These new buildings are on the site of the Needler's sweet factory. The factory was demolished a few years ago but while it was making mainly boiled sugary sweets called, I believe, Glacé fruits the smells around there were tremendous. Mixtures of strawberry and coconut scents would fill the area hiding the stench from the nearby tannery. Though they knocked down the sweet factory the tannery is still making the area "smell of delicious boiling bovine carcasses" .... [ 1 ]
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Friday, 27 April 2012
Another exciting development
If your name is Walker, Tucker or Fuller then it's a good bet your ancestors were involved in the cloth making trade. The fulling of cloths involved them being scoured by soaking them in stale urine and walking up and down on them, this bleached the cloth which was then thickened by felting to give increased waterproofing. I have read that urine was so important to this trade that it was taxed; an early example of the government taking the piss.
Above is a sign on a jewellers which is being tarted up, we're on tenterhooks. Below an uninspired picture of Walkergate, it's the only one I've got so it will have to do. At the end of the 1970s a road, New Walkergate, was built to by-pass all these old streets which were then pedestrianised.
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Surf's up
In 1890, so the story goes, two Hawaiian princes and their English guardian went surfing in the east Yorkshire resort of Bridlington, in the cold North Sea. So starting a craze in this country for taking boards out to sea in order to be washed ashore ... hmmm. Anyhow the UK tourist people seem to think that folk would rather go to Bridlington than Bondi for their surf, they're nuts, of course!
Wednesday, 25 April 2012
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Monday, 23 April 2012
Sunday, 22 April 2012
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