This page contains items of historical interest written by members of the HDLHRG and previously published in The LOCAL.
COURT HOUSING IN KINGSTON-UPON-HULL
Norman Angell
In common with most of the industrial towns in the Midlands and the North of England the inner residential areas of Kingston-upon-Hull are characterised by the presence of large numbers of small working-class houses, all built before the turn of the twentieth century. By 1965 38,450 of these houses were still occupied and housed over one-third of a population of just over 300,000, Of these, 46% of the houses were laid out as conventional terraces along main thoroughfares and streets (i.e. facing the road), but 54% were in cul-de-sac courts. These consisted of two parallel facing rows of houses with a wide pathway between them, laid out at right-angles to a thoroughfare or street to form a self-contained unit of between 12 and 22 houses. In local terminology these were also called terraces and are a distinctive feature of the inner-city landscape.
Some of these early terraces were usually 20 feet wide and up to 100 feet long and the houses would have had walk-in front doors straight off the terrace and either 1 or 2 bedrooms with appropriate rooms of the same size on the ground floor. By the mid-nineteenth century many of these would have been back-to-back houses with no rear exit and with communal privies (non-flush lavatories) and stand-pipes. The later houses were the same but had a small back-yard giving better ventilation through the house along with a privy. None of these houses had any sanitation other than an open sewer running between the houses into the street sewer. In later years the privies would be replaced by flush toilets and each house would have an outside water supply of its own. By the turn of the twentieth century things had improved and all newly-built terrace houses had a rear exit by means of a narrow passage running behind the terrace, and some slightly later ones had small front gardens with a 4 to 6 foot wide path running down the centre of the terrace. All the back-yards had a flush toilet, a coal-house and an outside water supply. This was the type of court-housing provided in the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century’s as Hull expanded eastwards, westwards and northwards. Prior to that, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, as Hull expanded northwards into Sculcoates after the building of Hull’s first dock in 1778, and then westwards into Myton a few years later, things were very different and had their origins in the old walled town of Hull.
Old Town housing and expansion after 1770
By about 1320 the town of Hull covered about 90 acres, the street plan had already been laid out and by 1400 the town had protective walls to the north, west and south, with the eastern side on the River Hull forming the harbour, with quay-sides and staithes leading into the centre of the town. All this can clearly be seen on Hollar’s plan of Hull in 1640. In addition, the town defences had been completed in Tudor times with the construction of the Citadel on the eastern bank of the River Hull. By 1770 the population of Hull was 15,000 and urban expansion had been almost entirely within the 90 acres of space within the town walls and river frontage. The capacity of the town had become inadequate for further expansion. At that time the eastern half of the Old Town consisted of merchant’s houses and warehouses in the High Street and the staithes and narrow streets leading from them to the Market Place and Lowgate. The western part of the town had a more open character with houses having large gardens and trees had been planted in certain areas. Very soon, as the population grew, the process began of filling all available space with cramped and close housing. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) on visiting Hull in the 1720s said; “The town is exceedingly close built....it is extraordinarily populous, even to inconvenience, having really no room to expand”.
Between 1645 and 1720 was mainly the period when the gardens of the town houses became crowded with cottages and workshops to their limits. Rich men’s houses became close in proximity to poor men’s hovels. By the 1780s building was taking place along the three roads leading from the town gates, northwards along the River Hull and north of the newly-constructed dock. Large Georgian residences were being built but a high majority of the poorer people still lived in the crowded Old Town area.
To the north and west of Hull, in Sculcoates and Myton, the Industrial Revolution came to Hull, particularly in Sculcoates where many factories, mills, tan-yards and paint works flourished. The demand for workers brought with it a demand for cheap housing and with building regulations almost non-existent until 1854 the slums of the future were built. The industrial premises and workers houses were built very close together with very little open space. By the mid-nineteenth century the population density in Hull was 163 people per acre.
The most insanitary areas were in the courts and alleys of the Old Town, but North and South Myton, and Drypool to the east of the River Hull, also had very bad slum areas. On the other hand, many fine middle-class residences were being built on the main roads leading from the town and out-lying villages.
Court Housing in the Old Town
By 1881 18,108 people lived in the Old Town. In some areas the density of population was 263 people per acre and in others 68 people per acre. The Jones-Smith Report of 1850 (Select Committee on the Health of Towns) stated that; “The 90 acres, closely built, are composed of narrow streets fringed by tall buildings with many narrow alleys and confined courts”. A typical Old Town court property illustrated the basic sanitary defects of the oldest type of housing; ‘Built back-to-back with an entry only 3 or 4 feet wide, provided with only 10 privies for 175 inhabitants or more, and built throughout of three storeys with walls only one brick thick, they were over-crowded, confined and insanitary’. Most of these courts were off the main streets with access through a tunnel entry and because of the height of the buildings got very little light. There were many like this in the Old Town and I personally knew a man who had lived in such a place as this in Blanket Row in the early 1930s.
Court Housing in Sculcoates and Myton
The new industrial areas of Sculcoates and Myton were built up between 1780 and 1850, first in Sculcoates and later in Myton. Both had areas where the density of population was between 200 and 530 persons per acre, with the higher densities in Sculcoates. It is strange that Myton, as the newest working class area, provided most of the adverse comments, both in 1840 and 1850. Its houses were newer, less over-crowded and better built than those in Sculcoates. In 1850 Sculcoates had 160 acres of built-up land and Myton had 330 acres.
The basic unit of building in Sculcoates and Myton was a modified version of the Old Town courts and streets. The court-yards were less narrow and although still at right-angles to the main street the majority still had a tunnel entry. The most significant improvement was the provision of a back-yard to each dwelling. These contained a privy and an ash-pit to replace the blocks of communal privies commonplace in the Old Town. Despite this there was still no rear access and the night-soil and ashes still had to be removed via the front door. Many houses were still 3 storeys high and still had only 1 course of bricks, and despite the improvements were prone to weakness and damp. The drainage was still by open channels down the centre of the court to the street sewers.
Social historian George Macauley Trevelyan (1876-1962) later wrote; “Throughout the 1840s and onwards nothing was done to control the slum landlords and jerry builders, who saved space by crowding families into single rooms and underground cellars. They saved money by the use of cheap building materials and by providing no drains, or worse still provided drains which oozed into the water supply system “.
The shocking thing about all this was that in both expanding areas of Hull there was enough space available for building houses with a much lower density of population per acre. Unfortunately this did not happen, mainly due to parsimony of the landlords.
Court Housing in East Hull
East Hull was fortunate that apart from the Witham area it had very little court housing. Having said that, the court housing in Witham was in very close proximity to the Drypool ‘muck-garths’, an area between Witham and what is now Clarence Street, where much of Hull’s night-soil was deposited. All of these courts were of the tunnel entry type and were also subject to flooding when the River Hull was high.
The Cholera Outbreak of 1849
The terrible cholera outbreak in Hull in 1849 brought things to the public notice when between August 31 and October 11, 1,360 people died in Hull from the disease. 583 of these were people who lived in Myton, 271 lived in Sculcoates and 352 in the Old Town. 48 people died in the Drypool area and 106 in the eastern River Hull districts of Sutton Parish, mainly Wilmington and Stoneferry.
Cholera outbreaks in other parts of Great Britain had led to public health Acts of Parliament, such as the Public Health Act of 1848, the Health of Towns Act of 1848, and the Kingston-upon-Hull Improvement Act of 1854, which were to begin the change in public attitudes, and the programmes of slum clearance slowly began. After a new Public Health Act of 1875 was passed progress became much more rapid but despite this it is still sad to record that in certain areas of Myton, Sculcoates and Witham, although no more such housing was built, people were still living in such conditions well into the twentieth century. I once worked with a man who in 1964 still lived in a one-up-one-down house with no rear exit in a terrace off Finsbury Street, Fountain Road, in Sculcoates. This terrace was pulled down in the 1970s along with most of the Fountain Road residential area.
For further reading regarding court housing I can recommend;
Forgotten Hull, Parts 1 and 2, by Gareth Watkinson and Graham Wilkinson.
Forgotten Hull, Part 3, by David Alexander Smith.
Court Housing in Kingston-upon-Hull, by C.A. Forster.
Hull Gent Seeks Country Residence 1750-1850 by K.J. Allison (EYLHS No 36).
(This booklet gives fine examples of how ‘the other half’ lived!!)
Autumn 2013
THE MOUSEMAN OF KILBURN – ROBERT THOMPSON
The village of Kilburn lies in the North Riding of Yorkshire near to the market town of Thirsk. The village was recorded as Chilburne in the Domesday Book of 1086 and the name means ‘cell by a stream’. High above the village is the famous ‘White Horse of Kilburn’, which was the inspiration of Thomas Taylor, a local business man, and schoolmaster John Hodgson, who helped cut the horse out of the hillside turf in 1857, revealing the white chalk stone which can be seen from miles away. The horse forms the backdrop to the village, a cluster of cottages, an inn, and a church, which contains a memorial chapel in English oak carved by Robert Thompson’s craftsmen. It is a memorial to Robert Thompson himself, the founder of the company which bore his name. Why is the memorial in oak? We shall soon see.
Let us start at the beginning. Robert Thompson was born in Kilburn in 1876, the son of a local joiner and wheelwright. No doubt he watched his father at work and eventually taught himself to use the traditional tools of a medieval craftsman. By 1919 he was experimenting with ideas for furniture based on the English styles of the seventeenth century. He was determined to realise his dream of bringing back the spirit of craftsmanship using a particular wood, namely oak. He always said that oak would last for 300 years, and many years more.
Why was the mouse the trademark of his work? The story is that one day when he was in his workshop, one of his fellow craftsmen, he never called them apprentices, commented that he was ‘as poor as a church mouse’. Robert immediately carved a little mouse and thus it became his trademark.
In his teens his father sent him to Cleckheaton in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was not sent to work as a craftsman in wood but as an engineer in a factory. Just imagine the noise of the factory and the bustle of the town, it was all alien to him and he was not happy. How he missed the quietness of his father’s workshop and the peacefulness of his village of Kilburn. On his visits back home he regularly visited Ripon Cathedral and this had a great impact on his thinking. Here he saw the works of the medieval carvers of Ripon, work one can see on the misericords of Beverley Minster. One master carver, in particular, impressed him and he was William Bromflet. Ripon Cathedral and William Bromflet were to become major influences in his life. After five years Thompson returned to Kilburn, wanting to work as a craftsman in his beloved oak. He would use as his main tool an adze, a tool similar to an axe with an arched blade.
The turning point was really in 1919 when he met Father Paul Nevill, a monk from Ampleforth College, the Roman Catholic public school not far from Kilburn. Father Nevill asked Thompson to make an oak cross for the cemetery at the college. Thompson found an oak tree which had blown down in the wind and duly made the cross. This was the start of his association with Ampleforth which lasted 35 years and was to play a huge part in his life.
Robert Thompson was a generous man who often encouraged boys in the village to come to his workshop and practise woodcraft using a penknife. He was particularly keen to help local deaf and dumb boys to do this. He was a perfectionist and taught all under his charge to respect what they were doing and to look upon their creation as a thing of beauty. By 1935 he had six men working for him, all trained in his ways of gentleness and patience. He had two machines to do plank sawing, but beyond that all the work was done by hand. The word ‘mass-production’ was unknown to him and he spurned the use of nails and screws. He maintained that oak could be held together by good craftsmanship. The oak, he said, had special properties and he was so devoted to its use he would let it weather for five years and see it mature before he used it.
By 1930 Thompson had thirty men working for him. His work was not only wanted and admired in the British Isles but also in countries like Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. Nearer to home examples of his work can be found in St. Mary’s, Sculcoates, St. Mary’s, Beverley, Brantingham and Beverley Minster. They are all examples of his hard work. He said, amusingly, ‘He who would thrive must rise by five’. Thompson was a married man who doted on his wife. In his house he had a saying carved in wood that read, ‘Better one hand that rocks the cradle, than two that drive the plough’. As stated above his work can be seen in East Yorkshire and further afield. There is a small Scottish island near Harris which has one house that is only occupied for a few weeks of the year. In this house is a private chapel with a great oak door showing one of Thompson’s mice, which was one of the last examples of his personal work.
Did Robert Thompson regard a piece of his work as his finest? Well, he did. One he would always mention was Thorp Arch Church near Wetherby. In the church the only woodwork which did not come from Kilburn was the altar, which came from Obergammerau, Germany. The furniture dates from 1935 and the pulpit and carved screen are his own personal work. Such was his fame that one letter arrived in this country which had been posted in America. It was addressed to ‘The Mouseman of England’ and it went straight to Kilburn.
When Robert Thompson became too ill to work his own son did not take over the company, but eventually his grandsons, Robert and John Cartwright, did. Grandfather Robert developed a terminal illness and died on December 8th 1955 in Purey Cust Nursing Home, York, aged 79. He was buried in the church yard in Kilburn on December 11th. He will be remembered as person understanding of men and portrayed a gentleness that had given a maturity to his work.
What was his legacy? Close to home is the wooden war memorial in St. Mary’s, Beverley, and work in the Military Chapel in Beverley Minster. There is work to be seen in Bridlington Priory and at Brantingham. Here, two wooden crosses in the churchyard are headstones for two members of the Massey family who died in 1934 and 1944. A little further afield there are examples of his work in the churches of Helmsley and Goathland. Also, there are lots of his work in York Minster and many other churches in York. Ripon Cathedral has eight candlesticks carved by Thompson. Even further away his work can be found in Usk and Newport in Wales, and Canna in the Isles of Hebrides.
Other places where the work of Robert Thompson can be seen are the Mill Inn at Withington in Gloucestershire, a part of the country where lots of his work can be seen, and the George Hotel at Piercebridge near Durham. Another unusual place is the cricket pavilion at Scarborough Cricket Club, where the refectory table is by Thompson. Mention was made earlier of his links with Ampleforth College. He did a lot of work for the monks there, the best known being the College Library, which is full of his craftsmanship.
Today, the work of Robert Thompson is continued by thirty craftsmen at the Museum Visitor Centre in Kilburn.
Adrian Toomey
Autumn 2012
MY WEEKLY YEAST ROUND
In the days before Mother’s Pride and sliced bread was ‘invented’, everybody did their own baking at home. A key ingredient of bread making was the yeast and every street corner shop had it on the counter and sold it in three pennyworths. My father and my uncle had a round in East Hull supplying the shops covering the area with their horse and cart and I (not being of school age) would go along for the ride. My uncle, who was never over committed to the job, would often stop at a pub on the round and go in for a pint. I was left out in the cold of course and I have waited outside every pub in East Hull at some time or other.
On Hedon Road once, he said he was going to get his hair cut and called into East Hull Barbers in Drypool and I was left on the rully. He was missing for what seemed hours. Other customers would go in and out, brushing hair from their shoulders - but no uncle. They certainly hadn’t pushed in, that wasn’t his nature. In the end I jumped down off the cart and sneaked a look in the shop but there was nobody in the premises. It turned out he had nipped out the back door and gone into the Waterloo Tavern. He must have been going thin on top and had a “five-barred gate” combed over his bald crown and when he returned he had had it shaved and I didn’t recognise him because I remember screaming and shouting “you’re not my uncle - you’re not my uncle – he’s got hair”.
The horse we had knew the round backwards. It didn’t need giddy-upping or guiding, it just used to plod from shop to shop and stop without telling. I recall one day doing the round with my father who was acting as a relief driver for Uncle Jim on the regular weekly round. This was Cleveland Street, Newbridge Road and Hedon Road. When we did the last delivery to the shop down Crowle Street, my father said “gee up” but it wouldn’t head home, it just went its own way on to Hedon Road and stopped outside the Sportsman’s Pub, the regular port of call, and would not move until my dad went inside. When he came out it really galloped back to Beverley Road, the iron wheels rattling on the granite setts.
We used to deliver in all weather of course, just on the open cart, and it was the custom for the drivers to sit on a pile of Hessian sacks, firstly for comfort and secondly for when it rained or carrying sacks. They would put one corner of the sack inside the other and form a ‘pixie-hood’ with a ‘bat-man’ cape to keep yourself dry and clean. No soppy cabs or heating in those days, just exposed to the elements all the time. I remember coming home once with my uncle for a cup of tea to get ‘warmed up’. We were always told to sit at the back of the room when came in very cold so that we didn’t get ‘hot-ache’ near the fire. He poured the tea out but when it came to milk there wasn’t any so he picked up the cats saucer of milk and slopped some into my tea and the rest in his. When my mother found out she wasn’t very pleased and ‘threw a wobbler’, accusing him of trying to poison her son.
We pulled up at a shop down St. Mark’s Street one day and my uncle delivered the half bag of yeast. It was in 10lb waxed hessian sacks and sold in half and quarter lb bags that you just cut with a big knife, no weighing, just ‘near enough’. He was missing for ages. I was getting cold and fed up so I jumped down from the cart and enquired in the shop, “Is my uncle in here?” “No, he’s probably in the pub round the corner” was the reply. The hotel is now known as ‘Spiders’ down Cleveland Street and the crafty devil had sneaked in there without me seeing him. Never any humouring me, no plying me with crisps or placating me with lemonade – he had just up and gone! So it was time to give up all this waiting, I was going home. Remember I was under school age so I had to think out my route, I was in a bit of a dilemma. I didn’t like Scott Street Bridge – I was frightened it would go up with me on it and I would fall into the thick glutinous thick mud and never be seen again. So I headed for Chapman Street where a man used to stand on the parapet and wind a handle so you had advance warning if it was going to open. When I got there I scrutinised it very carefully – nobody at the handle so I sprinted as fast as I could across to the safety of the other side and home to Clifton Street. My uncle in the mean time had come out of the pub and dare not come home without me and was out until late at night searching the river bank for any sign of me – and I was tucked up in bed with my cocoa.
David Wilson
Autumn 2010
The history of street names
The history of street names I feel is one of the most interesting topics to research in the very broad field of local history. This subject has certainly many grey area’s and can be a very infuriating topic to study and indeed can cause many heated arguments and much discussion over the derivations of many street names.
I shall for the purpose of this article use my own book Complete Streets of Beverley as a working example this volume took me six years to research and produce and covers in the order of 1,100 streets both past and present. It was finally published in 2002.
So how do we go about compiling a book of this magnitude? Firstly you have to decide what parameters you are going to work within. I for logistical reasons covered part of Molescroft in my research as certain streets in Molescroft are partly within the boundary of Beverley, by that I mean they split the boundary between Beverley and Molescroft.
You then need to find a way of splitting the area you are covering into sections thus making it easier to catalogue and retain all your information and making it far more simple to access. I basically split Beverley into four quarters when I started on the long haul of attempting to track down all Beverley’s streets.
Then you start consulting maps starting in the case of Beverley with the 1747 Burroughs Plan the earliest recorded map/plan of Beverley and work right through the numerous O.S. maps, through to the latest street map which you can obtain in any local book-shop or stationers.
As you build up your list of streets you then start with the major problem of attempting to find their various derivations. The Council Minutes are a good place to start although it has to be added that these are flawed because often they will only give you the date when a street received its name and not the reason for naming a street or road by a certain title. They are, as we all know sometimes a little bit limited as certain items discussed at council meetings are not minted at all.
I did however find a lot of information on street nomenclature in these minutes and they will give you a good start to your task. There is also in respect of Beverley J.R. Witty’s excellent series of articles which, were published in the Beverley Guardian in 1929 and I used these as another starting point when I set out with my research. You will then need to trawl through the local press to see if they can throw any light on the subject as in certain cases the derivation is given here, yet not explained in the official minutes issued by the Council.
Publications such as the Victoria County History in the case of Beverly volume six, and J.E. Smiths excellent book on place names of the East Riding are also well worth studying because they too give a lot of detail on this subject. Another important source of information is by word of mouth ask your friends, relatives and colleagues if they have any ideas about the derivation of certain streets, you will be surprised how much fresh information they will come up with. You will have to ask, as people generally are very reticent about giving out information as I found out the hard way.
Another excellent source for tracing old streets are in the school records which in the case of Beverley are kept in Treasure House although again a word warning about this as some parents gave colloquial names for where there off-springs lived such as for example Concrete Houses, Grovehill Road. You also need to study each and every Electoral Register as these give you virtually the exact date as to when streets or roads were first inhabited.
So what do streets, roads, avenues etc get named after? There are many varied reasons for giving a stretch of land a title, and here are just some of them. The most popular is to name a thoroughfare after a famous person. In Beverley alone there are dozens of such cases. Some after well known people from centuries past such as the Hotham family (Hotham Square) the Warton family (Warton Avenue) and Routh Avenue named obviously after Ann Routh. Others are named after people who had major businesses in the town for example Crathorne Road, Hodgson Avenue and Crosskill Close. These were named after the owners of three huge factories in the town Crathorne’s Mill at Grovehill, Hodgson’s Tannery in Flemingate and Crosskill’s Iron Foundry, which covered much of Mill Lane.
Another popular choice is trees and shrubs and two of Beverley’s estates have their streets named primarily after these. Model Farm Estate and Norwood Grange where such examples as Oak Close, Maple Drive, Laburnum Drive, Rowan Avenue and Chestnut Avenue are to be found.
In Beverley another popular reason for giving a street, lane or road its title is after people who lived in the area. Beckside for instance, has a whole host of streets given their title after well known citizens who at one time had connections with the Beck or the Beckside area in particular.
The Monarchy and aspects of it are also popular when street names are derived and in the early 1950s we had Queens Road, Windsor Close and Coronation Close all named at the time of the Queen’s coronation. A later example of this is Royal Garth in the Butt Lane region of the town, which was named to mark the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson in 1987. A far earlier example of this dating back to the 19th century is Regent Street.
Publicans and public houses are another popular choice as many of the old yards in Beverley were named after pubs or landlords. Here of course is another trap for budding local historians when searching for the derivation of a street name as some of these were only colloquial names given by the folk who lived in the area, and not officially named by the powers that be.
Religion also plays a big part in the naming of streets and Beverley’s three major churches, The Minster, St. Mary’s and St. Nicholas have all had many streets named after them. Some examples of this are Minster Avenue, Minster Court, St Mary’s Walk, St Mary’s Terrace, and St Nicholas Road.
Many streets too are named after the building on which they are built or were adjacent to, examples of this are Albion Court named after Albion House and Melrose Park which was named after the tannery of that name, which stood on the site. Harper’s Court on North Bar Without, which derives its name after the garage owned by the Harper family and Citadel Court after the Salvation Army citadel on Wilbert Lane also fall into the same category.
Many other reasons are found to give a street or road its title local councillors being a typical one. Although this has caused heated arguments in the council chamber in the past, as there was an unwritten law in existence that prevented any councillor having a street named after them while they were still alive. However that rule was waived when Hammond Road was named after Councillor Robert Hammond shortly after the end of World War 2.
Some of the older streets were named after industries in the area such as Flemingate, Walkergate and Dyer Lane. Whereas as Denton Street is named after a member of the Denton family who were tanners in the town.
More unusual and diverse reasons for naming a particular street can be found with the example of Annie Reed Road being a classic case in point. This was named after the mother of the chairman of the Property Company A.B.I. Properties Ltd. So do not be surprised by what you come up with when researching street nomenclature.
At one time the Post Office used to have a big say in the naming of the various roads however this seems to have waned somewhat. We now have examples such as Greenwood Avenue and Greenwood Gardens, Bramble Garth and Bramble Hill and Poplars Way and Poplar Drive all now in existence and which many years ago the Post Office would almost certainly have vetoed.
Something else which, is a popular fallacy is that no streets are named after Christian names and this is obviously untrue with two classic examples in Beverley to dispel this myth. Edward Street is named after Edward Osgerby whose family owned the field where the Horsefair used to be held and George Street is named after that famous Beverley builder George Pape.
Also don’t assume that because all streets in a certain development are named together there will be some consistency. A classic example of this being the Copandale estate were ten of the streets are named after vicars from either the Minster or St. Mary’s and the other three named after British birds. Where is the consistency in this, and furthermore what has the church of St. Nicholas done wrong for it to be totally ignored.
Another annoying part of researching street names is that streets are quite often spelt wrongly. Ascot Close for example which was obviously named after the Ascot racecourse is named Ascott Close. Whilst Hargreave Close which is in respect of the Reverend Reginald Cecil Hargreaves a famous Minster vicar shortly after World War 2 is also spelt incorrectly.
Another major problem you will find relates to the use of apostrophes and even street signs are not very helpful over these so my advice would be to stick with the most commonly used version and go with that.
These then are just some basic guidelines on how to go about researching street names and some of the problems and pitfalls not to mention inconsistencies you will find during the course of your research.
To finish with one final piece of advice if you have a gut feeling about a derivation of a certain street even if it has not been recorded as such, back your judgement and go with it, because it is highly likely that your instincts will prove to be correct.
David Sherwood
THE KLONDYKE CAFE
Brian Elletson
The Klondyke Café close to the New Inn Marfleet Hedon Road opened in 1913 and served its last customer sixty years later in 1973. The first owners were probably of German or Dutch origin who started making cups of tea for weekend travellers going to Withernsea and the east coast. With the opening of King George Dock in 1914 there was an opportunity to take advantage of the workers who worked there, as well as seaman who would want cheap refreshments.
It was an inconspicuous building yet one that played a daily role in the working lives of many hundreds of workers, not only those working on the docks but seamen, lorry and bus drivers. While the building was not an impressive one it did have a character all of its own. Evan a former owner said “its only the b***** paint that holds the place together“ At one time the earthen floor was covered by rubber belting from the grain silo on King George Dock which hid the potholes on the floor, but they made the tables wobble, so lumps of wood were needed under the table legs to steady them.
The New “Marfleet” Inn with the Klondyke on its left gives the impression that a telephone pole did indeed pass through the café.
One dock worker said in 1996 that the Klondyke was L shaped but would often change shape because the owner kept joining bits on. The café was made of wood, patched with bits of metal and tin, it sounds a bit like Mattie’s was at Withernsea. Built with driftwood from the mudflats and other timber ‘borrowed’ from local wood yards, in the middle was a telegraph pole that buzzed as it was still in use. Inside the chairs were mostly in poor condition, some had their backs broken off. The counter was hand made with bits of wood, unfortunately the owner was not a good handyman, and he just nailed the wood altogether.
There were no windows on the road side of the café as this wall went close up to the pavement edge. The roof used to leak rain water into the kitchen and when the cook was working there it would sometimes drip into the pans. The ceiling left something to be desired, as hanging from the rafters were what looked to be brown stalactites hanging down, these were a mixture of condensation and nicotine.
Some cats had made the Klondyke their home as well as a few rats. One of the cats who caught the rats would lay them in a row near the door. The rats came from the grain silo nearby on the dock. One day a rat snatched some food off the floor and shot back down its hole. After it came back for seconds the owner, after seeing this happen, filled a bucket with boiling water which he poured down the rat hole and said “that would warm it’s a*** up a bit and it wouldn’t be back in a hurry”.
My Father visited it twice on March 3rd 1934, “called in Klondyke at 12-10am until 1-30am” then again on the 31st May. It makes you wonder what time it opened and what time it closed and on what days. Perhaps it would stay open for as long as someone was there seven days a week. These establishments opened early in a morning as my Father went in Mrs Wood’s coffee shop at 6am, so it could have opened earlier. It suggests the Klondyke would keep similar hours. In the 1930s trams started at 5am so there must have been quite a number of workmen starting early in a morning who would want breakfast or tea and a bacon banjo at this early hour.
In the 1940’s a man called Harry Smith co-owned the Klondyke with a Les Maudson and a man called Walt. Behind the café was an orchard which also provided a home for chickens and geese, one being called Charlie. Harry and Walt used to tinker about with cars at the back of the café, and then one day someone left the orchard gate open. Charlie decided to go and attack Harry’s legs as he lay under a car, he tried to fend the goose off with a trolley jack handle all to no avail, so getting fed up with the goose he whacked Charlie with the handle and killed him. Needless to say he ended up on the cafés menu the next day.
Through the years the Klondyke continued to be a thriving business with workers from the docks, lorry drivers and a few ladies of the night who it was said had prices chalked on the soles of their shoes. In those days, for police officers, their beat was worked by one officer, either on foot or on a pedal bicycle, but on the night shift most officers doubled up outside local pubs. Stating at the Sportsman at the corner of Lee Smith Street and Hedon Road they would walk along to the Klondyke which was always open until the early hours.
The café proprietor at one time was a Maltese gentleman named Joe. His English was poor to say the least and his conversation was liberally filled with swear words. A police officer said that with it being a regular haunt for prostitutes, and also with a few drunken seaman, it was a recipe for trouble and there were sometimes quite unpleasant fights. However, the police officer said that normally both the men and the ladies were quite friendly to them and they often received helpful snippets of information.
In the 1960s an apprentice plumber said he and his colleagues used to push a hand cart loaded with materials for maintaining the prefabs on Hedon Road. He said they could never pass the Klondyke owing to the smell of bacon wafting out of the hut. Being lowly paid apprentice plumbers they couldn’t afford a bacon sandwich, so they had to make do with a bacon dip bread cake, (a bread cake dipped in bacon fat) and a pint mug of tea, or if you could afford it, a large two pint one.
During the morning rush hour it was the norm that after taking workers to the many factories on Hedon Road such as Priestman’s, Imperial Typewriter and the workers at Saltend, the bus drivers had time for a break before starting the school run. It was not uncommon to see as many as 10 to 15 buses parked alongside the perimeter fence near the café. The bus drivers at the rear of the queue had a hazardous task reaching the Klondyke as the gap between bus and fence was usually to narrow to walk between. While walking at the side of the buses the traffic leaving the docks on Hedon Road thundered by uncomfortably close to them
Sixty years on came the end of an era and the Klondyke entered into history. It was demolished in the 1970s along with the New (Marfleet) Inn, with both buildings being replaced by a Wick’s DIY store. Now in turn this building has been demolished and the site where they once stood lie beneath the roundabout at the Hedon Road, Marfleet Avenue junction.
THE EGG TRADE
David Wilson
Easter used to be the time chickens would start laying eggs after a long winter and the giving of Easter eggs was to celebrate the start of the breeding season. Attempts were made to keep the production regular by preserving them a with wax coating and pickling but were never very successful for any large quantity.
Experiments with refrigeration were successful and with eggs cheap in the summer they could be long time stored then sold in winter when they were scarce and the price had advanced six fold but this type of storage was expensive. Freezer space was rented at Union Cold Store on Albert Dock and Gilyott and Scott at High Street and it very time consuming. Every case was tipped on its side and if any traces of egg leaked the case was rejected. They had to be collected from remote packing stations at Pickering and the Wolds, Goole, Beverley, Plane Street and Hodgson Street, Hull. Some of the farms in the Wolds were just one family establishments and a highlight of the collection were the ‘doorstep’ dripping sandwiches they gave me – no wonder my cholesterol has gone to pot since then!
One of the quirky factors about the egg trade is the fact that quantities were always referred to as a ‘long hundred’, so ten dozen was 120 eggs. Whether its one of those idiosyncratic expressions like a ‘bakers dozen’ and you receive extra for breakages may be a fact. A case was 3L.Hd. so a case of 30 dozen would get you 300 good eggs! This expression has now died out with ‘bushel and pecks’!
The egg trade was a bit like the Stock Exchange trading, when eggs were plentiful the price would go down, and when they were in short supply the price would rise and a sudden glut on the market could soon lose you money. Every week there was a suggested price from the Egg Marketing Board but it was always a case of the best bid would get the goods. Now there is very little fluctuation in the trade, it’s evenly balanced during the year.
We would import eggs from Holland, Denmark and Poland into Hull docks. They seemed to have an over-production of eggs and the product was easy to transport. They could be in Hull in 48 hours as fresh as any of the home produced products. The Danish had brown shells and very deep yellow yolks the Dutch fairly light shells with pale cream yolks but the Polish white shells and pale yolks. It was as if it reflected the temperament and economy of the nation!
Collecting the eggs from King George dock could be a nightmare. Finding a ‘gang’ of dockers to load you after dinner when they had just come out of the ‘Sportsman’ pub caused problems. They would literally throw the crates on to the truck from all sides, with no respect for their fragility, for it was the same gang that was loading timber.
Any cracked eggs would go into a milk churn and be sold to bakers as a melange. Duck eggs were not very popular but they would make a lovely custard pie. We would sometimes come across eggs that had names and addresses pencilled on them and we would often reply to some child at a farm on the continent who usually replied with a postcard. Some from Poland had messages like ‘Help – I’m being held prisoner in an egg packing station in Poland.’ Hope they had a sense of humour!! This importation was also good for the economy. There were very few houses in Hull that didn’t have an egg box as a rabbit hutch, with braces ends used on the door hinges - a book shelf or cupboard and, as last resort - firewood!
Then somebody thought up ‘battery farming.’ The birds were kept in a constant temperature and the light turned off twice a day to make them think it was morning, and they would lay twice a many eggs a day all the year round. Production is now more controlled and seasonal differences eliminated. The need for imports became unnecessary and the trade has completely disappeared. Now a Polish Egg box circa 1958 is on the antiques road show! (Only joking!)
HDLHRG