The Money Pit

At some point after the stinking little port of Hull was granted the right to exist those who lived in the ancient town of Beverley grew tired of having to sail/row slowly down the twisting, meandering mud stream that was (and remains) the river Hull and decided they needed a road to get to the place that was going to take away their trade and their preeminence as a leading town in England. And so the Hull Road came about, straight as can be through the hamlets of Woodmansey, Dunswell and on through the largest village in England Cottingham across the swampy mires of Wyke until running into the Beverley Gate and the delights of what is now Whitefriargate. Down this road came King Charles I and his mates looking for a bed for the night before being told to go sling his hook. Later on to maintain the road, toll booths were put in place on the Beverley-Hull turnpike.

But times changed, the stinking little port grew and grew and became the stinking big town spreading ever outwards and reaching up and swallowing large chunks of Cottingham (its appetite is still not sated and it would swallow the whole and other villages besides if it had its druthers)  and the road is no longer Hull Road but Beverley Road and despite its historical significance no kings would come down here if they'd any sense.
The stretch of Beverley Road running from the town centre up to Cottingham Road is, now how shall I put this without appearing too blunt, a dump. In the thirty eight years I've been here it has always been a dump, a grey depressing dump. Behind it old slum housing with attendant social problems has been cleared and replaced by new slum, sorry social, housing with attendant social problems but the late Georgian/Victorian buildings put up by the expansion of the mid 19th century remain on the road itself. The condition of these buildings varies from maintained to totally neglected as in bombed out by the Germans and still not demolished nearly eighty years later, another building had all its internal walls  taken out (don't ask why) and is in danger of collapse. To add to its woes the area has somehow become a Conservation Area, so nothing can be done without jumping through the extra hoops of planning permission and cost. None of which would matter much if this wasn't one the main roads into the town, a gateway to use Council planning parlance, and it's hardly a delight but in its defense I would say that other roads into the town also produce the urge to turn around, leave and never come back. I know other cities have similar dreary roads, I recall Liverpool's long and winding roads even after more than forty years,  but that is their problem.

Now this has not gone unnoticed by those who claim to run the place. It has been spotted that the place has had economic decline in recent years (recent years? how recent is well over half a century of decline?). The cash strapped Council fresh from putting millions of pounds of paving in parts of the empty town centre put in for some cash from whatever source has the stuff and managed to bag a couple of million to do up the place. They have a plan, and (God help us all) the plan has a name: the Townscape Heritage Scheme. Well they've had this plan for a few years now but nothing visible has shown itself. The plan is to give grants for part of the cost of renovating buildings, put in new railings and boundary walls, remove a few street signs, install heritage lighting and no doubt polish the dog turds on the pavement and so on. I'm sure none of this will do any harm but honestly it's a drop in the vast ocean. And as any fool knows a couple of million can soon be eaten up in a council plan, especially as extra staffing will be needed to get the plan off the ground (ça va sans dire!), and approving the grants is "proving slower than anyone anticipated" (of course it is, this is Parkinson's Law in action). Clearly there is little reason why a private individual would sink good money into this place and even with grants it's becoming difficult to get any progress. So why waste any more public money? Simply knock the crumbly edifices down (it wouldn't take much; one simply fell down just the other year!), scrub it clean and start again with acres of prime development land or greenery if you wish right in the heart of town ... and as this will take an absolute age to do you could invite the king to come have a look.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Road Works

For the past few months the orange bollards and safety fencing have been up at one of the busiest junctions in town where Beverley Road and Spring Bank meet Ferensway and Freetown Way. The plan is to widen the junction, renew the traffic lights and make bigger islands for pedestrians to cross over. They'll also throw in some so-called pedestrians light controlled push buttons but as these won't actually do anything until the traffic has been stopped by the traffic lights they are really just for show. As with all road works in this town delays are inevitable; last Thursday, for example, I was on the bus into town and got caught in a jam so slow that we made 50 whole yards in ten minutes. In the end I got off and walked. (If you zoom in real close to the centre of the picture my bus is the red and cream one still stuck on Beverley Road ten minutes after I got off it!) The rumour is that this work will be completed ahead of schedule, that'll be a relief and we'll be back to the natural background rate of delays. I expect, though, that the junction will look pretty much the same as it did before which is to say not very pretty at all..

"A handsome and spacious new establishment"

Mr Craft and his company it appeared had designs to have stores on the main roads into Hull. Starting in the mid 1880s with Beverley Road by 1912 they had one on Witham and one on Anlaby Road and by 1914 would have had one on Hessle Road had not an Archduke and his wife taken a wrong turn in Sarajevo. So anyhow Crafts' Ltd proudly opened their Hessle Road store in May 1919. The local paper, the Hull Daily Mail, was there and gave it a big write up. We are given a description of this "innovation for Hessle Road" that reads like an architectural review: "As one approaches the new premises, the impression is of an effectively designed building, of lofty proportions, with distinct architectural features. The design suggests a modern business establishment on the lines of the great London stores. The fabric is a Royal Doulton terracotta facade with alternate squares and graceful circular columns. On the ground floor are two large semi-island windows and two large side windows. The building is surmounted with an imposing dome." I'm guessing this was cut and pasted or whatever was the style in those days from a Crafts' Ltd press release. The ground floor we are told sold "goods in the carpet line, dress and cotton fabrics, gentlemen's outfitting goods, boots, etc.. The first floor we are informed ""will be of great interest to the ladies, for here are to be found the most modern underclothing, baby linen, smart blouses and the latest fashionable hats, effectively displayed at prices which appear to be most reasonable." It ends optimistically: "It is safe to say that Messrs Craft's new stores... will be quickly appreciated."...

Maybe the stores were appreciated I don't know. I can say that today there are no Crafts' stores in Hull. I can find no reference to what happened to these dreams stores, maybe the downturn in the 20s and 30s was too much, or maybe they spent too much on terracotta columns and imposing domes (which, by the way, seems to have disappeared). The handsome and spacious establishment now sells camping equipment and outdoor clothing: The store website informs us: "You’ll find everything from jackets, fleeces, t-shirts, trousers and shorts, hoodies, base layers (???) and workwear ." Maybe they should get the HDM to do them a write up.

Prinny Ave

Here's Princes Avenue or Prinny Ave as it is usually called. Is it just a Hull thing to abbreviate names of streets? So Cottingham Road becomes Cott Road and Beverley Road is Bev Road.
At one time there were no pubs or cafes on this street now it the place for 'continental style' eating out with ten or so establishments. It does not have the bad reputation that the city centre has for loutish behaviour and as a consequence is quite a popular area.

Rose Villa

Rose Villa stands at the entrance to Pearson Park on Beverley Road. It's now a care home for the elderly but must have been some rich man's fantasy back in the early 1900's when Beverley Road looked like the picture below taken from almost the exact spot as the above.

Fubar

They say it's bad luck to change the name of ships and maybe the same applies to pubs. Here is what used to be the Mainbrace pub on Hull's Beverley Road. For many years it was a successful pub especially with the student crowd that use Beverley Road for pub crawls. Then about two years ago it was all change and it became the Fubar. I don't know what the reasons were but this pub is now closed and is in the process of becoming a block of flats and offices.
Find out what fubar means here; now you can see what an apt name it is.

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. 

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. 

Stepney Lane

Before Hull got too big for its boots, Stepney was a small hamlet on the road to Beverley close to Sculcoates. I've read that it got its name from the presence of a mounting stone or stepping stone, but you know how the internet is so take that with a large pinch of good old Saxa salt. Stepney Lane runs from Beverley Road down to the Barmston Drain. There's a school and the glorious Bull Inn at the far end and a mix of old terraced housing dating from late 1800s/early 1900 and some more modern stuff dating from the 1980s post slum clearance. It's not exactly a rich area but there were a surprising number of Mercedes, Jaguars and even a Chevrolet parked when I walked down here.

Oblique Cut Through

The walls of this old outhouse run not at right angles to the street it's on but to the road behind giving an odd effect. This is Duesberry Street, not the sort place an innocent visitor to Hull would or should wander down by choice; it once led to a railway line that's now a foot/cyclepath. It's a short cut through to Beverley Road from Princes Avenue, the  haunt of ne'er-do-wells and worse much like this blog which has been cutting through stuff at odd angles on and off for eight years now.

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.

Signs of ageing

 

Lichenometry, a way of telling the age of exposed rocks by studying the size of lichens, is, I'm told, particularly useful on specimens under 500 years old. However I think I can accurately date this stone to sometime in or about March 1859 this being the date inscribed on the grave of one John Oxtoby late of Hull Bank¹ who, we are informed, departed this life aged 55 on the 21^st of that month.

The new month's theme for City Daily Photo is ageing or aging depending which part of the world you come from. You can see how well others have aged or agd here.

¹ Hull Bank I have found was a " a hamlet in the township and parish of Cottingham; the seat of Benjamin Blades Haworth, Esq. (which explains the Haworth Arms right on the corner of this estate) 3 miles from Hull". Hull Bank was mentioned in the Domesday Book and was part of the Manor of Cottingham, roughly bounded by Clough Road, Beverley Road, the River Hull and Dunswell. The area became part of Hull with the boundary extension of 1882.

Hull Road, Beverley

Around here a lot of roads lead to Hull and are called Hull Road. This can lead to confusion especially with the police who are, it has to be said, not the brightest stars in the firmament. Here Hull Road is neatly crossing over Beverley Beck.

The Haworth Arms

One the best pubs in Hull,  erm probably. This is the Haworth at the junction of Beverley Road and Cottingham Road. Being close to the University it's the haunt of students as well as many  locals. It's a large place and holds many events along with the usual goings on to be found in pubs. A recent refurbishment was completed in February to restore the old wooden pannelling and bar fittings. 

Now again a word of warning, it looks old but it ain't. It's yet another glorious mock-Tudor construction of the late 1920's and 30's (seems they built nothing but this style in those years!). Indeed it didn't use to be such a big building at all, just a dowdy little pub on the corner as this old photo shows. My how it's grown!

It has a website these days and you'll find that 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 Bingo Hall

The advertising on this building attempts to convince that it is so much more than bingo but that's advertising for you; a manifest denial of the truth. This place, on Clough Road, looks like and is the same size as a large warehouse and has a large car park to cope with demand. It replaced the much smaller hall on Beverley Road. I can think of at least two other similarly large bingo clubs in Hull so there must be plenty of people wanting to get their "eyes down for a full house". In the UK 45 million visits a year were made to bingo clubs which was more than went to professional football in England so it's no small business but personally I cannot see the attraction of housey-housey.

What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?

Here's a familiar sight on a Friday evening on Beverley Road, traffic tailing back to the town centre and not moving much faster than a horse and cart did two centuries ago. But this is bliss compared to the predicted Carmageddon to come on Monday and Tuesday when a section of Ferensway is to be completely closed to allow the completion of some road improvement. A three mile diversion (!) has been put in place involving crossing the river twice. Now even at the best of times those river crossings are bottlenecks and with all the extra traffic it's going to be so much fun. The official advice is to take a bus instead of your car but being stuck on a bus in giant gridlock wont improve things much. My advice: stay in bed.

The weekend in black and white is here.

"Amazing murals adding colour to Beverley Road ..."

So ran the headline in the local supplier of hyperbole aka the Hull Daily Mail a few months back and as it's Monday I can't be bothered to argue. This one depicts the courageous struggle of a yellow coffee cup with sword and shield against an army of red ones ... like I say it's Monday just go with the flow. There's another equally "amazing" mural up the road.... maybe some other time.

There are more Monday murals here.

To Let: One City of Culture

I read a report in the esteemed local newspaper that, according to the equally esteemed Sunday Times, Hull is to be included for the first time in the "Best Places to Live in the UK" list. Being the ST it is aimed at readers who would not dream of taking the bus (yes a bus dear! you pay a fare and sit with 'other people' and they may even talk to you) to the human battery farms of Orchard Park and Bransholme or the ruins of Preston Road or, God forbid, a leisurely stroll along Beverley Road with its ambience of traffic pollution, cannabis and the glorious delights urban and human decay. No these blinkered snowflakes only appreciate how the tree-lined Avenues have become desirable with lots of eating places and how "everyone in Hull has got involved" (in the C of C, darling, do keep up). It's delusional BS for the aspirant middle classes.

The list is in no particular order of merit and has no fewer than 143 places on it (as the list takes into account "the personal experiences of the authors" I'm thinking that's a hell of a lot of baksheesh!).  I suppose by the same criteria of making a big enough list Abu Ghraib might have been one of the best prisons in the world.

The other day I was accused of moaning (yes, moaning, me!, as if I would!) by some anonymous commentator, may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.

The moving plod plods; and, having plodded, plods on.

In the  glad confident years of the end of the last century Humberside Police spent well if not too wisely and opened little stations at various places throughout the town and outer regions. One such was this in Pearson Park, next door to the mosque since you ask. There was another built on Beverley Road not four hundred yards from this... Total waste of money. Although it was a station it never seemed to have anyone in it and the couple of times I needed to contact the old Bill I had to use a phone installed in the doorway which put me through to some distant operator who took a message and promised to "see to my query" (meaning get lost and don't bother us we're having our tea break). 

Well you probably know where this is heading ... 2008, the political choice to impose austerity and so on meant that Humberside Police had to close these places in the name of efficiency (an admission if one were needed that these places weren't an efficient use of resources) and they also rashly sacked hundreds of officers. I must just mention in passing that Hull now has the highest burglary rate outside of London (hoorah!) ... maybe it's unconnected and really due to all that culture, who can say?.

So, anyhow,  if you want a big Victorian villa in Pearson Park with nice quiet neighbours apply to the Humberside Police...