The Golden Eagle

I've shown the Eagle on the corner of Coltman Street and Anlaby Road a couple of times before (here and here). The place has long ago given up on being a pub like it once was and had fallen on hard times as they say. Well now it has been converted into flats, though I did hear a story that a small pub (with micro brewery?) might open on the ground floor. Whatever happens the place now looks a million dollars, with new windows and all painted up with the eagle (that they really couldn't remove, now could they?) given a fresh golden coating. It all looks really good. 

It's been yonks ...

... since I posted anything.

The new year sees Hull and all things Hully still much the same. Be assured you haven't missed anything.

The Tower

I've shown this former cinema before but so long ago that a revisit is almost obligatory. The place has had many uses it is now a night club called Funktion. The domes I've learned (and should have remembered but you know how the memory fades with age) are replacements after the originals were removed illegally in 2003ish. I like this place; its designers seemed to have taken as many architectural ornaments as they could carry and stuck them together in a pleasing fashion.

I've read that it is equally flash inside. You want a sneeky peek inside? Try this from when the place was closed a few years ago.

Big Blue Beastie

It seems Dope Burger have got a bigger van and it's hungry. Colourful though it may be it's parked on a double yellow on Anlaby Road during the rush hour and that's just wrong on so many levels.

I took this as well from the same place so why not post it ...

The Ice House or what's left ...

This is all that remains of the Salvation Army Citadel on Anlaby Road, a crumbling door step. It stood next to the ill famed New York Hotel and was known universally as the Ice House because they had stored ice in it before fridges and what have you. I remember it as a Sally Army charity shop in the mid 1980's and that moved elsewhere in 1989 and demolition quickly followed but not until the obligatory arson attack. (Hull's motto: "Burn in haste, bulldoze at leisure!") The only reasonably good picture I can find of how looked is here though I'm sure there must be many others around. It was registered as a mission hall in 1883 and had seating for 2,500! (Those were the days). During WW2 it became a part-time synagogue for Hull's Old Hebrew Congregation as their place had been bombed as was the custom in those days. The new place is much smaller but the road on which it stands was renamed Ice House Road just to keep the memory going.

Big Lil

Lillian "Big Lil" Bilocca

The only memories that I have of Hull from my childhood back in the swinging sixties in the idyllic seaside town of Hartlepool is of dock strikes (seemingly every other week), trawlers being lost at sea and a large woman in a headscarf berating all and sundry up to and including the Prime Minister about safety for trawler men. That woman, whose trademark image of the headscarf and raincoat on the grainy black and white TV of the days was really unforgettable, was Lillian Bilocca, who, along with other equally formidable women from the Hessle Road fishing community, managed to get some modicum of safety on the fishing fleet. Trawlers had to have a radio operator, come to that, trawlers had to have a radio, quite a few didn't. Why did it take a group of women to achieve these things while the men were seemingly invisible? Well that's a story for someone else to tell.

So what's all this mural about then I hear you ask? Well someone's written a book, Headscarf Revolutionaries, about all these goings on and the film rights for the book have been sold so watch out for a Hollywood blockbuster. Then the BBC program, the One Show, got involved and commissioned two fellows from Belfast (where murals like this are two a penny) to come over and paint, well, what you see. It was unveiled, if that's the word, over last weekend. And I have to say I'm impressed and I don't impress easy.

Keep on smiling

Also while I was away the Council finally took a big deep breath and blew down the New York hotel, well maybe a JCB was involved, but anyway it's gone leaving this impressive pile of bricks and dozens of homeless pigeons. The building had only been empty for fifteen years and in a state of terminal decay for nigh on eight so this is really quick stuff from HCC, verging on the impetuous. (maybe I should go away more often) The bill for demolition is thought to be well over £250,000 which the Council thinks it will get back from the owners ... I think I know who is smiling after all this.

Dope Burger

Parked up on Midland Street this decorated van belongs to a take away, or rather a fast food restaurant,  by the name of Dope Burger on Anlaby Road. Despite its name, or maybe because of it, the place has rave reviews ...

Block of colour

Anlaby Road, Hull

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Arson about

...and that makes three. Following fires at the Cornmill Hotel and then Lambert Street chapel it seemed only a matter of time before yet another derelict building got the ordeal by fire. Investigators says they cannot rule out a link between these fires. So far no-one's been injured but give it time ....

I have posted several times  the sad tale of this place the latest is here.

I think I may have jinxed Joynsons, the shop with the scaffolding in the background. Shortly after mentioning they had been trading here since 1890 a large piece of masonry fell off the building, no-one was hurt. Ooops!

The weekend in black and white is here.

"Buses are running well late"

Carr Lane

I was in town this afternoon on a spot of business and ran into a classic Hull gridlock with buses backed up on Carr Lane, Ferensway full in both directions and Anlaby Road looking like a no-go area as well. Marvellous! And not helped by the road works I mentioned  a week ago. The title is what I overheard a bus company man saying to a frustrated passenger. My bus home took 15 minutes to do 300 yards just leaving the station, even I can walk faster than that with my gammy leg and all.

Ferensway

Junction Carr Lane, Ferensway and Anlaby Road

The Fagle has landed

Through the agency of time or, more likely thieving little hands, the Eagle on Anlaby Road has been transformed into the Fagle which, as I'm sure you all know, is a French word concerning an order of hardwood trees including oak and beech. No I didn't know that either I had imagined it to mean something entirely, erm how shall I put this, different (*innocent face*). But no matter the pub is still empty.

Arnold Street

...or yet another photo of Anlaby Road. 

In the foreground is EYMS' Hull garage. EYMS quite rightly put up fares when the oil price rose but for some inexplicable reason haven't reduced them when the oil price fell. Must surely just be an oversight on their part, what say you? EYMS were subject of a documentary series on TV last year, On The Yorkshire Buses , if you seek adventure and derring-do then click on the link to catch up on all eight action packed episodes. *extracts tongue from cheek*

Lowering at the back is the spire of St Matthew's once dubbed the Stadium Church and now either closed or about to close because it's going to cost too much to fix it up. The local rag has it that this is Hull's last surviving Anglican church with a full spire, much good it did it.

Sufficient unto the day

With the demolition the other week of Highcourt this building, Hull Royal Infirmary, became Hull's tallest building. At 57m (187 ft 3/32 inches , thanks Mr Google) and with 14 floors it does not exactly scrape the sky (tickle it maybe?) but it's quite big enough I think. Here it is in its new blue facade after a recent face lift and while it may look neat and tidy outside the workings of this place are at times beyond the ken of mere mortals. It manages to keep going with infusions of cash every now and then to tide it over till the next crisis but this is no way to run a modern health service. (I shall stop here there's an election coming on and no doubt promises will be heaped upon promises and we all shall see the broad, sunlit uplands ...)

À la recherche du temps perdu or whatever

For no particular reason here is the Anlaby Road end of Midland Street from the station car park. The place hasn't changed much, if at all, in the time I've known it. Joynson's have been in that building since the 1890's selling kitchen equipment. I have to admit to a certain, possibly irrational, disliking of this street, indeed in an another post I called it seedy. When I first came to this town I was looking for digs and a B&B was recommended to me on Midland Street. I don't think I'd ever seen a more run down Dickensian flea-pit in all my then young life. It's not often I run away but that day I ran. Always a slight shudder when going past this place.

Weekend reflections are here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Old Picture Palace

Here's the art deco-ish front of what was originally the Kinemacolour Picture Palace opened back in 1910, that title was clearly too much for Hullensians so it became the Regent and stayed open as a cinema until 1978. After a spell as a roller disco(?) it became a pub. It is now part of a chain of pubs named after a confectioner from Chester-le-Street. This place is the sort of place that has to serve beer in plastic containers to avoid the risk of serious damage in those customer-on-customer disagreements that inevitably arise in the fiery heat of teleological disputation ...