The Whitefriars Gate, King's Lynn

Hull has its Whitefriargate here in King's Lynn between terraced houses and a silted up quay is the Whitefriars Gate. It's the last vestige of a Carmelite Friary at the southern end of Lynn. A little sign around the back tells us the following "Gateway of the Carmelite Friary which from before 1260 until 1538 occupied a precinct to the south-east. Here lived Friar Aleyn, writer of 'The Book of Margery Kempe' the earliest biography in the English Language, c1436-40." This little jewel has survived the dissolution of the monasteries, sale to Lynn corporation, demolition of walls surrounding, demolition of later buildings abutting it and now stands in splendid isolation overlooking a car park.

I found an interesting blog post on this monument here.

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.

... do not sound a trumpet before you ...

If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modern people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

 George Orwell

"Do not feed the troll" is the lesson instilled in every child from the first gift of the internet at whatever early age is thought suitable these days... to which has now been added the age old edict "Do not give to the beggar" the mot du jour of the local Council. Your left hand seems to have discovered that your right hand has been doing good works to those deemed to be living an "at risk" lifestyle and your left hand is most unhappy. Your spare change might be helping buy that guy's next fix of whatever nice chemical he chooses to escape from the drudge of living in the city of culture, your scruffy little beggar may well be in fact a con artist (who isn't these days? Is it not written that all will be fake and all manner of things shall be fake...) with a nice flat paid for by housing benefit; your beggar is a smack head, a spiced out zombie, the scum of the earth, a drag on the social budget, a filthy stinking rotten nuisance ... that is your beggar so don't you go giving the beggar your precious pennies. No, give it instead to a Council approved list of charities who will see to it that your money goes to all the right places, the acceptable places, the 'deserving' places, ... all of course via the charities' very reasonable expense accounts, they have to live after all, they have rent to pay, managers to pay, they aren't a charity ... erm ... and somewhat like Orwell I see little difference between the beggars on  Jameson Street and Whitefriargate and the charities set up to do "good works": they just cut out the middle man. 

And I won't lie; I don't give to either.

Chutzpah and a bit more

Chutzpah, I think that's the word to describe taking your money then giving you some of it back and saying that it's being spent for your own good. No doubt there will still be recalcitrant remain minders, keepers of the dying flame (meeting in darkened rooms and secretly drinking to the bureaucratic kings over the water) who will point to this, wag the compulsory finger at us and say "look what you will be missing" come October 31st, Big Boris Day, le grand jour de départ (should it ever happen). But the EU simply gives us back some of our own money and, what's more, tells us how to spend it ... why any self-respecting people would put up with this crap I cannot imagine ... plus it's proposed new leaders (like the old lot before them) are  unelected, unaccountable failed despicable politicians and crooks. 

But ... taking your money and spending on projects that are supposed to be for your benefit is the nature of all government, I suppose. So you'll see a wee sign for "Northern Powerhouse". This is a quango more spoken of than existing in actuality. It seems to have mythic qualities in that it will regenerate the whole north of England without being a real entity. By merely repeating it three times it comes into being and renovates those parts that generations of neglect and disinvestment have ruined.

The Humberside Local Enterprise Partnership, another quango,  was recently criticised for failing to deliver any jobs boost despite receiving millions of central government (ie taxpayers') money.

Hull City Council we have met many times over the years; it is led by simple folk with simple ideas, as in simply ridiculous ideas. One of the latest is to take over empty shops in Whitefriargate and give them to young entrepreneurs to start up businesses. This is so self-evidently bonkers it could only come from folk with no business sense: so, off the top of my head, for example, what about the existing shops that will have to compete with non-rent paying businesses? Hardly fair, is it? I'm sure the EU would have something to say about it (see, I can do irony ...) But then fairness is not something HCC is noted for. So then let us ask who gets the money, why it'll be the greedy landlords who would otherwise be sitting on empty units demanding too high rents for the market until the simpletons of HCC come along with an open cheque book and an account filled with taxpayers' money ... the party of labour subsidising the landlords is an irony seemingly too rich for the simple folk of city hall ... and why help only young entrepreneurs? why can't grey bearded loons drink at the deep well of municipal benefice? 

Time limitations and good manners preclude me from expanding on the Environment Agency ... and Bmmjv are the recipients of all our money in case you wondered where it all went.

Where there's muck ...

I'm much too young to have any knowledge of the great smogs of London but I am old enough to remember when each house in the land burnt coal and the fuss and bother of the clean air legislation that meant we had to change to smokeless fuels: coke at first (which was a bit like having a mini blast furnace in the living room) and then later converting to good old North Sea Gas. I think all towns and cities in the in the UK are now smokeless zones however East Riding of Yorkshire has no smokeless zones at all so in Cottingham there are still the odd one or two coal burning houses pumping out the vile reeking smoke. It's amazing the intolerable, acrid, throat stinging stench from one coal fire and yet I don't recall this from thousands of coal hearths when I was a young lad; that was just how things were then. So no, I don't miss the old ways, the days starting cold and freezing as the fire obviously had gone out over night and wouldn't "catch" unless a sheet of newspaper was held over it to pull a draught up the chimney, the ashes needing carrying out, the regular delivery from the coal merchants, the sweeping of the chimney every so often to stop it catching fire (that was fun though, for a young'un, watching the brush poke out of the chimney with a cloud of soot), really cold bedrooms with ice on the window in winter, no central heating, no double glazing, no instant hot water, the singular joy of a frozen toilet and so on... I'm feeling a cold shudder just writing about it (but that could be because it's only 14C outside) ... give me a nice, efficient, clean gas boiler with instant central heating any day. But I digress ...

It was not just the bronchi of every living soul that were covered in a patina of soot and tar but the buildings were coated in grime, some with centuries of soot, as well. You might imagine that after nigh on fifty years of clean air these buildings would all be sparkling and for the most part you'd be right but ... well there's always one isn't there? This reminder of how things used to be is 46 Whitefriargate. It was originally a bank built in 1904 and despite, or maybe because of, its sooty grime it is Grade 2 listed. Now imagine, if you can, every building in every town similarly coated, ... no wonder old films were black and white ...

Summer in the City

Six years ago, almost to the day, I posted a collection from a trip round town on a Saturday afternoon. I thought maybe it could be time for a sequel, update, repeat call it what you will. There was plenty to see, as last time, but later, when I got home and watched to local news on ITV, I realised that I'd 'missed' a 'party' in Whitefriargate celebrating the birthday of murdered MP Jo Cox ( I'd noticed the seats and folk sitting around but ignored it ...had I known I would still have ignored it anyway, there's a creepy and creeping use of this woman's death as a weapon to try to silence dissent. She is portrayed a some kind of saint whereas she was in fact just another Labour/Remain MP whose politics I do not support and never will.). I also missed a gathering in Queen's Gardens by trade unionists still trying to get folk to think that unity is strength and passing on the age old messages of the labour movement... good luck with that on the first warm Saturday of the summer ... and Summer in the City was what the really quite talented young busker above was singing, he must really like the old tunes from last century ...

Mickey™ was posing for selfies and trying to sell twisted balloons

The youngsters' steel band was playing Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D which goes surprisingly well on steel drums; it does however go on and on and on and on ... and then stops for no apparent reason, a relief to all concerned.

A wee bit of faintly ridiculous quasi phoney Scottish cultural tosh was ignored by the oh so discerning passers-by ... they know their Culture when they see it.

The indoor market that two years ago I posted as being empty and deserted was heaving, it seems every pitch or stall has been filled with large variety of enterprising businesses. It was good to see  and a bit like old times.Let's hope it can continue.

Quite a lot of places had little yellow elephants displayed and outside a pub on Trinity House Lane a lady was wearing a plastic yellow elephant on her head, (out of respect for her privacy/sanity I did not photograph it). Seems it was Yellow Day in Hull and that's as much as I know or indeed want to know. 

And finally, before I go, there's this ...

Does your local news get read by someone who makes you want to throw yourself under a passing train or bus just for shits and giggles? Mr Levy... what can I say after watching this one-time 'actor' and disc-jockey read the news on the local BBC for what seems like a lifetime? ... he ums, he ahs, ums and ahs, ums and ahs ... he speaks with his mouth shut, he mutters, he mumbles, he puts accentuation in all the wrong places...  he thanks us for being there each evening,  and, ever so politely, thanks us again for "tuning in" (tuning in? Poor old soul, probably thinks he's still on the wireless.); he looks like he's lost a pound and found a penny ... and thanks to the iniquity of the British television licence, the vile regressive TV Tax,( soon to be reimposed on 75 year old pensioners), we all pay his wages whether we watch him or not ... and do you know what? Hundreds if not thousands like him and think he's doing a grand job... de gustibus and all that jazz.

Fill Your Boots

The news earlier this year that the town centre was to lose a pair of Boots¹ (here on Prospect Street and later on Whitefriargate, yes poor old Whitefriargate is to lose yet another store!) was tempered somewhat by the announcement that a brand new, size 16, mega Boots was to arrive in St Stephens. The new store duly opened a few days ago with "huge queues" (who queues for the opening of a new chemists shop? Do they pay them like opera claqueuers to wait from dawn with bated breath for the doors to open? Do they put off buying their Germaloids until the big day? Just what is it that makes these people tick?). So ... anyway, in this town,  the score is two lost and one found ...


¹ Boots, or Boots Alliance, formerly a large and well liked UK pharmacy and retail company bought by Swiss private equity and later sold to Walgreens of the USA. Now just another retailer with too many stores and not enough customers. And, after some atrociously poor customer service, at another Boots, I never go in this place ... I'm sure they miss me.

A Useless Passion

Deep in the depths of Whitefriargate surrounded on all sides by empty shops and the all pervading absurdity that is the city of culture what else but a coffee shop should spring up to lighten the way for the passing caffeine addicts that have taken over and destroyed our fair town with their zomby like behaviour and aggressive antisocial attitudes. They choose to wreck their lives on this substance and expect us to pick up the pieces as they huddle in doorways with eyes sunk into their befuddled heads waiting for the next fix ..... oops wrong drug, wrong rant... erm; where was I? Oh yes, if you're allergic to ontological puns avert your eyes. 

Bring back the birch

The birch is a pioneering tree, so I'm told, spreading rapidly and colonising clearings and waste lands. It is short lived (if 80-100 years can be called short lived) and makes way for longer lived species such as oak and pine. I don't expect to be around for that development but we plant trees for future generations to enjoy or so they say. There are signs around town telling us "Change is happening"; how true that is.

So to the building itself, well, what can I say? It's a bit fancy and somewhat overdressed for the surroundings the now closed M&S to one side and a hideous brick thing (also, as is the style on Whitefriargate, unoccupied) to the other. Nowadays it's a butcher's shop, or rather a purveyor of meats since I doubt any actual butchery takes place there and everything is wrapped in sealed plastic and looks like it came out of a box rather than a grazing animal... A minute's research reveals the place was originally a public house (yes, yet another ornate Victorian boozer) built in 1884 (the boom years for Hull) with alterations to the ground floor which are so dull they need not detain us.

Mea maxima culpa

                 
                           "The Philistines were Wrong: Culture can bring a city back to life"
                                                                                       Richard Morrison, The Times

I noticed how vibrant Whitefriargate had become as I wandered down there on a rainy day last week. It was like the old times, only seen in those black and white films of smiling folk in fifties coats and suits all wearing hats trying not to look at the camera but somehow failing ... and the sun always shining. The sound of thousands of happy shoppers thronging the revitalised stores and small shops near deafened me and I had to struggle through the milling crowds as they ambled slowly along to the rattle of filling tills ... I was wrong, I thought, I lacked faith, with a little bit of imagination, Culture really can bring a city back to life.

And this, this is just fake news, I wouldn't pay it any mind.

The large cool store is closed ...

Last Saturday (May 4^th) Marks and Spencer on Whitefriargate closed after nearly ninety years of selling "cheap clothes/ Set out in simple sizes plainly/ (Knitwear, Summer Casuals, Hose,/ In Browns and greys, maroons and navy)". Truth is that M&S has been on its way out since well before old Larkin went to the inevitable. There were rumours that the store was somehow bribed not to leave Whitefriargate when St Stephens was built a decade ago. Whatever the truth the customers no longer "leave at dawn low terraced houses/ Timed for factory, yard and site" and haven't done so for generations. I haven't bought anything from M&S this century, certainly no clothing ever. Their food store became pretentious and much parodied (This is not just tosh; this is M&S  tosh ...)

 

Perhaps, though, it's not too late for a blue plaque commemorating Larkin buying his kecks at Markies ...oh,  and writing "a silly poem about nighties" .

The building with its classical columns and bronzed shop front was designed by Jones & Rigby in 1931~ish when M&S were in competition with Woolworths not only for sales but in shop design. Woolies (always a much cheaper store in price and attitude than M&S) went to that great administrator in the sky eleven years ago during the 2008 evenements. There's a wee Viking boat on the top which I've shown before but a second look won't kill you.

Those who seek more about the architectural history of Marks and Spencer's  stores could do worse than take a peek at this link.

The Christmas Crush

While I was posting about King's Lynn the so-called festive season came and went and New Year too; seems so long ago now. Anyhoo ... here's Whitefriargate, erstwhile shopping hub of the city of culture and as you can see you could hardly move for the pressing throng all desperately getting their seasonal shopping ... 

I know I've posted many a time and oft about the decline of this street and was going to be ironic (not to say sarcastic) about the crowds down there but today I heard news that the big store on the left , Marks and Spencer, just about the only big shop left down here, announced plans for closure. It doesn't do to speak ill of the dead ... so let's just  move on, nothing to see here.

From Tuesday to Saturday

Right, we are on our way from Tuesday Market Place to Saturday Market Place via High Street. High Street is a medieval thoroughfare, a little over a quarter mile in length, packed with shops and adjacent to the Vancouver shopping centre. Although the picture doesn't show it the whole area was very busy with folk doing their shopping and/or having a good old gossip. The place looks pretty much as when I first saw it in the late 70s. OK Woolworth's has gone and Timothy White's is now Boots but Burton's is still there and the large selection of shops is just as I remember it. I noticed only two or three closed shops, one of them was a fire damaged charity shop. The comparison with Whitefriargate in Hull a similar street which was once the vibrant go-to place in town but is now effectively dead could not be more striking, but let us not dwell ...

I think I found the only broken lamp on High Street.

Some pagan winter festival is about to be celebrated ...

Another of Mr Burton's art deco style shops that grace many a high street up and down the land.

Street names change over the years. Briggate (Bridge Street in modern parlance) sounds better to me but it's not my town so I don't get no say.

The place to be is Withernsea

If you haven't been to Withernsea then all I can say is that you haven't lived. With its balmy sandy beaches and inviting blue waters Withernsea is the seaside resort without parallel. The posters below on Whitefriargate last year gave only the merest hint of the pleasures that await you on the sunny Yorkshire coast. Just half an hour's driving on delightful roads due east of the city of culture will bring you to this very special place.

OK it's a bit of dead end, run down resort that used to have a lot of visitors until the railway was removed. Now there's still a beach, a handful of shops and a lighthouse that was carefully placed so far inland that the eroding waves could never reach it. I went there once, it rained.

You are here

If by some misfortune you find yourself at the wrong end of Whitefriargate and feel a bit weary and lost then this helpful tourist map on the old Britannia Building Society will set you straight. It shows some of the notable landmarks and surprisingly the casino on George Street who presumably are sponsoring this thing. It occurred to me that  about 80-90% of the whole of this blog can be positioned on that small map. I must get out more.

I have a little list

That's the long list of empty buildings on Whitefriargate, poor Demon Trading has been added, closed because of high business rates (well done Hull City Council) and fall in passing trade due the recent year long city works (again take a bow HCC!). Even the website no longer works. But all is not doom and gloom, no sir, because we can take one off the list. A charity shop will be taking over in the store next door but one to this. 

This art deco style building was, I recently found out, the original BHS store built in 1934 and stands on the site of the original frontage of the George Hotel which in turn stood on the site of the residence of an Elizabethan businessman. (Did I mention Whitefriargate goes way back?). The current BHS store is on the larger list of empty buildings in Hull but disappointingly not on the list of nine buildings given listed status in an announcement today, the campaign to save the BHS mural continues.

Small Decoration, Nothing Fancy

At some point in time whoever owned 61 Whitefriargate took it upon themselves for whatever reason to embellish the rather plain façade with a little decoration. Nothing too extravagant, mind you, nor too noticeable. And so there it is, this tile or moulding, a foot maybe eighteen inches in height, clinging to the wall all by itself alone. It just sits there, in splendid isolation, beneath a burglar alarm of an adult games facility (amusement arcade to you and me), unnoticed by the all crowds that no longer parade down Whitefriagate, slowly crumbling into oblivion. 

The weekend in black and white is here.

Wanna buy a bank?

I've shown bits of this building before but for some reason never the tout ensemble. This was until recently the HSBC bank on Whitefriargate. Imposing old pile isn't it? The usual outlook for buildings of this nature is to be transformed into a bar/club/restaurant and perhaps given the HSBC connection something with a little Mexican/Columbian flavour might be appropriate. They could called it El Cartel, just a suggestion.

Out with the modern in with the old

Parliament Street is one of the last places to get a make over and consequently has those old familiar orange barriers making a maze out of straight line. When I first posted about this street back in 2011 someone commented that the square paving stones made the place look modern I wonder what they'll make of the new look stone blocks. Here's another view of how it used to look.

And while I'm here I may as well add the HSBC bank on the right to the list of empty buildings on Whitefriargate.

And while we're on Whitefriargate ...

And while we're on Whitefriargate, a short mediaeval street just 200 yards or so in length and once the flourishing bustling heart of town, I thought I'd count the empties as it were, the shops that serve no customers. I made it thirteen as of the end of last month. Even the charity shops have closed. I read recently that the death of the high street had been exaggerated, that people would not forgo the experience of real shopping for online purchasing. Well not here it seems.You expect to see tumble weed and hear coyotes howling.  Must make all those culture vultures wonder what kind of a place they've come to. Still the paving's new if a bit uneven in parts and there's a brand new phone box to call the Samaritans.

This 'joke shop' was opened at the beginning of the year of culture for one week only but seems to have survived. Click on it to enlarge and read the 'amusing' posters; the humour may not travel well.

I counted this as one but it could be two, so make that fourteen empty shops.

This one has been empty since at least 2014.