Tim, a park ranger at East Park, was really keen to show off his range of impressions. So we set up a camera, retreated to a safe difference and let him have at it. We take no responsibility for the results.
Only Dean, when asked to select a work of art, could come up with an old garage mural in Witham.
There’s a library in East Park? Yes, there is. Amy Thompson joins the list of people amazed to find out it’s there.
Having heard a couple of different answers to this question lately, we thought we’d dispatch our cub reporter Angus Young to get the absolute lowdown.
Most neighbourhoods in Hull owe their name to geographical history. Drypool was originally a tiny hamlet based in a dried up pool, Bransholme comes from an old Scandinavian word for a water meadow while Spring Bank hardly needs an explanation. Gipsyville, however, is a different kettle of fish with a name derived from an early 20th century household cleaning product
While a popular brand of laundry soap provided the inspiration for Port Sunlight near Liverpool, part of West Hull gets its name from a metal polish for stoves and fireplaces called Gipsy Black made from black lead. Gipsy Black was a best seller for Hargreaves Brothers & Co. which was first established in Hull in 1867 by brothers Theophilis and Matthew Hargreaves.
They first set up a manufacturing business at Ocean Works in Kent Street off Holderness Road, making blue and black lead for use in cleaning products. By 1907 it was time to expand and a ten-acre site just outside the city boundary was acquired for the development of a new factory. The company’s new production base was built in 1910 on what is now the site of the Dairycoates industrial estate. Christened Gipsyville after its main product, the new factory was regarded as being part of a model industrial development capable of creating a cluster of connected businesses.
For its time, the company was also progressive in terms of its employees by promoting a number of social activities and producing its own newspaper although it stopped short of following Reckitts’ example in Garden Village by building homes for its employees. Instead, speculative developers spotted an opportunity and began building terraced houses in a series of new streets adjacent to the factory south of Hessle Road. The new factory was soon joined by another at the bottom of one of these new streets when metal container manufacturer F. Atkins & Co. opened a plant next door. It was a logical move as Atkins already supplied Hargreaves with the tins to fill and then sell its paste-like Gipsy Black polish.
Eventually, the Gipsyville name became synonymous with the wider surrounding area rather than just the factory site but things could have been very different as another of the firm’s popular products was Glosso, advertised as “the one-minute polish producing in the shortest time the brightest polish”. Imagine catching the last bus to Glossoville or having a pint back in the Glossoville Tavern back in the day.
A 1913 report in the Lincolnshire Echo on a visit to the factory by local grocers states only a tenth of the site was in use at the time but nonetheless highlights the firm’s “immense buildings” and adds: “Messrs Hargreaves’ output and turnover may be fairly described as stupendous.” By 1920 the company seemed to be going from strength to strength having taken over no fewer than 20 other businesses in the preceding 14 years, acquiring several popular brands in the process, with factories in Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and two in Canada as well as Hull. By then, the wider neighbourhood was expanding with the building of new council housing to the north of Hessle Road which would eventually become known as the Gipsyville estate.
However, any hopes the estate’s new residents of getting a job at Hargreaves would soon vanish. In September 1922 shareholders at the company’s annual meeting were told of a heavy financial loss caused by a collapse in export trade following the depreciation of a number of foreign currencies as well as “political and industrial unrest in almost every part of the globe”. This instability had also resulted in delays in establishing new factories in Ireland and France and within two months of the meeting it was being reported the directors were considering selling the company and all of its assets.
When the private sale was completed the identity of the buyer was revealed to be none other than cross-city rival Reckitts, which had been a neighbouring business in Kent Street when the Hargreaves brothers first started. As part of the £355,000 purchase, Reckitts acquired all of Hargreaves’ land, buildings, stock, trademarks and debts as well as full control of 22 associated companies. The deal also required the Hargreaves directors to refrain from setting up any other similar business for the next 20 years. While Gipsyville was about to become an established community, the company and the product which inspired its name would disappear overnight.
Today Reckitts is still going strong, the old Atkins building is occupied by several small firms and all that remains of the Hargreaves factory is an impressively long brick boundary wall running the length of those eight terraced streets south of Hessle Road.
We’ve all seen it, most of us have larked in it, but why is it there? Only Hull Tour Guide Paul Schofield has the answer.
Isaac is a librarian but also a drummer and a percussionist, so he well knows a decent tub-thumper when he sees one.
Anonymous of HU3 asked the question, and we went and found the answer. That’s how this works.
Project Director Gill Osgerby tells Burnsy what’s happening with the huge Hull Maritime project. How things are going, how much longer they’ll take and what to expect when they’re finished.
Writer, artist, producer and trainee phrenologist Dave Windass picks a street (or two) with very personal associations.
Writer and photographer Alec Gill revisits the spots where photographed fish factory workers several decades ago.
