We caught up with comic book artist and author Nathan Hawthorne at the Big Malarkey and he outlined his pick of the superheroes.

Get your laughing gear around this chat between Burnsy and Gary Jennison for all the detail surrounding Hull Comedy Festival 2025.

Well, this looks like it would have been ace. Our lost attractions correspondent reports on the museum that never was.

The destruction of the Royal Institution museum in Albion Street during a bombing raid is one of Hull’s best-known wartime stories. However the tale of another Hull museum which suffered an identical fate was, until recently, almost forgotten. Thanks to ground-breaking research by Kyle Thomason, an archivist at the Hull History Centre, new light has been shed on the Old Times Museum in High Street.

In a recent History Centre blog, Kyke reveals how the larger-than-life director of Hull Museums Thomas Sheppard spent most of his professional career collecting and storing items destined for his ninth and most ambitious museum – an enclosed re-creation of a historical street. Sheppard’s idea wasn’t just restricted to opening a new attraction for visitors. He wanted to showcase the work of local craftsmen employed to put it all together.

The museum was earmarked to occupy a four-storey former grain warehouse standing between Wilberforce House museum and the River Hull. Conversion work started in 1932 and concentrated on the first two floors of the warehouse. It featured the construction of a dozen shops and buildings running down the length of the warehouse and standing either side of a cobbled street.

Most of the exhibits featured fixtures or fittings rescued by Sheppard from original buildings before their demolition. A replica of an Old Town tavern, for example, was created using the frontage of the Talbot Hotel in Scale Lane with interior fittings from two other old pubs. A chemist’s shop was assembled with a front bay from a pharmacy in Hertfordshire, a pair of ornamental gold serpents from the doorway at an old chemist’s in Howden and decorative panelling from another chemist’s which once stood at the junction of Spring Bank and Beverley Road.

Virtually an entire blacksmith’s workshop was relocated from Holderness Road while a plumber’s shop featuring re-constructed parts of the salvaged frontage of the former King’s Head Inn in High Street also housed  a collection of huge elm trunks originally used as pipes to carry fresh water to Hull from outlying areas. There was even an undertaker’s complete with an elaborately-carved Gothic hearse originally owned by the Annison’s funeral parlour.

A variety of historic vehicles were placed along the central street, including an 18th century stagecoach, an 1840 horse-drawn fire engine and an early motor car. The street itself was lit by whale oil lamps that once illuminated Queen’s Dock and also featured gallows and punishment stocks.

An opening date was pencilled in for March 1939 with plans in place for staff to wear period costume and serve beer from the re-created inns while a real blacksmith would be on hand to demonstrate his skills. However, for reasons which remain unclear, the necessary approval to open the museum to the public from Hull Corporation’s  property and bridges committee was delayed.

The start of the Second World War later that year put things on hold indefinitely and on the night of 8 May 1941 the Old Times Museum was destroyed in a huge fireball sparked by intensive German bombing. Having seen his grand vision go up in flames without ever opening, Sheppard retired later that year. Only a few exhibits were recovered from the smouldering ruins.

The bombed site was eventually cleared and replaced with an ornamental garden in 1950 which is still there today.

Angus Young

Andy Train, of Pride In Hull, picks a unexpected but undeniably amazing view.

Author and illustrator Ramzee takes a shot at our Big Malarkey quiz, while Ally-mai holds sway.

The difference between the rest of us and our muck garths correspondent Angus Young is that we see an owld doorway and he sees a social history of Hull.

It’s another one of those blink-and-you-will-miss-it moments. Take a stroll across North Bridge, dodge the traffic on Great Union Street and head for the southern side of Witham. Just before reaching Malton Street, it’s there on your right.

Framed in an archway set into an old brick wall is a wooden door covered by a rusting metal grille. Above it, there’s an overgrown bush. The archway itself is well below head height while the door looks as if it hasn’t been opened in decades. Viewed from the side across an open patch of fenced-off land, the door doesn’t appear to lead anywhere.

However, in the mid-19th century the archway was the entrance to 23 cramped properties lying either side of a narrow alley housing over 200 people. Holderness Court was one of five alleys lying between the Ship Inn (more recently known as the PlimsollShip Inn) and Malton Street. The others were the strangely-named Quickyfalls Court, Clean Alley, Chaffer’s Alley and Dunn’s Court.

Needless to say, conditions in the alleys back in the day were pretty grim. They had all been built on land previously used to store night spoil (human waste) removed from the town centre before taken out into the countryside where it was used as fertiliser. As a result, the area was known as ‘Muck Garths’. The houses were built back to back and didn’t have any running water or toilets. Instead, residents had to share a communal privy.

A picture of life in Chaffer’s Alley is provided by Mike and Sheena Young in an absorbing online blog called Young Family History. In it, they trace a branch of their ancestry back to three-year-old Jane Cotter listed in the 1841 Census as living with his parents and three older siblings in a house they shared with another family in Chaffer’s Alley. Jane’s labourer father James was born in Ireland while her mother Margaret originally hailed from Middlesex, suggesting the Muck Garths alleys were mainly home to migrant workers who had settled in Hull.

James Cotter died of a diseased bladder in 1845 aged 56. His burial entry records his residence as Chaffer’s Alley. His death almost certainly plunged the family into deeper poverty.

Six years later in the 1851 Census his widow Margaret is registered as living in the Sculcoates Union Workhouse with two children who had been born after Jane who by now, at the age of 12, was working as a servant in a lodging house in Sykes Street.

The cholera and typhus epidemics experienced in Hull in 1847 would eventually lead to the clearance of the kind of slum housing found in narrow alleys and passages. Between 1890 and 1910 Hull Corporation condemned and demolished 779 properties and a 1892 map showing the new tramway along Witham confirms that by then, Holderness Court and the other alleys were no more.

However, why the alley’s original archway entrance was retained remains one of life’s wonderful mysteries. The fact that it’s still with us nearly 200 years later certainly deserves a wave the next time you’re passing.

Angus Young

Hull Tour Guide Paul Schofield visits a memorial to the brave volunteers who fought fascism in the 1930s.

While appearing at a recent Hull Noir event, top author Jake Arnott was kind enough to tell us about his love for our local litterateurs.

In a podcast so fascinating Burnsy is stunned (almost) to silence, Stewart Baxter talks about everything from childhood trauma to improvised music to Spotify to the Nuremberg Trials combine in his new project.

This is a two-part podcast. Both episodes are available on this page.

Our police history correspondent Angus Young is a proud and enthusiastic graveyard rambler and often finds fascinating tales of local folk long past.

Graveyards are a treasure trove when it comes to researching local history. The one at St. Mary’s Church in Cottingham is no exception with a singular very striking tomb standing out. Surrounded by high iron railings on four sides, it features a prominent stone obelisk standing in the shade of a nearby tree. Closer inspection reveals it’s a grave for the Wray family.

There’s an engraved stone commemorating Anne Wray, who died in 1854 aged 66 and another in memory of what appears to be her three children – Eliza, John and Fanny. However, the reason for the striking monument lies in the contemporary importance of Anne’s husband John who, according to his own commemoration stone attached to the base of the obelisk, died in 1869. Still clearly visible and etched in stone, it reads: “In memory of John Wray Esquire, late Receiver General of the Metropolitan Police. Founder and for 43 years chairman of the University Life Assurance.”

Unlike Sir Robert Peel who, as Home Secretary, was responsible for the introduction of the Metropolitan Police force in London in 1829, little is known of the man who played a major role in getting it off the ground. That man was John Wray.

Born in Hull in 1782, Wray was appointed as the Met’s first Receiver Governor, or chief financial officer. It was his responsibility to organise and oversee the collection of money from London’s parishes to fund the new-look force, working from an office in Whitehall Place with a rear entrance in Scotland Yard. Wray was the son of  Lieutenant Colonel John Wray, commander of the Hull-based Fourth Battalion of the East Yorkshire Militia and a member of Hull Corporation who was best known for initiating a national relief fund for children and widows of men who had died during the Battle of Waterloo. Wray junior studied at Trinity College in Cambridge and worked as a barrister before joining the Met on an annual salary of £700. He served with the force until 1860 when he retired, aged 78

An official history of Scotland Yard describes him as “completely honest but far from organised by today’s standards”. Apparently, most of his dealings were verbal while his “interest in accurate account keeping was remote”. Even so, by the time he retired Wray had seen the Met grow to a force of 10,000 officers.

He also managed to juggle his role controlling the Met’s purse strings with founding and chairing the University Life Assurance Society, which was later acquired by Equitable Life group several years after his death. On retirement, Wray returned to live in East Yorkshire as a widower.

Today his name lives on in a block of flats built by the Metropolitan Police in Chelsea in the 1930s to provide accommodation for 114 police officers and their families. Wray House was sold in 1986 and converted into private residential accommodation but retains a link with the police as its original architect  Gilbert Mackenzie Trench was also responsible for designing the iconic blue police call box later made famous as Dr Who’s Tardis.

Angus Young