Dove House

A common sight on many shopping streets in this area is the Dove House charity shop collecting funds for the hospice for people with "a life limiting illness". When I say common there are over thirty of them spread across Hull and other East Riding towns providing 20% of the income for this charity. This one in Beverley Road specialises in furniture but it's right next to a more general shop selling the usual mix of clothing, books and toys. They also run a lottery. Hospices receive just a third of their funding from central Government so need all the help they can get.

The Local Rag

These are the offices of the Hull Daily Mail, a sprawling block at Blundell's Corner, the junction of Beverley Road and Spring Bank, that used to house a much bigger operation than at present. The paper is no longer printed here, that being done somewhere outside of Hull and then the papers trucked back for sale in the city. Don't ask how much it costs, I haven't bought a copy since Margaret Thatcher resigned! It claims a readership of 170,000 and is the largest regional newspaper in Yorkshire.

Now it has to be said that though it is called a newspaper much of what is reported by this institution is far from being new or even newsworthy. It is often wrong on facts, its standards of grammar are quite lamentable, it is not above copying stories from other sources without attribution. (I know plagiarism is the basis of all culture but when I found a senior HDM employee Tweeting my photo as if he owned the image it was a bit too much too far! Still waiting for some sort of apology for that.) Its reporters, if we may call them that, seem to have scant local knowledge and often misname places and streets. I could go on but you get the gist.

You can check out its web site here, but be warned, I'm told that the mobile site is a jumble of popup adverts that make it unusable, it often gives request timeouts and is generally poor. The only good thing on the site is the comments from readers which run the full gamut of sceptical denial of just about everything to rallying positively behind everything Hullish. I should just add here that I do not read the sports bits so that might be quite superb but somehow I doubt it.

Now having said all that, it came as no little surprise to hear that HDM has won awards for being the best regional newspaper. The judges said it was "delivering a newspaper completely in tune with the communities it served"; well quite! Makes you wonder how bad the other papers are.

Brunswick Arcade

Across the road from yesterday's empty church stands Brunswick Arcade. Built as the sign says in 1890 and like the curate's egg it's good in parts. The northern end is in pretty good nick with a newsagent (Pickwick Papers, where I used to get my papers from many years ago) and a couple of restaurants though one of them is undergoing renovation. No, the trouble lies, as you can see below, at this near end which is or was nearly collapsing from neglect and decay. Now this is a conservation area and no doubt these buildings are listed ( I haven't checked) and as members of the public tend to resent buildings falling on their heads the Council has been put in the position of having to pay for scaffolding to prop up a building it does not own. Price, according to local press, a mere £200,000. Fine you might say, an emergency required emergency action except the emergency was back in 2011! Every week costs the Council £150 just for inspections required by law. No sight or sound of the people this wreck belongs to. The Council are quoted in the paper as saying "Any costs will be recovered from the owners", it's good to live in hope, don't you think?

Trafalgar Street Church

Oh those Victorians! How they did like their churches, scattering them around the town with nary a thought to what the future would bring, like the market in Christianity collapsing post 1914-18. So now we have to deal with what might called post-Christian blight. This situation is made worse by a sentimental attachment to all things 'old' even if 'old' is only a hundred years and also conservation laws that defy stylistic and economic reason. Here's Trafalgar Street church on Beverley Road, built by the Baptists in 1906 in a mock Gothic brick flint-clad style (no doubt the builders' enthusiasm or funds did not run to paying out for stone) that you either love or detest (personally, it's as ugly a prayer factory as I've seen for quite some time). It was abandoned by them in 2002 then used by an even smaller sect for a while; it has been standing empty for nearly a decade. The rear church hall is now apartments, so far so good; but what on earth to you do with an empty church? Well they tried selling it for £160,000 but had to settle for a mere £80,000. That was over a year ago and still it sits there behind security fencing. I'm told it has been weatherproofed.  

Well now it seems to be a law that where ever there's an 'old' building falling into disrepair because there is no use for it there springs up a 'support' group to 'save' it and this is no exception. They want National Lottery money as well as donations for their rescue scheme. And their plan for this former house of God? A community gym! Because you must treat your body as a temple I suppose.

Did I mention it's a Grade 2 listed building in a conservation area? No? But then you'd probably guessed that's why it hasn't been knocked down a long time ago. More on this conservation nonsense tomorrow.

Passing off as Pizza Parlours

Upper Holderness Road; Lower Beverley Road

I suspect that neither Mr Brando, Mr Pacino nor yet Mr Coppola are aware of these establishments and if Mr Puzo ever found out he'd have to make them an offer they couldn't refuse.

Back seat driver

The bus service to Cottingham was, until recently, a bit of a joke with timetables serving a mere decorative function. With the introduction of  a second route and a spruced up timetable the service seems to be much improved, so a quiet vote of thanks to EYMS. The fares, however, are still a bit eye-watering.

C word on Vermont Street

I mentioned earlier how the local phone monopoly was painting up their cable cabinets with bits of what it likes to call culture. Here's the Humber Bridge gracing the end of Vermont Street, just next to that church they're demolishing that I showed yesterday. The artist, Katie Spencer, says the bridge represents "the pinnacle of Hull: togetherness and community". I promise not to post any more of these things, if you are remotely interested (and why wouldn't you be) there's a web page with all the current images and a dinky little map here. (There's almost certainly gong to be more, they'll spread like toads).

Acquired on behalf of clients

This is, or rather was, the Newland United Reformed Church on Beverley Road. It had stood empty for as long as I can remember and is now being reformed but in a more disunited way. I don't know what is to become of the site, I'll let it come as a surprise.

Use Alternative Routes

Those that make these sort of decisions chose the week before Christmas to suture one of the already sclerotic arteries that feed and drain the cyanotic city of Hull. As a result there have been daily thromboses in the western approaches. Radical surgery may be needed to by-pass the whole gangrenous mess. The patient remains in intensive care ...

Collateral Damage

In that continuation of politics by other means that went by the name of World War Two a bomb dropped by a German aircraft landed here on Beverley Road and neatly destroyed a house leaving this gap. I don't know if there were any casualties in this case though many hundreds did die in the air raids. It's an all too common sight in Hull to see a row of houses with an odd gap often grassed over or filled with a modern building, where a home has been wiped out by war. This just one of thousands in Hull destroyed or damaged and Hull just one of the hundreds of towns and cities across the world blighted by the failure of politicians to do their job without recourse to high explosive. Only today I read that  this destruction goes on in dirty little wars in far away places that we now fight by remote control from airbases in Lincolnshire. 

Looking good

My what a difference a coat of paint makes (along with hours and hours of hard work). Here is what was the Dorchester Hotel on Beverley Road. It closed a few years ago and was subjected to the now usual attacks from vandals and metal thieves (for a peek inside click here) and was left for long enough boarded up and looking pretty grim as you can see from a pic taken two years ago. (Would it be churlish to mention at this point that there is a police station directly opposite this building and still the destruction went on? Humberside Police "Protect, Help, Reassure", yeah right!)

The building is actually three Victorian villas built in the 1860's after Pearson Park opened just behind them. They were cobbled together to make what at one time was a 58 bedroom hotel later reduced to 25 after renovation in 2002. Even adding a nightclub couldn't save it. I think its position on the run down slummed down end of Beverley Road couldn't have helped. This year, however, it has been taken in hand and is looking good. I not quite sure what the plans are for it but I suspect it is returning to private accommodation. 

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

Regular visitors might recognise this as the pub formerly known as the Fishbowl, Hockney's and also Aussie Beach. Seems it was also once called Nostalgia, I missed that. Anyhow it's being disemboweled with a view to who knows what.

Time's up

Some may not appreciate an undertaker's clock ticking away the minutes of their life. Doesn't bother me that much.

Taken by Margot K Juby

Propping up the bank

This former bank on the corner of Pendrill Street and Beverley Road has been empty for years. It's been propped up even longer ever since a bomb landed next door during that little local difficulty we had with our German friends some time back. For those who like a sense of geographical completeness this is opposite the Aldi store I posted last week.

There is no grass on Terry Street

Here's the Aldi store on Terry Street. It opened in the mid 1990's, I used to live in a flat directly behind it. In contrast to the Jackson's store I posted the other day this lacks any fine ornamentation, it's just a very large brick shed. What it lacks in finery though it massively gains in the vast array of goods on sale, far more than Jackson's almost pokey little shop could possibly hope to offer and cheaper too. Living on a tight budget I think I can do without the marble and the mosaic and, any way, I no longer have to look at this shop every day.

If the title has got you wondering if I've gone a bit mad in all this heat it's from A Removal from Terry Street by Douglas Dunn. The line always used to make me laugh because, when I first moved to Hull, this site used to be a large grassy area, indeed there was little but grass on Terry Street in those days after demolition and before the rebuild. 

Twowheels

Here's a pretty sight to cheer you up on a Monday morning. Another boarded up shop, victim not of this recession but of some long forgotten down turn about twenty years ago. The building's odd appearance ( it was clearly part of a terrace) is no doubt due to high explosives dropped by some passing German in May 1941 demolishing the neighbours and creating space many years later for a police station where our hard working constables can make themselves a brew and put their feet up.

Sheep may safely graze ...

...but not on this pasture. If you peer closely you may see the Mayfair cinema reflected in the windows of this  shop on Beverley Road. The sheep has also starred in this blog before when the shop temporarily shifted into town. [ 1 ]. If you think this a tad odd I've seen cows, pigs and sheepdogs for sale here in the not too distant past, people buy the oddest things.

Weekend Reflections is here.

Mayfair meets Hollywood and Vine

Here are the mortal remains of the Mayfair cinema on a rather dull day. For thirty five years it showed the celluloid products of the movie industry before the little shiny box in the corner of the sitting room finally shut it down in 1964. Still there was life in the old building and it reopened the next year as a bingo hall. So for a while it was the mecca for pairs of fat ladies but even this business moved onto bigger and newer premises on Clough Road of all places. Then came the relaxed licencing laws and a boom in pub openings so it was turned into the Hogshead pub in 1998. At the height of this booze craze there about half a dozen new pubs in a half mile stretch on Beverley Road. A classic bubble that has now gone well and truly bust. I think only two are still open. Things were clearly not going too well when the name changed to Hollywood and Vine in 2011 (the sillier a pub name the sooner it goes belly-up). And now it's for sale. Surely this can't be the final reel in this story.

The Station, Stepney

Across the road from yesterday's post stands this pub. Now regular readers will note straight away the mock Tudor facade common to many pubs and probably applied in the 1920's or 30's. The pub presumably dates back to the 1850's  or 60's when the railway arrived. The little passageway to the left of the building has the grand name of  Kottingham Avenue. No-one is quite sure why it is spelt with a K nor indeed why it changed to this from Prague Terrace which it used go by.

Stepney, it turns out (OK it was news to me), was once a small village quite separate from the city of Hull. The local primary school had a rather neat little history prepared which you can read here, if such things interest you. 

Old Stepney Station

That's Stepney on Beverley Road not London E1. Hard to imagine now that there were once two railway stations on Beverley Road, one a bit further up on Fitzroy Street closed in 1924 while this one closed after the Beeching cuts in the 1960's. It was opened in the 1850's originally serving Victoria Dock and then as part of the line to Withernsea out on the coast. When I first came across this place in the early 80's it was in a terrible state of neglect, the platform was falling apart and the old track was a place frequented by drunks and people with their own unique view on how to live their lives. It was not the sort of place you would want to frequent. Anyhow a bit of money was spent repairing and turning the track into a foot/cycle path that runs across town. The station building is used as a language school, I believe, though I've never seen anyone going in or out. There are still a few drunks but their heart's not in it any more.

There's a lot more about this place on this webpage.

Today's picture is a composite of eight shots stitched together, normally I would have cropped it but I rather like the black frame.