Nigel Kobby Taylor of Beats Bus tell us all about his recent Freedom Festival show.

We return to Hull’s hottest studio, Quizmaster Matt and his gorgeous knees and our expert panel for another round of questions asked by you at the Big Malarkey.

We’ve done the widest, so we sent our thin thoroughfare correspondent Angus Young out with a tape measure to find the exact opposite.

If you are a regular Curiosity visitor, you might have seen Leanne Cloudsdale nominating Westbourne Avenue as her favourite street in the city recently. While taking a stroll along it, she revealed it was the widest of the four main Avenues linking Princes Avenue and Chanterlands Avenue. The 80ft span includes both the road and the generous grass verges on either side, reflecting the grandiose Victorian vision behind what was, at the time of its construction, Hull’s poshest street. If you ignore the subsequent development of dual carriageways with equally generous central reservations, Westbourne Avenue still  remains Hull’s widest residential street. All of which got us wondering which street is the narrowest?

Inevitably, our research led us to the Old Town where people have been living cheek by jowl for centuries and, in particular, Bishop Lane. According to our trusty Curiosity measuring tape, there’s a 16ft 4in space between the front doors on either side of the cobbled lane.

Bishop Lane originally ran from High Street through to the junction with Land of Green Ginger, having previously been known as Bishop’s Gate. It would later also be briefly known as Denton Lane. It was first recorded in 1347and poll tax records for 1377 show a total of 43 households in the lane with an adult population of 68.

The west side eventually became known as Bowlalley Lane but the eastern end not only retained its title but also maintained a reputation as a highly desirable place to live. In a newspaper advert from 1787 it was described as “a clean and retired street nearly in the centre of the town of Kingston upon Hull, with every requisite, out-office and a spacious garden behind the same.”

Like many streets in the Old Town, Bishop Lane was the result of houses being squeezed into old plots of garden land as Hull’s population expanded. The residential nature of the lane started to change in the late 17th century when a number of businesses opened and in the 19th century it was peppered with drinking establishments. For some reason, all of them opened on the south side of the lane. A 1791 directory of those living and working there gives some idea of the mix of residents and businesses with a surgeon, a shoemaker, a tailor and a pawnbroker rubbing shoulders with a shipowner, a postmaster, a painter and a brandy merchant.

Perhaps the best known address in Bishop Lane is Number One which stands at the south-east corner overlooking the junction with High Street. It is believed to have been built in the late 18th century after the demolition of an arched tenement at the end of the lane. Since then it’s been a merchant’s house, an alehouse, the office of a ship’s broker and the residence of a tailor before it was extended to include the neighbouring property at Number Two.

By the 1960s it was being used as a nightclub, reaching its peak a decade later as the legendary Bier Keller. These days Hitchcock’s vegetarian restaurant occupies the lower floor. Somewhat of a Hull institution, their all-you-can-eat buffets have been filling diners for the last four decades.

Angus Young

Artist James is part of Hinterland Creative and he talks us through how he approaches his craft.

We bumped into storyteller Eden Valentine at the Big Malarkey and he told us all about his brotherly love.

Ed Heppel is a partner in the Employment team at Wilkin Chapman Rollits and he answers posed by Burnsy on your behalf about sackings, redundancies and the threat of AI.

Our post-war demolition correspondent Angus Young writes about a fella you may not have heard of but who the whole city owes a debt of gratitude.

A young Army colonel carefully picks his way through the debris of bomb-damaged buildings in Hull’s Old Town. He’s on leave from active wartime service with the Green Howards in Cyprus and he’s on a mission. In 1936 at the age of just 23, Rupert Alec-Smith took the first steps to form the Georgian Society for East Yorkshire. Distressed by the demolition of the early 18th century Winestead Hall and already a keen  scholar of local history, the grandson of the founder of a prominent local timber importing firm used his family’s business contacts to recruit a formidable committee to spearhead the new society.Among them were East Riding Council chairman John Dunnington-Jefferson, Basil Reckitt of Reckitt & Colman, two local MPs and two architects – Hull City Hall designer Joseph Hirst and Francis Johnson from Bridlington.

The society’s initial focus was on trying to curb the increasing conversion or loss of Georgian era country houses and mansions like Winestead Hall. However, the issue accelerated dramatically in Hull during the Second World War when bomb damage typically resulted in demolition rather than restoration of grand Georgian houses in the Old Town. While on leave, Alec-Smith returned to Hull and would spend several hours rescuing fittings from damaged Georgian residences lining High Street

After the war, the city council showed little appetite to restore what was left. Instead, it commissioned a new masterplan for Hull proposing the demolition of many properties in High Street. Alec-Smith continued to salvage what he could from the buildings before they were bulldozed while turning his attention to saving and restoring two of the most prominent remaining Georgian landmarks in High Street. Under his leadership, the society acquired both Maister House and Blaydes House.

He then persuaded the National Trust to take on Maister House while the society itself funded the restoration of Blaydes House, damaged by a bomb blast which completely destroyed a neighbouring building in 1941. Blaydes House was later sold to the University of Hull for just £1 and now hosts the university’s Maritime Historical Studies Centre. Once home to a family of wealthy merchants, Grade I listed Maister House is now the National Trust’s only property in the whole of East Yorkshire and is leased by a music company.

Alec-Smith’s eye for architectural detail also resulted in a Georgian chimney piece retrieved from one High Street building earmarked for demolition ending up being installed in his own home – a Georgian era rectory – in Winestead after the war. In a later account of the rectory and its many sympathetic period additions from elsewhere, he wrote: “Lovers of houses so often seek permanence in the things they love.”

His passion for local and family history included everything from furniture to artworks. A 3,000-strong collection of his papers now held in Hull History Centre include documents on the medieval church and civic history of Hedon, maps and plans for numerous places across East Yorkshire, ancient manorial records for the village of Elstronwick, copies of enclosure acts and volumes of records about the Maister family. The collection also features nearly 20 years of correspondence with the poet John Betjeman, who became a good friend through a shared love of historical architecture.

Alec-Smith later became a Conservative councillor in Hull and served as Lord Mayor in 1970. He died in 1983 but his name lives on in a charitable fund he set up as a bequest which is now administered by the city council. It provides funding to buy objects of artistic or historic interest relating to Hull which can be added to the council’s own public collections.

Angus Young

You can’t drive down Hessle High Road without seeing them, but what and they and why? As always, Hull Tour Guide Paul Schofield has the answers.

Artist Lucy Brooke – of the Feminine Urge Collective – outlines what the role of a curator involves and why it matters.

Our legendary escapolgist correspondent Angus Young reports on a new book about our city and the world famous daredevil.

October 31 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Harry Houdini. So what better way to mark the occasion than a new book documenting the famous escapologist’s visits to Hull? Hull-based Houdini fan Roger K Noble’s ‘The Houdini Research Files’ is not only an extraordinary account of the great man’s appearances in the city but also a fascinating look at an almost forgotten local world of myth, magic, music hall and spirituality. It’s also something of a labour of love.

Roger first started researching the subject just over 30 years ago before putting his files to one side and half-forgetting about them until rediscovering his old notes during a clean-up at his home. “I am not a professional author, nor am I a magical performer, so I hope the reader will bear with me and the Houdini scholars forgive me for any errors but I do hope everyone will find something new and of interest in this small piece of work,” he said. “The aim is to introduce not only Harry Houdini the showman but the man who visited our own city, took Hull into theatrical history and threw down some of his challenges and inventions locally. He was and still is an enigma and was a remarkable man.

“His escapes were mysterious and spectacular and his personality was intriguing and often peculiar. He was also a man who moved with the times, always thinking of something new for his audiences, always pushing the boundaries of stage presentation. He was truly a performer totally dedicated to his craft and one of the very first superstars of the entertainment world.”

Houdini was 29 when he first performed in Hull in 1903 and returned five times over the next 17 years. On each visit he appeared at the Palace Theatre on Anlaby Road, then Hull’s entertainment hotspot with theatres, a circus and cinemas dotted along the street near Paragon Station.

Hull was also one of the first places in England where he performed his most famous escape in his self-made  Chinese Water Torture Cell. It involved his feet and ankles being locked in a wooden stock brace before he was suspended upside down in mid-air and then lowered into a glass tank of water. Once submerged, the restraint on his ankles would be locked to the top of the tank but it was never enough to prevent him escaping from apparent death.

Houdini often staged stunts in public to publicise his theatre shows and the book records one in 1914 which saw him jump from a tug boat into the Humber trussed in handcuffs and chains weighing nearly 20 pounds. An 8,000-strong crowd watched from Corporation Pier as he subsequently emerged in the water free from his shackles.

Using contemporary newspaper reports, Roger conjures up a rich picture of a dazzling showman and a city still captivated by live entertainment. His book is a joint project with Hull’s Carnegie History Centre where copies are available to buy. All profits are being donated to Yorkshire Cancer Research.

Roger will also be talking about the book alongside Houdini expert and performer Michael Diamond at a special event being staged by the Hull Magicians Circle on Thursday, October 29, at the Men in Sheds Community Centre, First Lane, Anlaby, starting at 7.45pm. Tickets priced £5 can be bought in advance. Details via email at secretaryhullmc@gmail.com

An exhibition about Houdini in Hull is scheduled to open at the Hull History Centre on December 1.

Angus Young