Golden Sun

This is a fire insurance mark, high up on the side of a building on High Street. It dates from the 1700s. In those days each insurance company had its own 'fire brigade'. When there was a fire the 'fire brigade'  would seek to extinguish the flames in those buildings with the company's markers first. Uninsured buildings would be left, often with disastrous consequences for neighbouring properties. It was similar to the present US health care system. This free market approach to fire fighting was incompatible with protecting property so municipal fire brigades grew up paid for by taxes. I guess it's easier to get people to pay to protect property than to protect health.

Wise Reflections

I know nothing of what this building is for so, as a wise man once said, if you have nothing to say, say nothing.

This is the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, part of the University of  Hull. You'll find it on High Street right next door to Wilberforce's house. There's almost certainly a website but you're all grown up now and know how to use Google™, so I'll leave to your own devices.

University House or what were they on?

Now when University House was built it was not this fantasy of glass and steel but a mere functional 'soviet-style' concrete box that you can see in the back. It worked perfectly well as the student union building with cafes and bars and so on. Obviously sometime in the eons since I left the place it became so unbearably ugly that it needed a makeover and what a makeover. It took me a while to realise that the canopy changes colour. It's pretty useless as a canopy but what the heck! In these days of cutbacks to universities this is an obscene monument to conspicuous consumption.

Out for a duck

Sometimes it gets eerily empty in the old town; just me and a duck have the place to ourselves.

Church and Market

I don't think I've shown the front of Holy Trinity church before as until recently it was obscured by two large trees. Unfortunately one of the trees succumbed to disease and was removed. Whilst it's sad to lose a large old tree it does clear a space for me to show you the impresseive windows of the church; now if only that sign wasn't there ....

The tower on the left belongs to the market, why they need a tower? I don't know.

Trinity

It's a public house, a place where intoxicating liquors may be sold for consumption on or off the premises. Oh, and it's on Trinity House Lane, hence the name, either that or there's a religious connection and I can't quite see that somehow.

Sunburst

This is the back of what used to be part of the University of Lincoln. I showed you the front sometime back (here)

If you want a potted history of how come the Univeristy of Lincoln came to be in Hull read on.

It started out as Hull College of Education and various other educational establishments in Hull. With the passage of time this became Humberside College of Higher Education with colleges in Grimsby as well. Then, not wishing to remain a mere college, it became Humberside Polytechnic. In came a change of government and all polytechnics were now to be called universities, so Humberside University it became. The city of Lincoln was without its own university, so the University of Humberside was approached to develop a new campus to the south west of the city centre. The University of  Lincolnshire and Humberside emerged from this. Now a strange thing happened, gradually the business tranferred to Lincoln, bit by bit, courses and departments shifted south of the river; it was called consolidation. And the name changed once again, to the University of Lincoln (hmmm). The last I heard this building is no longer part of the university and just about all buildings in Hull relating to the university have been sold off.