White Hart Blues

A sad little note in the window of the White Hart on Alfred Gelder Street informs the world that it is closed "due to the current economic climate". Optimistically it expects to reopen in the Spring. We shall see. Quite a few pubs have closed in recent years only to "reopen" as apartments.

Hull hole revisited

If there's one thing that can be said about meetings between councils and conservation bodies it is that nothing, absolutely nothing, is done with any degree of haste. So it was over a year ago that Hull Council entered into talks with English Heritage over the future of the oversized rubbish bin otherwise known as the Beverley Gate ruins and still there are no puffs of white smoke to indicate just what is going on. The plan, if you can call rumour a plan, is to fill it all in and build some new tourist attraction. Frankly the sooner the better, for despite its links to the English civil war, it is, when all said and done, just a large ugly hole in the ground.

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.

Raindrops on snowdrops

Taken by Margot K Juby

There's an old mill by the stream

Full marks for those of you who recognised  the reflection of the old Clarence flour mill. Now when I first posted about this old mill, over three years ago, I mentioned that planning permission for a hotel and casino had been granted. Well as you can see no hotel, no casino and what's more planning permission expires after three years so who knows what's going on.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Weekend Reflections are here.

Old Dock Offices

Right next door to the entrance to Queen's dock that I posted yesterday stands this late Georgian building, the former Docks Office. It was built in 1820 but as trade grew and the docks expanded new offices were built at the other end of Queens' dock now the maritme museum. Well that's the story on the blue plaque, personally I think they just wanted somewhere just a tad grander, if you click  here you'll see what I mean.

At one time, if I remember rightly, this place was a pub called the Mutiny on the Bounty then it was used by some youth training scheme. At the moment the place seems to be empty and unused.

Queen's Dock Basin

Back in the days of the late eighteenth century this was the entrance to what was then the world's largest dock. Getting sailing ships to turn  a right angle from the river to get through those gates must have been fun. Queen's dock was closed down in the 1930's, bought by the Council and filled in to give us Queen's Gardens. This entrance basin was retained as a dry dock until the 1990's.  Like a lot of places near the river it has silted up. The old crane remains; I expect it's got some sort of preservation order on it otherwise the scrap iron boys would have taken it years ago.