. Here we have Wensley Avenue, then there's Aysgarth and Leyburn Avenues. Together they make a small block of redbrick terraced houses where seemingly nothing much ever happens. Quiet, safe, secure streets, dull maybe but then dull is often underrated, it's what city living is all about, isn't it? Could maybe do with a few trees though.

A shot of shots

Newland Avenue, Hull

Now it's been a while since I studied la língua española (put it this way Franco was still regrettably Caudillo de España, Por la Gracia de Dios) and I really don't care that much but surely(or just maybe) that should be los chupitos? It doesn't matter much, I just liked the sign. This place is, as you might have guessed, a Mexican themed restaurant that opened recently on Newland Avenue. This street  is fast becoming what someone has described as a United Nations of food.  ¡Basta ya! Hasta luego.

A word from our sponsors

A couple of Government sponsored adverts have appeared on Cottingham Road, they accompany others on TV and in newspapers in a similar vein. It is a new development, in this country, that the Government should seek to advertise like this, trying to convince us that the country is doing "Great".(War time hype excepted) It comes on the back of other advertising campaigns about the Scottish referendum and the UK's role in Afghanistan. Overall Government advertising spending has risen by 22% this year. I cannot recall anything like this particular campaign in my lifetime, maybe the pathetic "I'm backing Britain" thing in the 60's comes close but it was nothing like as widespread as this. One might almost call it propaganda. Oh and there's an election coming up in May did I forget to mention that? I expect the Government will win that again ...

Sunday mornin' and I'm fallin' ...

So what would get a crowd out on a Sunday morning in Orchard Park?

Well maybe a bit of demolition might stir some interest

Seems the world and his mother was there to see the fun.

Then the bang, well bang's too short a word for the thumping great crack like thunder and the jolting shock.

And a second later it was all over. Done and dusted as they say.

Party's over; time to go home.

This was the end of Highcourt on Orchard Park. Bit of a blink and you'll miss it situation, it came down too fast for me, so if you want to see the action here's a video from YouTube.

Smoke ring

Nelson Street, Hull

The laws against smoking mean that poor nicotine dependent souls have taken to congregating in little huddles on the streets to share their 'vice'.  

Singing too-ral-li, oo-ral-li, addity

Singing too-ral-li, oo-ral-li, addity,
Singing too-ral-li, oo-ral-li, ay,
Singing too-ral-li, oo-ral-li, addity,
And we're bound for Botany Bay.

Sorry, couldn't resist a quick chorus of this well known ditty which has absolutely nothing to do with today's post, so let's get back on track shall we ...

You might have thought a florist opposite a large hospital would have a good trade in what Larkin called "wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers". But the shop despite (or perhaps because of) its fine name has, like old Larkin, failed to thrive. I remember when this was a post office many years ago. The online history of Anlaby Road informs me that the building, 197 Anlaby Road, was originally known as Albert Cottage and was built between 1842 and 1848 it also notes that it is "a rare survivor" of the original buildings in this area though how much longer it will last is anyone's guess.

It's a bit of an earworm that song....

Now all my young Dookies and Duchesses,

Take warning from what I've to say:

Mind all is your own as you toucheses

Or you'll find us in Botany Bay.

Lines that never cross

The track to Hull at Snuff Mill Lane

There's nothing quite like the old conundrum of parallel lines never meeting or only meeting at infinity for getting the mathematicians gassing on and on about Euclid's 5th postulate, spherical geometry or hyperbolic geometry or whatever they feel like calling it. Me, I just take comfort in these lines staying 4 foot eight inches apart all the way to Hull station. After that they can do  whatever they like.


The weekend in black and white is here.

Another piece of pie?

Trinity House Lane, Hull

Did I mention pie shops were taking over the world? I think I did.

Purplish haze

Jameson Street, Hull

The weatherpeople say we've just had the sunniest Winter on record, well every sunny day has it end and this one went out in a blaze of glory, though not everybody seemed to appreciate it.

I've just noticed the Council have for some reason installed little pink illuminated spikes on the street lights. Money to burn so it seems.

Monday meanderings

Clough Road, Hull

An idea being put out by a group calling itself Generation Rent suggests that Parliament be brought to Hull and that the Houses of Parliament be converted into affordable accommodation. No seriously, I checked the date and it's still March not April 1st. Well I suppose it's a thought and I'm sure the 650 or so MPs and 800+ Lords (a legislative body surpassed in size only by China's National People's Congress) with attendant lackeys and lickspittles would easily fit into and be made welcome by this City of Culture. And the sight of Brenda in full regalia in her state coach traipsing down Clough Road with a cavalry guard to open Parliament would be bound to draw the crowds. It's reckoned 5000 jobs would be created in Hull (no mention of how many lost in London but why wake up the dreamer?) and save £120 million over a five year parliament (or smell the coffee!). So yeah, bring it on ....

Signs of ageing

 

Lichenometry, a way of telling the age of exposed rocks by studying the size of lichens, is, I'm told, particularly useful on specimens under 500 years old. However I think I can accurately date this stone to sometime in or about March 1859 this being the date inscribed on the grave of one John Oxtoby late of Hull Bank¹ who, we are informed, departed this life aged 55 on the 21^st of that month.

The new month's theme for City Daily Photo is ageing or aging depending which part of the world you come from. You can see how well others have aged or agd here.

¹ Hull Bank I have found was a " a hamlet in the township and parish of Cottingham; the seat of Benjamin Blades Haworth, Esq. (which explains the Haworth Arms right on the corner of this estate) 3 miles from Hull". Hull Bank was mentioned in the Domesday Book and was part of the Manor of Cottingham, roughly bounded by Clough Road, Beverley Road, the River Hull and Dunswell. The area became part of Hull with the boundary extension of 1882.

Barmy Drain

When applying for planning permission to build anything new  nowadays you have to supply a flood risk assessment, a surveyor, at no small cost, looks at the plot and decides how likely it is to flood and what if anything should be taken into account when drawing up plans. Good job then that such niceties did not prevail in the middle ages else nothing would be standing in these parts. The whole Hull river valley until the middle ages used to be one big marshy malarial infested lake stretching up as far as Driffield with occasional interventions from the Humber to add to the gaiety of nations. But bit by bit and without any help from the Environment Agency river banks were raised and drains put in. The late 18^th and early 19^th century saw really large investment in drying out the land and bringing it into cultivation. And so here's the Barmston (Barmy) Drain as seen from Clough Road doing what it has been doing since the passage of the Beverley and Barmston Drainage Act of 1798 taking the wet stuff from East Yorkshire's marshy carrs and putting it into the river Hull in a neat controllable fashion. Despite the rubbish piling up on the banks these drains provide a rich habitat for wildlife though it has to be said I only saw two wrens and a depressed looking duck while I was here.

I've posted about this waterway before here.
If you are into the history of drainage (and be honest who isn't?) here's an old pamphlet about draining the Hull Valley.
The weekend in black and white lurks here.
And weekend reflections are hiding here.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog

As I shall not pass this way again here is the view going home.

On acquiring the status of an icon

Finally I arrive at the purpose of this long hike or not quite. I'd heard that demolition of the west wharf at Alexandra Dock was imminent so I thought I'd better go take a pic or two before it was too late. Looking at the map there's a public footpath right past this place however the powers that be, ABP, obviously worried that idiots (who you looking at?) might be tempted to go out and have a better view have fenced off access so this was as close as I could get. (However look you here for some views of the place)

The wharf was built in 1911 to export coal from the Yorkshire coal mines, conveyors took coal from trains to waiting ships so there was no mucking about waiting for the tide. It has been out of use for best part of sixty years or so. (Things move slowly in these parts) Though it's an interesting piece of the city's past it is perhaps, as someone once said of somewhere else, worth seeing but not worth going to see.

I suppose I must mention at this point a little local storm in a teacup that has arisen over the demolition. Many years ago, so the story goes, two  local men, somewhat the worse for wear after a night of boozing, took it upon themselves to paint some graffiti on the rusty ware house. The graffiti was no fine work of art merely a dead bird with the words "A Dead Bod" (sic) underneath. Anyhow leave something for fifty years and it'll turn into a 'well-known landmark', become 'cherished' and acquire the status of 'icon' and you try to remove it at your peril. So it has come to pass that a piece of rusting corrugated crap  is to be preserved for posterity. It's a cultural thing don'tcha know? (Read all about it here, yet more garbage here and buy the T-shirt here)

 Below is how it looked in working order in 1924( from Britain from above)

and finally the 'iconic' dead bod.

(Image Copyright Robert Mason. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, US)

A bit of a wreck

Further along the promenade there's a small graveyard of barges abandoned many years ago to rot by the tide of  Humber.

Riverside Promenade

Saturday saw me venturing into terra incognita that is to say the Riverside Promenade eastwards from the Half-tide basin towards Alexandra Dock. The walk is along the sea wall and is tiresomely straight and direct with views across the Humber on one side and a housing estate on the other but with little of note along the way. The monotony is broken by this sculpture from the workshop of Theo Wickenden and a nearby sign informing us that the sea wall was completed in 1992 and opened by the Burgomaster of Rotterdam, Dr A Peper. 

Did I mention it was straight and unvaried?

Riverside Promenade about halfway along.

and if the worst comes to the worst

I don't know what it is about this particular site on Anlaby Road but it attracts unusual adverts and this, should the barriers I mentioned yesterday fail in some way, could be useful. I checked out the system and it appears to be high-tech sandbags, sorry boxes, but I may have missed some subtle message.

Defences

Half Tide Basin entrance, Victoria Dock

If, twice a day, you have an enemy rising up and threatening to engulf you then defences akin to a medieval castle are appropriate. This weekend there have been exceptionally high tides (8.4 meters at Albert Dock on Saturday evening) and the tidal surge barrier has been doing its job again. Along with that there are miles of sea walls, completed in 1992, keeping the Humber at bay for the time being. Astronomy is conspiring against us with the approach, in September, of that point in the 19 year solar/lunar cycle when their pull on the tides is highest. It's only a matter of time ...

The round end

I was going to title this "the Stern of the Spurn" but thought better of it. It is, as I'm sure you knew, the back end of the Spurn lightship moored in the marina and given a slight green tint juste pour rire.

Weekend reflections are here.

Stasis

Well I came to see if was still here and indeed the former Alfred Percy's York Commercial and Temperance Hotel better known as the New York nightclub on Anlaby Road is indeed standing upright and showing all the signs of decay you might expect from a building that no-one wants but no-one can afford to knock down. Four years ago I posted about this and how it was due to make way for a brand new hotel and it's nearly a year since I posted that the Council were demanding it be made good or else. At the end of last month it was reported in the local rag that the Council "could be forced to intervene" after finding that the owners had been leading them a merry dance (who'd have thought it?) and might actually, you know, go ahead and demolish the place and send the owners the bill (well good luck with that!). The Council suffers from a lack of money and political will to take on the owners of places like this so a kind of septic stasis has set in.

This derelict building, which opened in 1880 and has been through two world wars with attendant air raids and numerous economic ups and downs, could still be here in a couple of years time to welcome visitors as they alight from Paragon Station for the delights of the year of the City of Culture. That or a pile of rubble and some homeless pigeons. 

The weekend in black and white is here.

Deep Piles

It's not all falling down in the old town. At the new C4DI site work is underway to put in the necessary supporting piles. It seems a company called Aarsleff have been given the task of ramming steel into the Humber's muddy shore. Pile driving is not something you can do quietly and the noise from the operation nicely echoes off the Deep's walls. I recorded it just for fun. It's really not pleasant but it took me back to when I was a youngster living in Hartlepool and they built an atomic power station across the way, the pile driving went on for what seemed like two whole years; now that was tiresome.

A little support

At the start of this month I posted the back of Humber Street and its somewhat tumbledown appearance. What I didn't mention at the time was how these buildings or what's left of them are still managing to defy gravity. The answer, as you can see, is scaffolding and lots of it and in some places brace that up with large tanks of water to keep it all in one place. Even so one of the buildings has had to be surgically removed leaving a nice little gap. It's easy see how how £4 million could just disappear down this street.

 The street is, of course, not passable to motors

Humber Street Art

I took these last year but never got round to posting them. These are some of the murals decorating the doors of old green grocers' warehouses on Humber Street. They were painted by schoolchildren as part of a project to raise awareness of marine habitat in the little darlngs (good luck with that!). I'm just posting them for historical record since things down this street are no longer quite so idyllic as I'll show tomorrow.

If a job's worth doing ...

... it's worth doing twice.

This picture of intense activity shows the resurfacing of Bricknell Avenue earlier this month. Tar dragons, as we used to call them when I was young, don't seem to be the impressive beasts of long ago. Anyhow when the job was finished it was found, to no-one's extreme surprise, that it was unsatisfactory and they'll have to do it all over again. If you look real close you can just make out that there's snow and ice on the pavement. Laying tar over wet surfaces that subsequently freeze overnight doesn't strike me as conducive to a fair outcome but what do I know ...

The Cecil

I can't believe I haven't posted this former cinema before now. It stands on the corner of Ferensway and Anlaby Road. The Cecil was opened in 1955 with a screening of the Seven Year Itch. It has a rather dull looking exterior perhaps because the architects, local firm Gelder & Kitchen, were more noted for designing flour mills than cinemas.  This was where I saw the last film I paid to go watch, (Splash, since you ask, with Daryl Hannah as a mermaid, yeah I know, pathetic!) and as I'm told it closed as a cinema in 1992 that just shows what an avid film buff I am. The building is now a Mecca bingo hall. The picture is a reflection in a window of Europa House which was built on the site of the original Cecil which stood on the opposite corner until May 8th 1941 when it was destroyed by the Germans dropping bombs on it as was the style in those days.

Weekend reflections are here.

A few trees and things

Here's a sample of some of  Cottingham's many splendid large old trees. These are all on or around Newgate Street/ Priory Road. I'd like to say they are well looked after and protected but I've noticed a few recently in a nearby street being removed to make space for a car to be parked or some such reason. 

Wicstun Express

Newland Avenue, Hull

Here's the bus from York stopping on Newland Avenue, but what all this Wicstun Express malarkey? Well Wicstun is the old name for Market Weighton, a small town somewhere between here and York. Oh verb sap 'Weighton' is pronounced something like 'wheaton' ...
The bus takes two hours to cover the 47 or so miles from York which hardly strikes me as galloping but then it does take the scenic route and stops along the way. As a marketing ploy they've adopted some stylized Viking complete with obligatory horned helmet. I'm not sure a Viking gives the impression of speed, they've more a reputation (thoroughly undeserved of course) for pillaging and general naughtiness. Vikings, of course, wouldn't have been seen dead in a poncey horned helmet and as roads were usually nonexistent or impassable they would have gone by boat up and down the Humber and been in York in a couple of hours with a full flood tide and no stopping at Wicstun or anywhere else for that matter.