Finishing Touches

Here at last the nearly completed Wilbeforce Health Centre. I showed you the plans and the initial construction here and here. Now they're putting the finishing touches to what is, in my humble opinion, quite possibly the ugliest building in town. I can't help but wonder whether that ghastly red pillar symbolises the bleeding dry of the NHS by wasteful projects such as this.

Amy, wonderful Amy ....

Here's a Hull heroine, Amy Johnson, captured in Portland stone.In the days when flights to far off places were headline news Amy Johnson was the star, flying off to Australia and South Africa breaking records all the while. In those days before 24 hour news and internet madness this was really big news with huge crowds gathering to see a plane land. I've managed to find a video which shows the enthusiasm for aviation in those days and also that English was spoken with terribly clipped vowels sounds almost like a foreign language.



There's also a song that demonstrates that music was no better then than now.

Time to go home

This is the newish Hull Interchange or combined bus and rail station. Straight ahead for buses to all parts of Hull and hereabouts. Trains are to the left from Paragon Station.

Beverley Road Public Baths

A fine example of Edwardian civic pride on display here. Not one but two domes all copper; there's posh. Opened in 1905 the baths served two purposes, recreational and hygenic. Many of the surrounding houses lacked bathrooms and so residents used the excellent slipper baths which were still in use in the 1980s; I know, I used to use them and very nice they were too! The swimming pool was used at one time for the preservation of an ancient wooden boat that was found on the shores of the Humber, there a link here. A campaign to save the baths from demolition in the 1990s was successful and they were renovated and are now in constant use; the council have a page here. There's a bit more about the building here.

Noble thoughts from all directions

This statue is in the garden of the Transport Museum (now with the pretentious name of the Nelson Mandela Garden) and was paid for by Hull's Indian community.  It was unveiled in 2004 by Lord Putnam no less and a whole host of other dignitaries.

Drop Zone

Here's the rich brown river Hull near the entrance to the old Victoria Dock. It's fairly notorious as a place where those of an unsteady gait are prone to fall in the water and get stuck in that glorious mud. There are calls to erect a fence but I feel that would end a long tradition of mocking the misfortunes of others.

A welcoming face?

This splendidly cross-eyed face peers out over the entrance to the old Westwood workhouse and infirmary in Beverley, a place where the poor and destitute were housed and put to work. Over the years the workhouse was closed and the infirmary became a NHS hospital. Despite intense local opposition the hospital is due to close and be replaced by a new state of the art building which I bet will not have a sculpture like this welcoming patients.