Down among the Dahlias

Whoever does the planting at  East Park's Star Gardens is clearly a dahlia fan as every year the display seems to get better. 

I thought, maybe, a little panorama would not be out of place.

Who's smiling now?

The shop with a Lithuanian smile  for a name is now a mere AtCost, well at least it's still open ...

Sign of the cross

This is a new display on St Columba's on Holderness Road. Somehow I doubt any amount of new signage is going to get the punters into church although I grant it does have high brand recognition.

University rhubarb

Of course it's a damn hoarding, do you take us for fools! University spending millions on a big TV screen, no sorry, an "industry standard digital cinema"; yeah right! You can't buy culture? Pshaw! Culture is a whore, you have to haggle over the price.

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!

Sudden Closure

There has been a rash of sudden closures of restaurants in the town centre. This one, a fish bar on King Edward Street, opened last October and closed in September. Starbucks and Pizza Hut have already left town. There's news today of yet another closure in the old town. The local rag carries tales of woe from restaurant owners demanding that 'something must be done' as if the public purse should remedy their poor business choices. At this rate of attrition there won't be any left by the year of Kultur.  But, you ask, don't the good folk of Hull like to dine out of an evening? Sure they do, just not in the moribund centre of town but in places such as Princes Avenue which is crammed with restaurants and bars. I think it's called market forces or some such ...

The House on Salthouse Lane

... and while we're on Salthouse Lane I must show you this grade 2 listed Georgian dolls' house that completely dominates what's left of the lane. This was built in the 1780's as a merchant's home, later became a branch of the Bank of England then a home for sailors. It's now part of a housing association. Although facing onto Salthouse Lane for some reason this is officially 105 Alfred Gelder Street. Ah well ... Someone with a lot of time on their hands has researched the whole history of this place and put their findings online here, so, many thanks to that person.

The White Hart Hotel, again

I've shown this pub/hotel a couple of times now. The last time was back in March last year with a hopeful note that the place would reopen in Spring. Well two Springs have passed and a Summer and now Autumn and it's still not open. The economic climate has clearly not changed much, at least not for the better. This is a rear view, as it were, from Salthouse Lane and shows the full extent of this really quite large establishment. I guessing from the cosy way it agrees with the streets that at some point this was rebuilt to fit in with the 'new' layout of Alfred Gelder Street.

The Hull plinth

In the manner of Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth I offer you the scaled down, rough and ready Hull version which features that aid to modern living, without which no public space would be complete, the damaged runaway shopping trolley... oh, have we got culture for you! Anyhow Queen's garden's trees are nicely doing that thing they do at this time of year.

Hogweed

This is your common hogweed not the giant stuff that's poisonous and illegal to grow. In fact I've read that Heracleum sphondylium is "the finest tasting vegetable in the UK" but I suspect these dried up old seeds lack gastronomic appeal. This picture was taken by Margot because I didn't want to dawdle on Snuff Mill Lane.

The bonny rowan tree

This year's bumper crop means the local blackbirds won't be going hungry for a few weeks.

Save our hole!

The perennial question of what to do with the remains of Hull's Beverley Gate has once again failed to be answered. The Council flush with money (£25 million found behind the back of the sofa) had planned to fill in the hole and then grass it over. So far so good, it has to be the least spectacular historic monument on the planet but nothing is ever so simple in this place.... Having thus erased the past it was planned to put up a humungous piece of pretentious twaddle called Word Gate. To give you a flavour of the nonsense there's this from the Council web site: "Word Gate conjures up a place at a moment in the past. The place was a gate that said no and stayed closed, a place now beckoning you to come close. Hull speaks through Word gate, a gate between land and sea, between Hull's heritage and Hull's future, the City of Culture". Cutting through this rhubarb what is proposed is a thirty or forty foot high piece of steel with words scratched on it, this will completely dominate the area, block the view down Princes Dock and after a few years will be pulled down after it becomes tarnished, dulled and covered in graffiti. You think I exaggerate take a peek at the nauseating blob in the artist's drawing below.

Well as I was saying that was the Council's plan until a petition to save the monument to the start of the English civil war (the English Fort Sumter if you will) gathered a few thousand signatures. The guy in charge now says other plans will be considered. Well when you're in a hole it's best to stop digging.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Protection

Cottingham cares for its cycles, no it really does; so much so that two of these perspex protectors have been put up in the village to keep saddles dry. Gone are the days of wrapping a plastic bag over your seat, now you can relax in the comfort of the parish council's generosity; provided the wind blows in the right direction, of course.... 

October's theme for City Daily Photo is 'shelter'.

Burnett House, try again

Four years ago I posted about this property, Burnett House on Castle Street. Back then I mentioned how the place had been renovated by the Council but was still standing empty. Well the place has been re-renovated (is that a word? well it is now) and instead of being just office space it now has permission to be either retail/restaurant or office plus there are now no fewer than seven apartments on the upper floors. I came across some estate agent bumf on this property describing it as being "located in a lively area, already boasting a well established evening entertainment scene", surely they can't mean the dead and dying old town, can they? Also the building has "superb road connections" that is to say it sits next to the A63 dual carriage way, the busiest road in town which is due to be overhauled in the next few years (possibly decades?). 

It is however nice to see the hideous tatty propaganda hoardings come down but the building still seems to be sitting empty though ....

Bold as brass

The latest on the new C4DI building is that it is now getting a cladding of shiny brass tiles. This is just the first of, I think, four new buildings for this site.

Death by a thousand bricks

In the late 80's or was it the early 90's Hull betook itself of a scheme to pedestrianise parts of the city centre. Whitefriargate's pedestrianisation in the 70's having been deemed a success it was thought that a goodly dose of the same medicine would improve the place. Accordingly Jameson Street, King Edward Street and Queen Victoria Square were closed to traffic and paved over. Then later bricked over, as you see. The idea, no doubt, was to improve the 'shopping experience' and indeed no-one now gets hastled by a bus on King Edward Street but then they never did if they stuck to the pavement. As for the shops they have for the most part gone; I doubt there's single business that was running from before still going now. Instead there's, well as I've said before numerous coffee shops, charity shops, shops selling telephones and discount stores. There's also the inescapable fact that the place looks (I'll be polite here) ugly and drab. I'm told that after about 6pm the whole place is deserted which accounts for the closure of so many restaurants, pubs and so on. Today's paper brings a  tale of a restaurant being opened with the forlorn hope to "revive the evening economy", well good luck with that.

Now  instead of drawing the logical conclusion that bricking the place up was a big mistake the Council is going to polish the turd, as they say in certain parts, and fling millions at 'improvements' for the City of Culture. It won't work, no amount of pavement fountains, arty farty works and so on will bring in the shoppers. (The shops by the way are all in the new shopping mall St Stephens or out of town (people are going to Leeds and Sheffield for their shopping!), we'll skip over the absence of joined up thinking here, shall we?)  

Well here's my view for it's worth: Admit that the planners were barmy (and quite possibly corrupt, Hull is far from alone in having failed pedestrian schemes all put in in the glorious 90's), rip out the bricks, put in some tarmac and bring back the buses and cars, restore the status quo ante; in short bring back the life that was sucked out by this idiotic scheme.  But I suspect it's too late, there's a definite stench of decay but that could just be the drains....

Hull Entrance

It'll soon be that time of year when the youthful hordes descend again on the Cottingham Road campus to take up again their ascetic life of study. The Uni likes to boast how many of its graduates are in employment (95%, if I recall right) but will not disclose just what that employment is; be it a burger flipper or CEO of Tesco. This Summer's political hoopla means that it has now provided this poor nation with two deputy leaders of the Labour Party (keep that quiet). The University may have many secret drinking clubs with  bizarre toad rituals; I wouldn't know about that; this is not Oxford after all.... Anyway to any freshers reading this nonsense a warm welcome and remember to move down the bus when standing ...

Chop it up for firewood

They say planting a tree is a gift to the future well I think the time has come for us to enjoy what this gift has to offer by way of heat and light. This tree on Nelson Street has clearly not been alive for quite a while but, as ever, there's been no hurry to remove it possibly because this is a conservation area where you can't blow your nose without prior permission from the Council. Perhaps they are deciding what suitable gift to make for posterity ...

Lake view

I've posted about East Park before so I've absolutely no excuse for doing it again ...

Weekend reflections are here

Zebedee's Yard

Having got permission to put a car park where a school building once stood Trinity House splashed out on a bit of metal work to proclaim that said car park is henceforth to be known as Zebedee's Yard. Access to this delight is via Posterngate. We've met with Zebedee before; Zebedee Scaping, long serving (55 years!) headmaster of Trinity House School lies under the sod in Western Cemetery.

The weekend in black and white continues here.

End-times

With the end of world confidently predicted for next week or if not then October 7 (it's always good to have a plan B) , it seems that, in the twinkling of an eye, the occupants of these machines have been caught up together to meet the good Lord in the air ... or maybe they just popped into the café on the corner. 

Common Darter

This, if I'm not mistaken, is a female of the species Sympetrum striolatum and at the risk of being terribly politically incorrect is a bit of a stunner. Here it is taking up the sun on a fence on Snuff Mill Lane.

Margot took this because the camera and I have issues over macro shots grrrr.

Never trust a man called Dave

How do you pronounce Mbps? Is it megabips or magaberps? Anyhow while the local monopoly is trying to sell digital speed with its optical cable roll out I'm stuck on 2 and bit meagreboops and really I don't think I'm missing anything, but maybe good old Dave knows better.

Sunflowers

There's a guy down the road who grows these giant sunflowers every year and every year I mean to photograph them and every year forget. Well this year I was passing, camera in hand ....

Simply Buses

I always strive, as you are aware, to be upbeat and positive in my postings about this fair town. So it gives me immense pleasure to inform you that half of Hull's buses, those blue ones run by Stagecoach, have undergone an overhaul. Not the actual buses themselves, no that would be too much, no the routes they run on. Routes have been combined, adjusted and played around with so that now there are just fifteen routes, numbered 1 to 16. For some reason there is no number 15. Mirabile dictu there's now even a service that runs from the west unto the east (and back again) and it runs right past my front door every ten minutes. The old buses were labeled Pronto now in a masterpiece of PR they are to be known as Simplibus. We tried out that new service on Monday and sure enough it went all the way across to Holderness Road; pretty straight forward except when the driver forgot the new route in town and took us on an impromptu tourist ride round the houses to get back on track. Still, early days ...

Weekend Reflections are here.

Samman House

The last in an impromptu triplet of doorways is this on Bowlalley Lane complete with bin bags. The story of the rise (if that's the right word) of Henry Samman from Oxfordshire born cabin boy to Hull shipping magnate, owner of the Deddington Steamship Company, mayor of Beverley and eventual baronet can be read here should you want a good read. Hull's chamber of commerce and shipping no longer resides here and indeed the whole building was recently (2013) refurbished and converted into "eight unique high specification apartments" which I suppose explains the trash. A recent addition, well I've only just noticed it, is the little picture of what I believe is the SS Elf in company colours.

76-78 Lowgate

Just round the corner from yesterday's doorway and within spitting distance of the old Queen's Dock this pair of buildings, now the Lowgate Centre, were built in the late 18th-century as merchants' houses complete with stables and warehouses. The medieval practice of merchants living over the shop, as it were, died out pretty soon after this date which led to the spread of Hull north of the dock into Baker Street, Albion Street and that area. 

Maritime Buildings

Maritime buildings are on Alfred Gelder Street close by the Guildhall and were actually designed by our old friends Gelder & Kitchen in 1900. The doorway is impressive but could do with some tlc and a good coat of paint. A nearby blue plaque informs us that a goodly portion of Finland's huddled masses went through Hull on their way to the land of the free and the home of the whatever ...

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.