With dark nights now firmly upon us, our cub reporter Angus Young tells how Hull pioneered street lighting.

The next time you’re in the Old Town check out what is believed to be the last surviving physical reminder of when nights in Hull suddenly turned light. Built in 1656, Wilberforce House in High Street is now one the sparkling jewels of the Hull Museums service. But back in the late 17th century, and like buildings in surrounding streets, once darkness fell there was not much to see of it except flickering candles inside the front windows of the house. That all changed when Hull’s wealthy merchants borrowed an idea pioneered by their Dutch counterparts and started using whale oil to illuminate the town’s main streets.

Historically, the Dutch competed with British ships in the early hunting of whales in Arctic fishing grounds but by the time Wilberforce House was built, the Dutch had become the dominant player while whaling in Hull was in steep decline. However, imported whale oil continued to be shipped into Hull to be used as a lubricant in some early industrial processes as well as being burned indoors in small lamps as an  alternative to candles in some homes and businesses. When the Dutch started using whale oil for street lighting, news of the innovation travelled quickly across the North Sea and the first outdoor lamps started appearing in Hull.

By 1713 Hull had more street lights than any other town in Britain and was sending whale oil to other places eager to catch up, including London, Birmingham and Edinburgh. When Hull’s reputation as a major whaling port revived in the late 18th century, its capacity to produce its own whale oil dramatically increased. Oil was extracted from chopped blubber boiled in large open pots at what were known as the Greenland Yards in Bankside next to the River. For a couple of decades, street lamps around the country were burning processed whale oil from Hull.

The omnipresent nocturnal smell of burning fish oil must have been strong but it was presumably tolerated for the benefits this new form of lighting brought, from encouraging longer trading hours to reducing crime in what had previously been pitch-black neighbourhoods. A typical lamp featured a small glass dish of oil with two wicks suspended inside a larger glass globe. The globe would sit in a metal ring fixed to a frame. It would be lit by a lamplighter using a ladder to reach the oil. Each lamp would usually burn for several hours until the oil ran out. The globe would require cleaning at least three times a week because of the soot produced by the burning oil.

Back in High Street, a metal ring and supporting frame which once carried a globe full of whale oil still sits above the arched wrought-iron main entrance gate at Wilberforce House. A century of Hull being illuminated burning whale oil eventually came to an end in the 1820s with the arrival of gas lamps and their much brighter light.

Angus Young

Burnsy visits the Western Library on Boulevard to find out what goes on at the Toddler Time events that happen regularly across the city.

We’ve all heard the fairly grim tale of the supposed death of the man who sculpted the statue of King Billy, but is it true? Our Urban Mythbuster Amy Thompson went to Hull History Centre to ask City Archivist Martin Taylor about the actual facts.

Ten-year old Jamie asked us this question, so we put our best brains on the job of finding the answer.

Former Hull MP, former Home Secretary, former Health Minister and now best-selling author, Alan Johnson talks to Burnsy about Brexit, the Post Office Scandal, regrets, guitars, Harold Wilson and more.

With excavations ongoing at the former Clarence Mill site, our cub reporter Angus Young gets an update on what been found thus far.

For the last six weeks archaeologists and around 100 volunteers have been peeling back layers of history at the site of the former Clarence Mill next the the River Hull. Covering roughly the size of a football pitch, the excavation aimed to dig deep into the story of the ancient parish of Drypool.

Mentioned in the Domesday Book, Drypool actually pre-dates Hull and is at least 900 years old so there was plenty to go at. Here, in chronological order, are some of the highlights of what they found.

A late 13th century ditch

Identifiable by its colour compared to the adjacent natural clay deposit, the discovery of a ditch might not sound very exciting but it confirms human activity at the site in the late 13th century. The team from the Humber Archaeology Partnership also located evidence of specially-dug pits from the period which were probably used as rudimentary toilets.

A 14th century jug

A sizable fragment of a jug, including its handle, proved to be one of the finds of the dig. The shape, colour and type of ceramic identified it as a piece of Humber ware pottery, probably made at either West Cowick or Holme on Spalding Moor where large-scale Medieval production sites are known to have existed.

Henry VIII’s defences

The team expected to see a small section of the base of a huge wall protecting a castle and fortress built on the orders of King Henry VIII between 1541 and 1553 and, as it turned out, they did. The northern tip of the defences runs through a corner of the site.

Drypool’s pool

Despite being named after a dried-up pool, numerous historical maps show evidence of a large pool or pond existing in the hamlet over many centuries before being filled in during the late 19th century. It was regularly used to dump rubbish and, as such, it provided a rich source of varied material during the dig with everything from discarded marbles to clay pipes, animal bones to pottery being found.

The most unusual and poignant item retrieved from the mud was the remains of a child’s leather shoe complete with a wooden sole and an attached calliper.

A vanished street

An impressive swathe of exposed granite setts mark the route of long lost Harcourt Street along with intact original kerb stones and iron gutters. The construction of the street in the mid-18th century marked the start of a population boom as the town of Hull across the river began to expand. With new housing eventually planned for the site, it’s hoped some of the original street can be incorporated into the development.

Early terraced housing

A dozen tiny terraced houses were built fronting Harcourt Street and the footprint of some of these have also been uncovered. They were built without foundations and trenches dug at the site vividly show how bricks were simply laid on bare earth. The ground-floor layout of some of the houses can also be traced, including kitchen tilework and blackened brickwork indicating where corner fireplaces once stood.

Timber Dock

People living in the houses would have looked out across the junction between the Timber Dock – built in 1850 as part of Victoria Dock – and the Old Harbour on the River Hull. During the excavation, old wooden sections of the dock became visible close to King Henry’s older fortifications.

With literally hundreds of objects either retrieved or left in situ, the site is being back-filled ahead of its eventual development. However, there are plans for a public event there next summer showcasing some of the finds as part of a joint festival being organised jointly between the Humber Archaeology Partnership and the nearby  Rooted in Hull community garden project with the idea of reviving the ancient tradition of the annual Drypool Feast celebration.

Angus Young

As a name, it seems entirely inappropriate, but – as Hull Tour Guide Paul Schofield explains – it used to be an accurate description of the area.

Ruth works at the Western Library on Boulevard and is a bit of an audiobook addict. Here are her favourites of the year and how to get them in your lug’oles.

Enjoy a contemplative moment with crime author Nick Quantrill as he picks his preferred spot to sit and ponder.

The fascinating tale of an undervalued figure in the British art world, Leslie Cole. Another cracker from our cub reporter Angus Young.

Photographs of bomb-damaged buildings overlooking Queen Victoria Square have become the defining images of Hull during the Second World War. But the paintings of Leslie Cole also probably also deserve to be seen in the same light as his work as an artist both in the city and abroad reveal a rare talent for capturing the human experience in what had become industrial-scale warfare. However, it was only in 1985 – nine years after his death – that he was finally recognised as one the UK’s foremost wartime artists when a posthumous solo exhibition was staged at the Imperial War Museum in London.

Originally from Swindon, Cole moved to Hull in 1937 to take up a teaching job at the Hull College of Art in Anlaby Road where he became an assistant lecturer in charge of lithography. A year later he married his wife Brenda and the couple lived in Victoria Avenue. When war broke out, Cole joined the Royal Air Force but was discharged on medical grounds.

Instead of being able to serve, he carried on teaching while attempting to secure a contract with the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), set up by the government to compile a comprehensive artistic record of Britain throughout the war. Initially rejected, Cole decided to gain the committee’s attention by personally arranging trips on a Hull trawler involved in minesweeping and coastal defence duties. His stark dimly-lit lithographic print of life below decks from one of those trips reflects the crew’s cramped living space. He also spent some time painting scenes of the war effort in Hull, presumably organising access himself.

Cole also visited King George Dock to watch tanks being loaded onto a ship bound for Russia resulting in two paintings now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. One features a busy crane-filled dockside view, the other takes us inside the bowels of the ship itself as workers pack the cargo ahead of their journey. His Night Scene in a Watch Office was also painted around this time, Cloaked in grey and dark blue, it shows a group of RAF personnel scanning a moonlit night sky through a large window for enemy aircraft.

In contrast, The Shaping of a Keel Plate of a Corvette, is a fiery shipyard scene with men  illuminated by the red-hot metal they are working on. As the Royal Navy Corvette HMS Azalea was built at the Cook Welton and Gemmell shipyard in Beverley in 1941, it’s likely Cole paid a visit there too. Eventually, the quality of his work in Hull led to his first full-time WAAC commission. In 1943 he went to Malta to witness the end of a German siege and then took part in an operation to recover the island of Pantelleria off the Siciallian coast.

Cole returned to Hull in late 1943 and resumed teaching at the College of Art until July 1944 when a second commission saw him join the Royal Marines in Normandy before taking on further WAAC work in Cairo and Greece. Juggling his teaching duties now became increasingly difficult and later that year he resigned from the college to become a fully salaried war artist. He was then sent with three other artists to record the British liberation of the Belsen-Bergen concentration camp in Germany, producing some of his best-known and most moving works – three large panoramic oil paintings of survivors, British troops and captured German guards.

In a commentary on one of the paintings, he wrote “The camp is large – 12 square miles and divided into compounds like chicken runs, with huts bare of any furniture  or conveniences. The huts normally accommodate 50 but as many as 400 were put in. The women’s compounds were the most tragic and horrible, and the worst cases of disease were located here, both in number and intensity. During my visit, the victims were still dying in the open and the woman in the centre of the picture collapsed while I was drawing. There are many bodies lying about, clothed and unclothed, and these were left as the British medical officers had not enough personnel to check if death had set in. If the body disappeared at night, it was alive.”

Cole did not return to Britain until 1946 having spent time in Singapore, Burma and Borneo, completing several more paintings of liberated prisoners of war. When he did return, he and Brenda left Hull and moved to London where he established a studio and then took a teaching job at Brighton College of Art. He was still working there when he died in 1976.

As well as The Kitchen, a painting from Cole’s time in Malta is also in the Ferens Art Gallery collection, although neither are currently on display. Overall, 20 of Cole’s works are in the Imperial War Museum while over 70 others are in public collections across Britain.

Angus Young