Many families lived in short courts some twenty feet in width, running at right angles to the main street with six to ten houses on either side, ending with a wall or fence dividing it from the corresponding court running from the next parallel street. This cul-de-sac court-housing was distinctive to Hull.
- Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, Nikolaus Pevsner and David Neave, 2nd edn, 1995.
My mother grew up in one of those short courts mentioned above. She was born in Hull in the 1930s and left in the mid-1940s, after the death of her mother. She used to quote that old saying - "From Hull, Hell and Halifax may the Lord deliver us". But then, she did live there during the 2nd World War bombing.
I've only been to the city a couple of times, and not recently, but have while compiling these pages tried to discover facts and dates relating to the area where many of my ancestors lived.
Following increasing congestion on the River Hull, Hull's first dock opened in 1778. At the time of construction it was the second largest dock in Britain. Originally known just as "The Dock", it was then "The Old Dock", later Queen's Dock (then Queen's Gardens).
Eleven docks were built between 1778 and 1969, those to the west primarily for the fishing industry, to the east for the timber trade. These included Alexandra Dock, constructed in 1885 for the Hull and Barnsley Railway Company, for the export of coal from the South Yorkshire coalfields. (Now we're shipping it the other way, I imagine.) By the later twentieth century only five were in regular commercial use. I'm not sure what the situation is now.
"Hull has a larger coasting trade than any other port in the kingdom; it also carries on an extensive trade with the N. of Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, and the Baltic. The chief articles of export are woollen and cotton goods and hardware; and of import, timber, grain, seeds, wool, flax, iron, tar, pitch, resin, bones, and tallow."
- From The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland, 1868
The railways were a significant factor in Hull's growing prosperity in the Victorian period, particularly the opening of the Hull-Selby railway line in 1840. Hull's Paragon Station opened in 1848.
The Corn Exchange was built in 1855, and Pearson Park was laid out in 1860. The Dock Offices - "Hull's most impressive Victorian building" (Pevsner guide) - date from 1867.
Hull was created a city in 1897.
The population in 1831 was 32,958. By 1911 it was 277,991. Vast numbers of working class houses were built in the Victorian period, beginning west of the centre to the south of Anlaby Road.
In World War Two, Hull was one of the three most bomb-damaged areas in the country. For more information, visit the excellent Hull Bombing Map page - which states that "over three-quarters of the total housing stock was either destroyed or damaged". For personal accounts of the bombing, see Hull - the blitz, World War Two, on this site. Hull City Council's Image Project includes photographs arranged by decade - many of the 1940s photos show the devastating effect of the Hull blitz.
Post-war, the council's 1950s development plan "blighted the Old Town and other areas for over twenty years" (Pevsner guide). Housing clearance was accelerated, with most development on peripheral estates, including Bransholme, begun in 1968.