Why Are There Serpents On Spring Bank?

Some unique reptilian ornaments on a busy Hull road form a mystery our serpentine adornment correspondent Angus Young tries to solve.

Belgrave Terrace, Spring Bank, yesterday.

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,

Serpent adornments on the railings.

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.

Angus Young

What’s Going On With Lockwood Street Bridge?

It may not be the best known or most used bridge over the River Hull, but our walkway renovation correspondent Angus Young finds merit in an uncared for achitectural gem.

Lockwood Street Bridge, yesterday.

The bridges spanning the River Hull are generally well known features of the city’s landscape. However, those crossing the city’s drains are typically less familiar. Such is the case with the bridge carrying Lockwood Street across Beverley and Barmston Drain. It’s a shame because the bridge itself is a neat and tidy example of sturdy late 19th century urban infrastructure. At least, it used to be neat and tidy until a combination of careless drivers and care-free vandals intervened recently.

Together, repeated vandalism and vehicle impacts have left part of it in a sorry state. Dislodged bricks, damaged parapets and breakages to a number of cast-iron panels and posts have forced the city council to fence off part of the structure on safety grounds. It’s a sad sight to see because while relatively modest in size and scale, the bridge does still have a certain charm about it. The striking contrast between the yellow and red brickwork and stone detailing might have something to do with it.

Damage and fencing on Lockwood Street Bridge.

Then there’s the ironwork, a throwback to the days when heavy industry surrounded the site and almost certainly provided many of the materials required for its construction. When it was built, the bridge provided a connection between the factories and yards in Wincolmlee next to the River Hull and a large residential area in and around Fountain Road. To an extent, it still does although most of the factories have long gone and a council estate now sits where densely-packed privately-rented terraced housing once stood. Hundreds if not thousands of people would have once walked or cycled across the bridge every day to reach their workplace before making the return journey at night,

The bridge itself is close to the High Flags outfall, where the drain flows into the River Hull. Wooden tidal doors open as the tide goes out to let the drain water reach the river and then closes again as the tide rises, preventing flooding from the Humber.

In the past, keeping the outfall flowing was so important that a river board employee lived close to the site to monitor each tide on a daily basis. There used to be a lot more water in the drain than today  mainly because extra water was being discharged into it from the cooling towers of the Sculcoates Power Station. In the 1940s, a pumping station was built in nearby Lincoln Street to keep the water moving even when the tide was in.

Damage and fencing on Lockwood Street Bridge.

Happily, plans are in the pipeline to carry out repairs and restoration work on the bridge in the not too distant future. A recently submitted planning application mapping out the proposed works maps out key elements such as the careful demolition and re-building of the damaged section of brickwork, the replacement of some cast-iron features and the re-positioning of coping stones.

As the bridge has Grade II listed building status, the ultimate sign-off on the scheme going ahead rests with the government although the planning application first has to be agreed by the city council. In a report accompanying the application, consultant bridge engineer Beatrix Hernando says: “While the bridge’s individual components are modest in isolation, collectively they form a coherent and intact historic structure, justifying the asset’s Grade II designation. Works will be undertaken using scaffold access confined within the bridge footprint, avoiding any encroachment into the watercourse. Reusable historic materials, including bricks and stone copings, will be carefully salvaged and reused where feasible to do so. The works will not alter the bridge’s scale, massing, alignment or relationship with its surroundings. All interventions are confined to the parapets and west wing walls, and the reinstated elements will be respectful to the bridge’s heritage.”

Angus Young

Why Was A Vietnam War Photographer Taking Snaps In Hull In 1968?

What do Saigon, The Beatles, poetry and a slum street in Hull have in common? Our conflict photography correspondent Angus Young rediscovers some amazing pictures.

In the summer of England’s World Cup win in 1966, an aspiring Scottish poet became a mature student at Hull University. Douglas Dunn arrived in Hull to study English and, as a fan of Philip Larkin’s poetry, had already managed to have a couple of his own poems published in magazines. Dunn and his wife used their savings to buy a house in a tiny terrace off Terry Street on Beverley Road.

The couple lived there for two years despite their neighbourhood being declared as unfit for human habitation because of the poor condition of the so-called ‘slum’ housing. His experience there inspired his first collection of verse, titled Terry Street. Published in 1969, the book launched him on the road to international acclaim.

Prior to publication, half a dozen of Dunn’s poems appeared in London Magazine accompanied by six photographs of the Terry Street area taken in 1968 by Robert Whitaker. Whitaker was best known for his photographs of The Beatles, including the image used for the cover of the band’s US-only album Yesterday and Today. He would later cover wars in Vietnam and Cambodia and the war of independence in Bangladesh.

Whitaker spent a day in Hull on his commission to illustrate Dunn’s poetry. He said: “Douglas had written his poetry with sympathy, dignity, humour and love, not only about his immediate neighbours but also about his surroundings. His poetry was visual which was a great help for me. It was a simple task for me to record what I saw. I remember making a comment to my girlfriend at the time: ‘What a pleasure to illustrate these simple, precise words’. I spent maybe 45 minutes, three and a half rolls of 35mm 36 exposure film. I was very happy with the day’s work.”

London Magazine used just six of his photographs and his hopes of a book combining all of his images and Dunn’s poems never materialised. “The years passed by and I thought that my Terry Street photographs were doomed to end on a tip, in a plastic bag somewhere in Sussex, after my death.”

In 1994 he received a letter out of the blue from Dr John Osborne, a lecturer at Hull University and co-founder of the Philip Larkin Society, enquiring about the Terry Street photographs. “He believed that I was the cameraman who had photographed the ‘slum’ area called Terry Street.” Whitaker recalled. “In his letter Dr Osborne mentioned that Douglas Dunn had heard a rumour that I had been killed while working as a photographer in Vietnam for Time & Life magazine. I was badly wounded in Vietnam, however, not killed.”

At the time, Dr Osborne was publishing Bete Noire, his own Hull-based poetry magazine and eventually devoted an entire edition to Terry Street, featuring 18 Dunn poems alongside 60 of Whitaker’s photographs. The edition immediately sold out, prompting a later exhibition of both the poems and the photographs at the Ferens Art Gallery.

“Rarely in art history can two distinguished practitioners in entirely different media have brought their skills to bear on a single subject,” wrote Dr Osborne in a special exhibition programme. “Whereas Dunn’s picture of Terry Street is predominantly sombre but relieved by spots of brightness, in Whitaker the proportions are reversed, the vibrancy of the people exceeding the constraints of their impoverishment. In this way, the perspectives of poet and photographer complement one another beautifully and the work of each is enhanced.”

The old terraced housing and the way of life of the people who lived in them captured by Dunn and Whitaker disappeared in the mid-1970s thanks to a council demolition programme. In the 1996 exhibition programme, Whitaker said he was thrilled to see the poetry and images together again. “For me they work together just as well as they did in 1968. Maybe in 200 years they will still tell a story. I still have yearnings for the people who lived in these dignified surroundings. We all have problems, Terry Street was never a ‘slum’ to me.”

Angus Young

  • Douglas Dunn is a poet, academic and critic. He was awarded an OBE in 2003.
  • Robert Whitaker largely retired from photography in the 1970s to become a farmer. He died in 2011 after a long illness.
  • Dr John Osborne remains an active member of the Philip Larkin Society and runs an independent publishing company.