Some unique reptilian ornaments on a busy Hull road form a mystery our serpentine adornment correspondent Angus Young tries to solve.
Hull Zoological Gardens might have closed in 1861 but its legacy lives on in and around Spring Bank. There are a pair of bear sculptures climbing poles at one end of Albany Street and a small statue of a hippopotamus at the other, a pub called The Polar Bear and a series of paving slabs on Spring Bank itself featuring elephants. All of them are nods to Gardens’ animal attractions but what about a nest of often-overlooked snakes?
Four eye-catching wrought-iron serpents form part of the railings fronting two town houses in Belgrave Terrace which fronts Spring Bank. The three-storey terrace was built around 1830 and is similar in style and design to those in Albion Street and Jarratt Street. Each house in the terrace has a basement accessible via steps and stone staircases up to each front door. Older readers might recall The Silhouette nightclub being based in one of the town houses in the 1970s and 1980s,
Today, second hand vinyl record shop Disc Discovery has been trading from one of the basements since 1989. So what about the snakes?
It’s not known whether they were included in the original design and it’s slightly odd that they only feature either side of just two of the gated entrances on the terrace. If they are original features, they pre-date the Zoological Gardens by a decade. The pair which lead to Disc Discovery have been painted silver at some point while the neighbouring pair outside of Number 55 are black. A couple have old, presumably abandoned, bike locks are attached to them,
Their proximity to the Gardens might have been an inspiration if they weren’t part of the terrace when it was built but there’s no record of when or even why they appeared or who made them. It’s not even clear whether others might have existed further along the terrace only to disappear at some later date.
What is known is children’s author Amy Walton was born at Number 55 in 1849. She was the daughter of the Rev. John Deck, vicar at the nearby St. Stephen’s Church, and her best-selling novels, written under the name Mrs O.F. Walton, included Christie’s Old Organ, Little Dot and A Peep Behind The Scenes. She later lived in Park Street but after marrying Octavius Walton, who was her father’s curate, she moved to Jerusalem where her new husband took charge of a ministry on Mount Zion.
Were the serpents part of Amy’s childhood? It’s likely they were. As a decorative feature, they form part of an official Grade II listing which includes both Nos. 53 and 55 as well as the external railings. Unlike others in the terrace, the two properties retain most of their original external features.
As far as I’m aware, the surviving snakes are unique. However, why they were commissioned in the first place remains something of a mystery.