St Mary's Cemetery, Air Street, Sculcoates

Many years before the city of Hull was built the village of Sculcoates huddled by the muddy flooded banks of the river Hull. The name, Sculcoates, comes, I've  been told, from Skuli's Cottages; Skuli being a Viking who settled in these parts. Anyhow time passed and a church was built, St Mary's, with its attendant graveyard, is first mentioned in 1232  but it could be much older. The church was rebuilt in 1760 and done up again in 1875 at the cost of a £1000. A description of it reads "An arcade of four bays separates the nave from the aisles. The east window is filled ,with stained glass, representing the Crucifixion. In the chancel is a fine old brass chandelier of 16 lights, of the Queen Anne period."  This  church  ran the old school I showed the other day. So why, you might ask, am I telling you all this instead of showing you a photo of it in all its glory? Well, sadly, the church was pulled down in 1916 and rebuilt somewhere else. So there's only the  old graveyard left, stuck between the RE:group tanks and Bankside's passing traffic. 

The magnificent  tomb must be at least 10 feet tall, unfortunately I couldn't find any inscription on it but it shows the wealth that must have been around in what is now an uninhabited area.

Lovers of graveyards and tombs should head over to Taphophile Tragics.

Rag-and-bone man

Moving with the times the rag-and-bone trade has gone from scavenging through old rags and bones to the scrap metal trade. Here's a long suffering horse puling a precarious load and no fewer than four passengers on Clough Road. No doubt this load was heading for Lord & Midgley's  scrap yard at the other end of Clough Road.

The old school on Bankside

Right next to the corner of Air Street that I showed yesterday is this old building which at first I thought was an old chapel but which was actually a school opened in 1858 and closed fifty or so years later. Since then it has been used as a warehouse. The bricked up entrance leads right onto Bankside so it was probably just as well they didn't have heavy lorries trundling past in those days. Right behind the school runs the river Hull so you can imagine how small the school yard was. See quite how small and other images of this old school here.

Regroup behind the wall

On the corner of Air Street and Bankside RE:Group take polluted water and other nasties and turn it into useable fuel. This is an area where pedestrians are clearly not catered for (I nearly got my foot squashed by a lorry turning left at this junction) and you are definitely not supposed to see what goes on behind those walls. That's the old mill putting in a cameo appearance in the top pic.

The Bankside Tree

Not many trees grow in the badlands, here's one struggling on.

Isis Mill

You have seen all those wonderful shots of the countryside in April and May covered as far as the eye can see in yellow. It's all very pretty but the nation's oil seed rape crop ends up in a place like this.

This is the Isis mill and is a stone's throw from that old mill. It looks similar to the old mill but this one is still working and producing masses of vegetable oil. It is in fact older being  built in 1912 and  owned since 1985 by Cargill. It crushes rapeseed to produce oil and protein meal. The plant can produce over 320 tonnes of oil per day from 750 tonnes of seed. With such figures it's easy to see why nearly a million acres of the UK are given over to rape each year.

Motor trade

Not owning a car means I know little about the motor trade but even I know that these establishments are not the top of the range shall we say. Nevertheless they have a seedy charm all of their own. Should you be needing their services you'll find both on Bankside.