I first visited Kingston upon Hull in 1961 having walked from Liverpool and have no memory of the reception we received in the city centre or where the march terminated. However, I and another marcher, were accommodated by a University Lecturer and his wife and family at their home at Cottingham and my memory is that because my companion was a vegan, a Cheese soufflé had been prepared which for some reason I did not fancy, so some pieces of cold ham were produced while the other marcher consumed my portion of the soufflé together with his own. I had a good night's sleep in a bed after a bath and ten days sleeping on the floors of halls.
It was then a decade before I returned, this occasion representing Cheshire County Council on the North Region Association for the Blind or the deaf, a body mainly attended by Councillors but where Cheshire had decided to send an officer. I had stayed overnight in the city and remember thinking it was a drab town much affected by World War II and the subsequent decline in economic fortunes. I commenced to make visits to the city from around 1993 and have visited the city centre and some of its suburbs for the last decade and a half although it is some three years since my list visit and what changes I was to experience!
I could have made the visit from South Cave as there are hourly buses but I only found this out later. I therefore made my way to Beverley by car where the town was full with the Saturday Market and a Folk festival and the first hints of the rain which had been forecast. Unfortunately a shower developed as I reached the bus station where the stop for Hull was not protected so I had use an umbrella. Before my bus one of the same number but going in the opposite direction arrived going on to Scarborough and I was tempted to change plans. Being third in the queue I was able to get a front seat and therefore had an excellent view throughout the journey, with part of the way out of Beverley and into Hull familiar. The route into Hull has a run down feel, full of rented accommodation much used by students sharing properties and making use of the various pubs, cafes and contemporary type bars mingling with local community shops and businesses. The Older University is spread to the west of the City at Cottingham where there a first year campus and halls of residents and where there are good pubs in the village including one where a traditional jazz band played once a week. It is only a short bus ride to the principal University Campus of buildings. The City is also home the University of Humberside created from the former Technology and Further Education colleges. It is a large city over eight times the size of Beverley and similar to Newcastle and Sunderland with large areas of riverside, and as with South Shields and the other Tyne and Wear authorities high levels of social deprivation developed in the 1970 making several generation dependent on community benefits. For Hull this was the second period of social distress for the majority of the population as it had been the most damaged city outside of London in the UK with 95% of properties damaged and much of the city centre. 192000 people were made homeless out of a wartime population of 320000 which indicates something of the scale of the devastation and why the city was subsequently rebuilt with tree lines walkways, some pedestrianised and with plenty of public seating areas, and why it has also proved possible to make major improvements over the past decade as the economy of Britain became stable and developed at a faster rate than the rest of Europe, perhaps with the exception of Eire. It also helped to have a key figure of the Blair administration as an Member of Parliament for the city, John Prescott.
When I commenced to visit Hull on a regular basis in the 1990's I was impressed by the indoor shopping facilities. The Prospect centre is a solid building tucked away between some impressive post war department store buildings notably the British Homes Stores building, the House of Fraser, Debenhams and the more recent chain of T J Hughes and where there is also the Central Library and a large Woolworths. Inside the Prospect centre ground floor has no architectural features and is simply functional but it also has a sweeping series of escalators which were under repair on this visit and with the lift out of order I decided against the stairway, hoping that I could find the photos from a visit made some three years ago. Because photos take so much space on computers I have been good at making copies to disks, but failed miserably to keep a proper record and index, so that after an hour's searching I was unable to locate those from the previous visit. I will check again.
I arrived at the new bus station which has been added to the railway station since my last visit. There are 38 bays in constant use and four coach bays. Unusually all the bays are on line with passengers only being able to reach a bus through controlled doors, thus eliminating accidents which would be the situation given the frequency of services and the brief space between bus when they are alongside each other. Large monitors announce the departure using two pages but usually only covering the next ten to fifteen minutes of services such is the volume of use. I was able to make a good study of the operation of the terminal as although there are four different scheduled services from Hull to Beverley, I had to wait nearly an hour as one service never appeared and two others had just been missed. There was no explanation given for the non appearance and I gained the impression that because each bay was is in constant use drivers are required rigidly adhere to time tables an air. One mother door way just after it has been closed and the driver did not reopen and similarly in one fairly rural spot two young women turned a corner and came rushing towards the bus but the drive moved off leaving them there, with a limited shelter from the driving rain for what, I assumed was to have been another half hour. I appreciate these were just two examples but at Beverley although there was quite a queue in the increasing rain the departing male driver continued to chat with the attractive female new driver for longer than was desirable in the circumstances. I just had the feeling this was a comprehensive and modern service system which did not allow much for passenger flexibility.
There is an impressive new ticket and information centre with coach and bus Travel on one side and train on the other and there were plenty of leaflets on services and local attractions. Hull central station rather like that at Sunderland were disgraces. Sunderland has yet to be improved given that a short distance away there is a magnificent modern station for the metro adjacent to the new bus station but at the main station there is just a utility building which house a fast food and a sandwich bakery with access from the street and the new ticket centre which is an improvement on the situation until a few years ago. I must add that the staff have always been exceptionally helpful. Hull has traditional above ground station with a direct and pleasant train service to London which I have used but had a cold and grim feel about the building with a large area derelict and where facilities on a Sunday evening were non existence. There is now a delightful welcoming waiting facility with very modern toilets staffed toilets where a payment of 20p is required and where there is a soft purple blue glow which I understand is designed to make it difficult for drug addicts to inject. The station begins to match its ancestral history and increasing importance in an era when the train and the bus needs to replace journeys made by car.
A good time mention that everywhere in Hull there are well designed facilities for the parking and securing of bicycles but on an admittedly raining day there was not much evidence of use. There are 7 stopping trains to London a day plus an express, the Hull Executive which takes 2 hrs 45 mins. There are hourly services to Manchester which takes 2 hours with extensions to Warrington and Liverpool, to Doncaster and Sheffield, two trains an hour to Beverley and Bridlington with one of these every two hours going on to Scarborough and one train every two hours to York.
The station was originally built in the 1840's and is attached to The Royal Station Hotel after a stay by Queen Victoria. A major part of the station became derelict although in one area nearby the Famous Hull Truck Theatre made its home in a ramshackle shed like single storey building. All this is changing because across form the exceptionally busy thoroughfare in constant use by the buses is the spectacular St Stephens development which opened with new bus terminal in September 2007, and which has an extraordinary vaulted glass ceiling and tower like feature. with three levels of stores and recreational facilities, including new multiplex and Bingo centre, and with a long coffee shop suspended in the space between either sides of the building. I only managed to take one photo inside the building as a security officer advised that I would have to seek management permission. To one side of the building, at the far end, there is the biggest of supermarkets, a Tesco Extra. This has the appearance of the inside of a giant aeroplane hanger with a first floor covering about half the floor area and a basement level car park. The centre includes a pharmacy, opticians and petrol station and there is a café on the first floor where I had hoped buy a hot meal but they were out of the beef and ale pie, so I settled for a baguette and coffee in an open café in the middle of the centre towards the front entrance. I also explored the outside of the centre at rear where there is a vast area of designer open space with seating and terracing overlooking the existing Hull Truck Theatre. However next to St Stephens a 440 seat replacement theatre is being built together with a Music centre for the youth of the city.
The new development takes away from what had been the main shopping precinct in the city the Prince's Quay built mainly over Prince's Dock, although an area of water remains with two fountains, with one area overlooked by an arts centre with three other bordered by several Inns and night clubs developed out of former dockside buildings. At the far end one can see part of the Marina also created out of former docks leading towards the River Hull and towards the Humber. Prince's Quay also has a three deck shopping precinct presently with 80 stores but is being extend to include another forty and two department stores. It is also a splendid looking building in glass with a vaulted centre for the escalators and car parking to one side. I have used the car park several times although I did lose my car once as there are separate levels to those reached from the shopping centre. It was here that I had yet another surprise for having retreated to the centre because of persistent and heavy rain I planned to visit the top deck where there was an in door market type stall area and eating places, what did I find. Britain's first all digital multiplex cinema boasting wall to wall and floor to ceilings screens, 3 D stadium seats and superior leather style seats in some parts of theatres. I looked in vain for the box office only to discover later that the clever clogs have abandoned the separate box office so that you buy tickets at the tills selling sweets and drinks. Well I never. I did note that whereas those over sixty could buy a tickets for £3.50 at St Stephens, at Prince's Quay it was 4.40.
Hull is not short of cinemas theatres because in addition there is a Cineworld multiplex to the north of the city at the Kingswood Retail Park together with indoor Bowling and restaurants and a Travel Lodge, all of which I have used before, other than Bowling, in times past. Moreover there is also a Retail Park across the main Humberside dockside road which continues to the Bridge and the start of the M62 Here on the Banks of the Humber next to the Ice Arena is an Odeon, with a Pizza type restaurant adjacent where I once tried to go through a glass door. There is also Hull Screen which is the Cinema Art House and which is located close to buildings belonging to a third university that of Lincolnshire across the Humber Bridge. In Hull close to the river Hull and the interesting area of buildings including Wilberforce House, The Museum of Transport, the Hull and East Riding Museum, the Guildhall, the Crown Courts and the St Mary's Church there are the Management and Health and Social Care branches of the university. I was heading for this area where the deluge commenced. However I was able to view the large BBC building and enter the Queens Dock Gardens, built in what used to be the Queen's Dock, surprise, surprise. I headed towards the gardens because I could hear some attractive Afro West Indian music and then found a small stage and large amplifiers and an odd assortment of individuals from several races dancing in the rain. On my way to find shelter at the Prince's Quay I noted a cloud of what became pungent smoke from a small group of white teenagers clearly enjoying themselves to one side of the gardens oblivious to the music and the rain. It was cool man.
I did mange to visit small arcade the Paragon but not the Hepworth, or the Trinity Indoor Market on this occasion which is near the impressive St Trinity Church and the Hull Trinity School. However at this point I abandoned my visit and waited patiently for nearly an hour for the bus back to Beverley although midway I was tempted to buy a ticket for the train. Hull was the home of William Wilberforce and Amy Johnson the aviator, Two actors I have greatly admired, the humorist Maureen Lipman and the endearing John Alderton. The playwright Alan Plater was not born in Hull but has close associations.
Hull remains an active Port including vehicle ferries to Holland with some 5000 people employed and twice as many more in work associated with the port. There are also large industrial cinema along the corridor to the motorway, including Smith and Nephew.
Final mention must go to Hull Kingston Rovers which has managed to get into the Premier Division and although expected to go straight down is looking forward to the £50 million the experience will bring in regardless of what happens.
It was then a decade before I returned, this occasion representing Cheshire County Council on the North Region Association for the Blind or the deaf, a body mainly attended by Councillors but where Cheshire had decided to send an officer. I had stayed overnight in the city and remember thinking it was a drab town much affected by World War II and the subsequent decline in economic fortunes. I commenced to make visits to the city from around 1993 and have visited the city centre and some of its suburbs for the last decade and a half although it is some three years since my list visit and what changes I was to experience!
I could have made the visit from South Cave as there are hourly buses but I only found this out later. I therefore made my way to Beverley by car where the town was full with the Saturday Market and a Folk festival and the first hints of the rain which had been forecast. Unfortunately a shower developed as I reached the bus station where the stop for Hull was not protected so I had use an umbrella. Before my bus one of the same number but going in the opposite direction arrived going on to Scarborough and I was tempted to change plans. Being third in the queue I was able to get a front seat and therefore had an excellent view throughout the journey, with part of the way out of Beverley and into Hull familiar. The route into Hull has a run down feel, full of rented accommodation much used by students sharing properties and making use of the various pubs, cafes and contemporary type bars mingling with local community shops and businesses. The Older University is spread to the west of the City at Cottingham where there a first year campus and halls of residents and where there are good pubs in the village including one where a traditional jazz band played once a week. It is only a short bus ride to the principal University Campus of buildings. The City is also home the University of Humberside created from the former Technology and Further Education colleges. It is a large city over eight times the size of Beverley and similar to Newcastle and Sunderland with large areas of riverside, and as with South Shields and the other Tyne and Wear authorities high levels of social deprivation developed in the 1970 making several generation dependent on community benefits. For Hull this was the second period of social distress for the majority of the population as it had been the most damaged city outside of London in the UK with 95% of properties damaged and much of the city centre. 192000 people were made homeless out of a wartime population of 320000 which indicates something of the scale of the devastation and why the city was subsequently rebuilt with tree lines walkways, some pedestrianised and with plenty of public seating areas, and why it has also proved possible to make major improvements over the past decade as the economy of Britain became stable and developed at a faster rate than the rest of Europe, perhaps with the exception of Eire. It also helped to have a key figure of the Blair administration as an Member of Parliament for the city, John Prescott.
When I commenced to visit Hull on a regular basis in the 1990's I was impressed by the indoor shopping facilities. The Prospect centre is a solid building tucked away between some impressive post war department store buildings notably the British Homes Stores building, the House of Fraser, Debenhams and the more recent chain of T J Hughes and where there is also the Central Library and a large Woolworths. Inside the Prospect centre ground floor has no architectural features and is simply functional but it also has a sweeping series of escalators which were under repair on this visit and with the lift out of order I decided against the stairway, hoping that I could find the photos from a visit made some three years ago. Because photos take so much space on computers I have been good at making copies to disks, but failed miserably to keep a proper record and index, so that after an hour's searching I was unable to locate those from the previous visit. I will check again.
I arrived at the new bus station which has been added to the railway station since my last visit. There are 38 bays in constant use and four coach bays. Unusually all the bays are on line with passengers only being able to reach a bus through controlled doors, thus eliminating accidents which would be the situation given the frequency of services and the brief space between bus when they are alongside each other. Large monitors announce the departure using two pages but usually only covering the next ten to fifteen minutes of services such is the volume of use. I was able to make a good study of the operation of the terminal as although there are four different scheduled services from Hull to Beverley, I had to wait nearly an hour as one service never appeared and two others had just been missed. There was no explanation given for the non appearance and I gained the impression that because each bay was is in constant use drivers are required rigidly adhere to time tables an air. One mother door way just after it has been closed and the driver did not reopen and similarly in one fairly rural spot two young women turned a corner and came rushing towards the bus but the drive moved off leaving them there, with a limited shelter from the driving rain for what, I assumed was to have been another half hour. I appreciate these were just two examples but at Beverley although there was quite a queue in the increasing rain the departing male driver continued to chat with the attractive female new driver for longer than was desirable in the circumstances. I just had the feeling this was a comprehensive and modern service system which did not allow much for passenger flexibility.
There is an impressive new ticket and information centre with coach and bus Travel on one side and train on the other and there were plenty of leaflets on services and local attractions. Hull central station rather like that at Sunderland were disgraces. Sunderland has yet to be improved given that a short distance away there is a magnificent modern station for the metro adjacent to the new bus station but at the main station there is just a utility building which house a fast food and a sandwich bakery with access from the street and the new ticket centre which is an improvement on the situation until a few years ago. I must add that the staff have always been exceptionally helpful. Hull has traditional above ground station with a direct and pleasant train service to London which I have used but had a cold and grim feel about the building with a large area derelict and where facilities on a Sunday evening were non existence. There is now a delightful welcoming waiting facility with very modern toilets staffed toilets where a payment of 20p is required and where there is a soft purple blue glow which I understand is designed to make it difficult for drug addicts to inject. The station begins to match its ancestral history and increasing importance in an era when the train and the bus needs to replace journeys made by car.
A good time mention that everywhere in Hull there are well designed facilities for the parking and securing of bicycles but on an admittedly raining day there was not much evidence of use. There are 7 stopping trains to London a day plus an express, the Hull Executive which takes 2 hrs 45 mins. There are hourly services to Manchester which takes 2 hours with extensions to Warrington and Liverpool, to Doncaster and Sheffield, two trains an hour to Beverley and Bridlington with one of these every two hours going on to Scarborough and one train every two hours to York.
The station was originally built in the 1840's and is attached to The Royal Station Hotel after a stay by Queen Victoria. A major part of the station became derelict although in one area nearby the Famous Hull Truck Theatre made its home in a ramshackle shed like single storey building. All this is changing because across form the exceptionally busy thoroughfare in constant use by the buses is the spectacular St Stephens development which opened with new bus terminal in September 2007, and which has an extraordinary vaulted glass ceiling and tower like feature. with three levels of stores and recreational facilities, including new multiplex and Bingo centre, and with a long coffee shop suspended in the space between either sides of the building. I only managed to take one photo inside the building as a security officer advised that I would have to seek management permission. To one side of the building, at the far end, there is the biggest of supermarkets, a Tesco Extra. This has the appearance of the inside of a giant aeroplane hanger with a first floor covering about half the floor area and a basement level car park. The centre includes a pharmacy, opticians and petrol station and there is a café on the first floor where I had hoped buy a hot meal but they were out of the beef and ale pie, so I settled for a baguette and coffee in an open café in the middle of the centre towards the front entrance. I also explored the outside of the centre at rear where there is a vast area of designer open space with seating and terracing overlooking the existing Hull Truck Theatre. However next to St Stephens a 440 seat replacement theatre is being built together with a Music centre for the youth of the city.
The new development takes away from what had been the main shopping precinct in the city the Prince's Quay built mainly over Prince's Dock, although an area of water remains with two fountains, with one area overlooked by an arts centre with three other bordered by several Inns and night clubs developed out of former dockside buildings. At the far end one can see part of the Marina also created out of former docks leading towards the River Hull and towards the Humber. Prince's Quay also has a three deck shopping precinct presently with 80 stores but is being extend to include another forty and two department stores. It is also a splendid looking building in glass with a vaulted centre for the escalators and car parking to one side. I have used the car park several times although I did lose my car once as there are separate levels to those reached from the shopping centre. It was here that I had yet another surprise for having retreated to the centre because of persistent and heavy rain I planned to visit the top deck where there was an in door market type stall area and eating places, what did I find. Britain's first all digital multiplex cinema boasting wall to wall and floor to ceilings screens, 3 D stadium seats and superior leather style seats in some parts of theatres. I looked in vain for the box office only to discover later that the clever clogs have abandoned the separate box office so that you buy tickets at the tills selling sweets and drinks. Well I never. I did note that whereas those over sixty could buy a tickets for £3.50 at St Stephens, at Prince's Quay it was 4.40.
Hull is not short of cinemas theatres because in addition there is a Cineworld multiplex to the north of the city at the Kingswood Retail Park together with indoor Bowling and restaurants and a Travel Lodge, all of which I have used before, other than Bowling, in times past. Moreover there is also a Retail Park across the main Humberside dockside road which continues to the Bridge and the start of the M62 Here on the Banks of the Humber next to the Ice Arena is an Odeon, with a Pizza type restaurant adjacent where I once tried to go through a glass door. There is also Hull Screen which is the Cinema Art House and which is located close to buildings belonging to a third university that of Lincolnshire across the Humber Bridge. In Hull close to the river Hull and the interesting area of buildings including Wilberforce House, The Museum of Transport, the Hull and East Riding Museum, the Guildhall, the Crown Courts and the St Mary's Church there are the Management and Health and Social Care branches of the university. I was heading for this area where the deluge commenced. However I was able to view the large BBC building and enter the Queens Dock Gardens, built in what used to be the Queen's Dock, surprise, surprise. I headed towards the gardens because I could hear some attractive Afro West Indian music and then found a small stage and large amplifiers and an odd assortment of individuals from several races dancing in the rain. On my way to find shelter at the Prince's Quay I noted a cloud of what became pungent smoke from a small group of white teenagers clearly enjoying themselves to one side of the gardens oblivious to the music and the rain. It was cool man.
I did mange to visit small arcade the Paragon but not the Hepworth, or the Trinity Indoor Market on this occasion which is near the impressive St Trinity Church and the Hull Trinity School. However at this point I abandoned my visit and waited patiently for nearly an hour for the bus back to Beverley although midway I was tempted to buy a ticket for the train. Hull was the home of William Wilberforce and Amy Johnson the aviator, Two actors I have greatly admired, the humorist Maureen Lipman and the endearing John Alderton. The playwright Alan Plater was not born in Hull but has close associations.
Hull remains an active Port including vehicle ferries to Holland with some 5000 people employed and twice as many more in work associated with the port. There are also large industrial cinema along the corridor to the motorway, including Smith and Nephew.
Final mention must go to Hull Kingston Rovers which has managed to get into the Premier Division and although expected to go straight down is looking forward to the £50 million the experience will bring in regardless of what happens.
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