It's another Hull thing

OK it's one of the things that Hull is noted for: cream coloured phone boxes. I'm sure I've been over this before but briefly for those who don't know the story behind it; when all municipal phone companies were nationalised many years ago Hull Council stood firm and the phone company remained in council hands. So that's why the boxes are this distinctive colour and not red as in the rest of this pleasant land, they also lack a crown coat of arms but that's a detail for geeks. So, as I say, all phone boxes in Hull are this colour except for this one and erm that one and maybe that other one as well.
Anyhow I'm not here to talk about old history. It being the year of culture and Hull just having gone through a massive makeover (yada yada) the now privatised phone company was asked to plonk a load of these boxes around town, often in places, like here in Whitefriargate, where no phone box had ever been. I think they are actually working boxes but no-body uses them as everyone has got a mobile these days and also they're very expensive. Basically they're just there for no good reason other than Hull has cream boxes and you, as a visitor, will damn well see cream boxes. (Gee would you look! A cream phone box! That's got to be way cool!) I believe the word 'iconic' has been applied to them as well, and why not? It's applied to everything else in this cultural town.

The Erstwhile Bank

In what estate agents might call a prime location on the junction of Hallgate and King Street here is the building formerly known as HSBC. If this does not become a trendy wine bar and/or  restaurant in the next few months I'll be very surprised. It seems the big boys are closing branches up and down the country. HSBC are closing two branches in town including the Whitefriargate one. While Cottingham still has three other banks that folks can use some villages and even small towns have no banks at all which I imagine is a right pain if you're a pensioner with limited mobility and no understanding the web or if you're trying to run a shop and run out of change. 

Falling haloes, whips and other seasonal failings

It's that time of year for silly window displays. Here we have some seemingly drunken winking mannequins tottering over to starboard with haloes at what can only be called a jaunty angle. If the intent was to say that angels get their kit at this shop I think it merits a glorious fail.

A few doors down we have a mannequin with a whip for no discernible reason. Maybe for some festive flagellation; who knows. Maybe whipping up trade ... any way another fail I think.

And speaking of failure these shops are on Whitefriargate which, in the past, has had seasonal lighting that at least looked faintly impressive. This year there's a tawdry single string of lights. Pathetic really, maybe they shouldn't have bothered.

A room with a view

Sneaking through the new Zebedee's Yard car park the other day I came across this odd thing. It's some kind of observation platform stuck on top of a building behind the old Neptune Hotel aka Boots the chemist on Whitefriargate. I'll tempt fate and say it wouldn't be sticking my neck out too far to say that, as the building was part of the Customs and Excise extortion racket until 1912, it has some nautical connection since from up there you would have been able to see all the comings and goings on Hull's docks and the river traffic as well. A low tech version of Big Brother is watching you ... the 'security' camera is the modern version.

The weekend in black and white has crept up on us again and it's here.

Barriers to trade

In a chrysophobics nightmare half of Whitefriargate has been barricaded off to allow for work. Each shop has a little bridge to the entrance but it's hardly welcoming. When it's all done we are promised that street will be repaved (I should hope so!), the trees removed (that's already happened!) to allow for an improved view of the architecture, oh and oooooh! wooden seats to admire the view. So nowt much then. Fancy an ice-cream?

Death by a thousand bricks

In the late 80's or was it the early 90's Hull betook itself of a scheme to pedestrianise parts of the city centre. Whitefriargate's pedestrianisation in the 70's having been deemed a success it was thought that a goodly dose of the same medicine would improve the place. Accordingly Jameson Street, King Edward Street and Queen Victoria Square were closed to traffic and paved over. Then later bricked over, as you see. The idea, no doubt, was to improve the 'shopping experience' and indeed no-one now gets hastled by a bus on King Edward Street but then they never did if they stuck to the pavement. As for the shops they have for the most part gone; I doubt there's single business that was running from before still going now. Instead there's, well as I've said before numerous coffee shops, charity shops, shops selling telephones and discount stores. There's also the inescapable fact that the place looks (I'll be polite here) ugly and drab. I'm told that after about 6pm the whole place is deserted which accounts for the closure of so many restaurants, pubs and so on. Today's paper brings a  tale of a restaurant being opened with the forlorn hope to "revive the evening economy", well good luck with that.

Now  instead of drawing the logical conclusion that bricking the place up was a big mistake the Council is going to polish the turd, as they say in certain parts, and fling millions at 'improvements' for the City of Culture. It won't work, no amount of pavement fountains, arty farty works and so on will bring in the shoppers. (The shops by the way are all in the new shopping mall St Stephens or out of town (people are going to Leeds and Sheffield for their shopping!), we'll skip over the absence of joined up thinking here, shall we?)  

Well here's my view for it's worth: Admit that the planners were barmy (and quite possibly corrupt, Hull is far from alone in having failed pedestrian schemes all put in in the glorious 90's), rip out the bricks, put in some tarmac and bring back the buses and cars, restore the status quo ante; in short bring back the life that was sucked out by this idiotic scheme.  But I suspect it's too late, there's a definite stench of decay but that could just be the drains....

Shark infested pavement

Regular readers will be aware of the Hull fish trail. Well here's another one for the collection, a rather sad looking shark, and I think it's the biggest on the trail. It's on Whitefriargate near the ugly brute I posted a while back. This shark is carved from slate and was originally in the middle of Whitefriargate but was damaged by a heavy truck. It's now repaired and out of harm's way, appropriately outside the HSBC building.

In what used to be Woolies ...

The old  Woolwoth's store on Whitefriargate has got a new occupant, Boyes. Well it opened in September last year but I've only just round to noticing it. After Woolies went bust in '08 the store was a Peacock's shop but that didn't last too long. There didn't seem to be throngs of eager customers in the place but then Whitefriargate doesn't attract to passing trade it used to. I suppose Boyes know what they've taken on.

Monkfish

It's been a while since I mentioned Hull's fish trail so I thought it might be safe to venture back into the water, as it were, that is until I came face to face with this gurning brute. This monkfish was made in 1992 or thereabouts by Gordon Young out of black carboniferous Belgian limestone. I think that's just about all you need to know about it. Oh yeah it's lurking at the end Whitefriargate , you have been warned.

Did Britannia waive the rules?

This building on the corner of Whitefriargate and Land of Green Ginger was built in 1886 to house the Colonial and United States Mortgage Company. The architects were one Mr Clamp and our old friend Alfred Gelder. I know nothing of the Colonial and US Mortgage Company, Google refuses to enlighten me. I can tell you that many years after it was built it housed another mortgage company, the Britannia Building Society, later to become the Britannia Bank. Why isn't it still a branch of Britannia? Well you know it's just the old, old story ....

The Britannia Building Society, was caught up in the dying embers of the 2008 crash. It was  formed in the mid 19th century and was the second largest building society until it merged with the Cooperative Bank in 2009. Now I'm not going to say there was a criminal enterprise involved because no-one has been charged with anything but  the Britannia  had a boat load of bad debts (sub-prime garbage) on its books. The merged concern had to be 'distanced' from the mutual Co-op and in effect bought out. Expect a huge legal brouhaha over all this. Meanwhile if you know anyone who wants a Victorian French renaissance style office and erstwhile bank, here's one going spare.

Here's how it looked when new and yes it was enlarged at a later date. And quite how, despite being a listed building, that ornate frontage was replaced with  plate glass dreck is probably a story too murky for sensitive souls.

From the canteen window

One of the perks of working in Boot's store on Whitefriargate is that the canteen is the banqueting hall of the old Neptune Hotel with a view past the exotic lingerie store and the bank along Parliament Street. 

This is the ceiling, as you might have guessed. Nice though it is I guess a raise in take home pay would be a better perk. 

This room is open on Open Heritage Days in September which is when I took these photos.

Art deco? What art deco?

Many of Mr Burton's emporia built all across the country during the early years of the last century were noted for their fine art deco styling and this one at the top of Whitefriargate is a particularly splendid example with black marble and gold painted windows. Shame then that, when the ground floor was renovated some years back, this was all thrown out along with the baby and the bath water. 

PS: Following a comment from Steffe I've had a root around the web and come up with this not very clear picture from 1953. As was the style back then everything was monochrome and cars drove on what are now pavements, how quaint. Anyhow I hope you can make out what the old shop front, on the left, was like. There's a bigger version here.

Good news or bad?

Well we wave bye-bye to the parasitic blood sucking payday loan sharks on Whitefriargate and wonder just how bad things have become if even these scumbags can't make a living here anymore ... oh and the bookmakers a few doors down has shut as well. Maybe we should all move to sunny Scunny!

Monumental Memorial Madness

Way back in 1935 this thing (well, it is an ugly, phallic monstrosity when all said and done) was rightly considered to be a nuisance and a hazard to traffic and so Hull City Council spent £1,500 moving it from the end of Whitefriargate to the eastern end of Queens Gardens ( see here ). There it stands out of everyone's way, a focal point, if you like, for the view along the gardens. And there you might think it would stay but you would have reckoned without the all pervading madness that has overcome the City of Culture. The recently announced city facelift that I mentioned some days back includes, if  funds from the National Lottery can be found, a plan to put this darn thing back where it was. I am put in mind of the rearrangement of deckchairs on the Titanic ... oh, the cost, I forgot to mention the cost, well multiply the old cost by a thousand and you have it.

Clearout

Whitefriargate

I think it's clear that Clearout has cleared out.

Carmelite House

On Posterngate Carmelite House was built in 1826 as an almshouse for twenty-three seamen and wives. It was named after the Carmelite order of monks who used to have a monastery or some such around here before being suppressed when religion got nationalised in the 16^th century. Carmelites were also known as white friars hence Whitefriargate. The building was converted into offices in the 1950's.

After I posted the above I came across the following from Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary.

CARMELITE, n. A mendicant friar of the order of Mount Carmel.

As Death was a-riding out one day,
Across Mount Camel he took his way,
     Where he met a mendicant monk,
     Some three or four quarters drunk,
With a holy leer and a pious grin,
Ragged and fat and as saucy as sin,
     Who held out his hands and cried:
"Give, give in Charity's name, I pray.
Give in the name of the Church. O give,
Give that her holy sons may live!"
     And Death replied,
     Smiling long and wide:
"I'll give, holy father, I'll give thee—a ride."

     With a rattle and bang
     Of his bones, he sprang
From his famous Pale Horse, with his spear;
     By the neck and the foot
     Seized the fellow, and put
Him astride with his face to the rear.

The Monarch laughed loud with a sound that fell
Like clods on the coffin's sounding shell:
"Ho, ho! A beggar on horseback, they say,
     Will ride to the devil!"—and thump
     Fell the flat of his dart on the rump
Of the charger, which galloped away.

Faster and faster and faster it flew,
Till the rocks and the flocks and the trees that grew
By the road were dim and blended and blue
     To the wild, wild eyes
     Of the rider—in size
     Resembling a couple of blackberry pies.
Death laughed again, as a tomb might laugh
     At a burial service spoiled,
     And the mourners' intentions foiled
     By the body erecting
     Its head and objecting
To further proceedings in its behalf.

Many a year and many a day
Have passed since these events away.
The monk has long been a dusty corse,
And Death has never recovered his horse.
     For the friar got hold of its tail,
     And steered it within the pale
Of the monastery gray,
Where the beast was stabled and fed
With barley and oil and bread
Till fatter it grew than the fattest friar,
And so in due course was appointed Prior.

Xmas and all that jazz

After yesterday's village illuminations here's how the big town lights up. Above is Whitefriargate with its canopy of  glittery delight. The tree in Queen Victoria Square this year changes colour every few seconds and I must admit is probably the best tree for many years, someone had the bright idea of turning off the nearby street lights so it shows off better. I remember one year the tree was so puny it had to be replaced and on the whole the trees have been a bit of a disappointment. Not that I'm that much into Xmas and all that jazz, you understand, but if you're going to do it at all you may as do it well.. 

Risqué

The Ann Summers emporium on Whitefriargate is having a sale with their customary salacious advertising. 

Saturday Afternoon

So this is what Hull gets up to on a Saturday afternoon in June! Let's start with the copper man who sits on an invisible seat, close by there's the preacher man converting no-one in particular but the whole world in general and roundly ignored by all and sundry.

In Queen's Gardens it was Armed Forces Day with a rock band, loud and not too bad, in the new bandstand and lots of stalls for various army things, not my cup of tea but you can't please everyone. In the morning there had been a march by troops through the town past the mayor in all her glory. Needless to say I missed that.

It was ten minutes 'till the next Punch & Judy show so I moved on and took pictures of the new bridge which I posted yesterday.

On Whitefriargate a man was sculpting a dog out of sand, according to the local newspaper there's a craze for this kind of thing. Whoever would have guessed?

And last but by no means least Hull's Olympic gold medal winning boxer Luke Campbell was giving sparring lessons to anyone brave enough to take him on in Queen Victoria Square ... 

After all that it was time to go home and put my feet up. There were other things going on as well but if I told them all here there'd be nothing left for tomorrow. Hull dull? Nah! Well not today at least.

Kapow!

Here's a sign that really makes an impact on Whitefriargate. The shop sells the kind of tacky gadgets and gizmos that modern life finds indispensible. The building was part of  a redevelopment in 1795 of Trinity House property and is Grade 2 listed. Older Hull residents may remember this as the Kardomah coffee house. The old sign was uncovered during recent redecoration (see here)