With a hosepipe ban just announced, our medieval blockade correspondent Angus Young outlines how water supply has always been problematic.

The Romans, Vikings and Normans largely steered clear of invading Hull, largely because the place didn’t exist at the time. But by 1392 Kingston upon Hull was both an established town and borough with its own set of Royal charters. The year marked the first ever siege of Hull but those taking up arms against the town weren’t from abroad or even marauding Scots. Instead, they hailed from just up the road.

Hull’s Royal first charter granted by King Edward in 1299 created a system of local governance as well as providing the right to hold a twice-weekly market and an annual 30-day fair. Others followed, giving more powers and rights and the 1382 charter granted by King Richard II paved the way for a new era of prosperity by handing control of the River Hull’s Old Harbour to the Mayor and Burgesses. However, the town’s expansion led to an increasing demand for fresh water which was in short supply.

Surrounded by salty marshland, early medieval Hull’s thirst was usually satisfied by beer or wine with drinking water being shipped across the Humber in barrels after being extracted from springs in Lincolnshire. This was because control of natural springs to the west of the town rested with parishes who resisted repeated attempts by Hull’s leaders to take them over.

Hostilities between the two sides reached a peak in 1392 when around 1,000 armed men from parishes in Anlaby, Cottingham and Wolfreton banded together and laid siege to Hull, threatening to burn it to the ground. They were angry about the digging of a number of dykes to bring fresh water to Hull which they claimed had not only damaged their farmland but also deprived them of water.

A history of Hull written by Thomas Gent in 1735 features what is believed to be the first account of what happened next. (Warning: the following contains descriptions of  violence, execution and, er, poetry.)

“In the SpringTime, near a thousand Persons, belonging to Cottingham, Wolfreton, Anlaby and other neighbouring Towns, being offended, that the inhabitants of Hull, had, by cutting the Earth, drawn some fresh Water from them; they bound themselves, with a terrible Oath, to stand by one another whilst they were able to shed their last Drops of Blood. Then, having ordain’d the most rustical Leaders, they appear’d in the Sort of Arms, ransacking Houses, and abusing such Owners, who would not as madly confederate with them.

“Soon did they lay Siege to Hull, vowing the utter Destruction of it. Being strangely poetically given too, they made such insipid Rhimes, to encourage the Seditious, as indeed would dishonour the Flights of Antiquity, should such ridiculous Stuff be publicly set forth.

“The Canals, which had been made at vast Expense, quickly fill’d up, almost as they had been before. But tho’ by these Means they had spitefully deprived the Town of fresh flowing Streams, and stopt Provisions that were sent to the valiant Inhabitants; yet these ill-advised Wretches found themselves too much much deluded, and withal too impotent, to prevail against them.

“Upon which, withdrawing to Cottingham; and afterwards, through Fear, dispersing; some fled quite away; others, taken, and sent to York, were executed; and about 30 obtained Pardon, upon their Penitence, and faithful Promise, never to attempt the like again.”

Despite those promises, trouble rumbled on. Subsequent dyke-digging led to attacks on men carrying out the work and acts of sabotage, including carcasses of dead animals being dumped in the water to pollute it.

The cross-border hostilities finally came to an end in 1413 thanks to the unlikely intervention of Pope Gregory XII who issued a letter urging the East Riding side to give up their campaign for their own spiritual well-being. The Pope’s letter seemed to do the trick and later Royal charters for Hull allowed the town to extend its boundaries to take in the whole of Haltemprice and acquire legal rights to its abundant natural springs.

The ‘water wars’ were over and before long a new channel was constructed to bring fresh water from Anlaby’s springs all the way to the town centre. The channel was originally known as Derringham Dyke and followed a route which now includes Spring Bank West, Spring Bank and Prospect Street.

Angus Young

Jamie from Middle Child tells us about a job with more moving parts than a lawnmower. He definitely earns his keep, that lad.

Ally-mai caught up with author Sam Sedgeman at the Big Malarkey and challenged him to our new general knowledge quiz.

The amazing cop-evading capers of the early feminists are recounted by our social liberation correspondent Angus Young.

Confronted by two policemen, Charlotte Marsh gathered up her skirt and leapt from an elevated quayside walkway onto a railway track below. Thus began the first of two suffragette protests in Hull during the summer of 1909.

With her target in sight, she ran towards cabinet member and Postmaster General Sydney Buxton. Before she could reach him, her path was blocked by a coal truck. As she climbed back onto the upper deck she was met by the two officers who circled her as a crowd gathered. “By what right do you stop me?” she shouted.

“You are not going to interrupt the proceedings,” the senior officer replied.

“I don’t want to,” said Charlotte. “This is a public place and I have a right to be here.”

“Never mind your rights, you are not going to get near Mr Buxton.”

“I don’t want to get near him. I only want votes for women!”

Charlotte was then escorted to a railway office on Hull’s Riverside Quay where she was held until the VIP party had left Albert Dock. Released without charge, she shook the officers’ hand, said she bore no grudge against the police and suggested their paths were likely to cross again later in the day The regional organiser of the Women’s Social and Political Union kept her promise.

Buxton’s next engagement on his visit to Hull was to officially open the new Head Post Office in Lowgate. Charlotte had already laid the groundwork by staging a series of open-air meetings in Hull ahead of the visit. Addressing crowds of up to 700 people, she spoke for over an hour from a horse-drawn wagonette alongside three other suffragettes. Undaunted by her earlier arrest, Charlotte resumed her pursuit of Buxton as he left the Royal Station Hotel by jumping onto the footplate of the car taking him to the opening ceremony. Again a crowd swarmed around as she clung on before being dragged off the vehicle by the police. In the melee that followed, she broke free and ran after the car only to be swallowed up by the crowd. Charlotte then jumped onto a tram which took her straight to Lowgate where Buxton’s entourage was arriving.

Mounted police were stationed around the building with orders to keep a watch for female protestors but as Buxton approached the main entrance Charlotte ran forward and got within a few feet before being seized by a couple of constables. The ensuing struggle was met by a mix of jeers and sympathetic applause from the crowd before Charlotte was once more placed into police custody. Even so, Buxton’s speech on the steps of the building declaring it officially open was interrupted by cries of ‘Votes for Women’ from a suffragette colleague, Ada Flatman.

Later released once more without charge, her pursuit of Buxton was not quite over. The opening ceremony was followed by a banquet back to the hotel. As guests were served turtle soup complete with specially-engraved turtle shells to commemorate the event, Charlotte and Ada staged  another well-attended meeting outside before attempting to gain entry. Police officers refused them admission, stating that instructions had been given not to let any woman into the hotel.

Next morning the pair again followed Buxton as his visit to the city continued with police detectives now attempting to track their every move. As the politician finally headed back to Paragon Station to catch his train, the two women hailed a horse-drawn cab only for one of the detectives to jump onboard next to the driver as he set off towards the station. Charlotte and Ada immediately leapt from the moving cab and flagged down another.

A chase – described in one newspaper report as an “exciting run” – then took place through the city centre with the suffragettes arriving at the station ahead of a presumably embarrassed chief constable, several inspectors and constables. However, officers already posted at the station refused to allow them onto the platform where Buxton’s train was waiting to depart. Despite being turned away, a large crowd of spectators cheered them as they once again took up the cry ‘Votes for Women’.

The following month Charlotte was back in Hull and this time, along with eight other women, she ended up in court. The trigger was another ministerial visit, this time by Chancellor Herbert Samuel who was due to speak at a public meeting in the Assembly Rooms, now better known as Hull New Theatre. Charlotte organised a meeting outside the venue and arranged for activists from across the country to attend and speak. When her colleagues arrived in Albion Street on the back of a horse-drawn wagon, mounted police officers stopped them from going any further. As the women jumped off the wagon and joined the crowd, the officers rode onto the pavement where people were standing and mayhem briefly erupted. Easily identifiable because of their suffragette colours, the women were all arrested and as the crowd shouted “Cowards!” at the police.

In court the next day, Charlotte claimed she alone was responsible for the crowd gathering. The others all denied the same charge of provoking a breach of the peace. They all said the disorder only started once the police rode their horses onto the pavement and into the crowd. The Stipendiary Magistrate found all nine women guilty but discharged them without passing a sentence. He told them: “I am not going to gratify any wish which any of you might have to make martyrs of yourselves by undergoing imprisonment for your cause. This is the first case of the suffragette movement in Hull, so I shall discharge you all. If this sort of thing is repeated by any of you, I will give you something more to your liking.”

Charlotte later became one of the suffragettes to be forcibly fed during a hunger strike protest in prison in 1911. During the First World War she worked as a mechanic and chauffeur for Prime Minister David Lloyd George. After the war, the vote was given to women over 30 who met certain property qualifications.  In 1928 all women were given the right to vote at the age of 21.

Angus Young

• There are no known photographs of Charlotte’s adventures in Hull but an artist’s sketch of her arrest outside the Head Post Office was printed in a local newspaper. The original image is relatively crude because of the block engraving process used at the time so we asked Hull-based illustrator Gareth Sleightholme to weave his magic and come up with an improved version to accompany this article.

Back to Ours enthusiast Mark tells us what he loves about their North Hull chat shop.

With the reunited Gallagher brothers returning to stadiums tonight, Nick Quantrill recalls the time they played somewhere much smaller.

It’s little more than an underground box, so this is a fair question for our subterranean immersion correspondent Angus Young to address.

When you sink a road several metres underground in Hull it’s the obvious question to ask. As anyone who has driven under the section of Chanterlands Avenue which dips under a railway bridge will know, heavy rainfall usually creates a big puddle pretty quickly. So will the same thing happen on a much bigger scale in the underpass currently being built on the A63 at Castle Street in the city centre?

According to National Highways’ senior project director Fran Oliver, the answer is no.

Speaking at a recent city council scrutiny meeting, she gave details of the a new pumping station being constructed next the junction with Commercial Road which has been designed to keep traffic flowing once the new-look dual carriageway is finally finished in Spring next year, She said: “The pumping equipment in the building will serve the underpass in times when there is excess water from run-off from the road. It will have a huge capacity and it’s a really significant part of the overall scheme. Just to be clear, as well as dealing with normal run-off it is also designed for a flooding-type incident on the road. We are conscious it’s a big dip in the road and we know what water is like so we don’t want it to collect there. The pumping station is designed to deal with flooding although it’s more than likely to be triggered by excess rainfall on a more regular basis”

She said sensors inside the underpass will pass on real-time information on the build-up of any water. If large volumes need pumping out, water will initially be held in storage tanks before being gradually released into the city’s main drainage system.

“The pumping station will be connected to our regional control centre so they will know when to switch it on in the event of a problem if they need to override the automatic systems,” said Ms Oliver. “There’s a full emergency plan in place and National Highways also has mobile pumps which, in exceptional circumstances, can be brought here pretty quickly. Inside the station itself, there is a pump and a back-up pump as well as a power back-up.”

She said she had no worries about the underpass itself being able to withstand extra pressure from any flooding, however small. “The structure is incredibly robust. The concrete walls are capable of bearing an enormous amount of pressure and they go 27 metres deep into the ground. They are absolutely huge concrete walls and, together with the base slab, they are why it has taken us a little longer to install. We have tried to ensure that all the elements work together. For example, when we finish the base slab and take the props out, we won’t do anything for a week or so because we have got so much monitoring instrumentation to make sure everything is absolutely belt and braces.”

Because of the high water table in the immediate area, she said National Highways had opted to use concrete for the walls of the underpass instead of sheet piling which is more commonly used in similar construction projects elsewhere. “A lot of the design was influenced by the high water table. Huge volumes of steel and concrete have been put in, essentially to weigh it down because the water pressure is so great. Other underpasses might be constructed with sheet piles but they just wouldn’t be appropriate here because they wouldn’t be able to stand up to the strength of the water.”

When completed and fully open, the new underpass has been designed to have a 120-year lifespan.

Angus Young

When, where, why? Only Hull Tour Guide Paul Schofield can ferry us across the questions to the facts.

Artist Pippa Hale tells how the humble banana went from musa to muse. (Bonus points to anyone who gets that reference.)

Hull poet and legend Dean Wilson cropped up unexpectedly on Countryfile so our surprise TV correspondent Angus Young asked him about it.

Countryfile is one of BBC1’s most popular programmes and last night it featured one of our own local treasures. Self-styled Fourth Best Poet in Hull and Second Best Poet in Withernsea Dean Wilson appeared in an episode devoted to the beautiful natural wilderness of Spurn Point.

The beloved Curiosity contributor recently spent a day filming at Spurn with a three-man Countryfile crew. The results were screened on Sunday night as part of the latest programme in the long-running show which covers rural, agricultural and environmental issues.

Dean said: “I got a call from a researcher asking if I’d be interested in being featured in a programme they were planning to do about Spurn Point. It came a bit out of the blue but I couldn’t say ‘no’.”

On the day in question, Dean donned his trademark woolly hat and spent six hours being filmed on the peninsula. “It was a really great day because it was just like going for a day out at Spurn,” he said. “The crew were really nice, the weather was lovely too and I just talked about pebbles, poetry and what’s it like living in Withernsea.

“They filmed me talking about the pebbles I pick up along the coast, reading three of my poems and going up the lighthouse at Spurn to enjoy the view. I also talked about going to Spurn as a kid. It’s always been a magical place for me. Even though we were there all day, I was told they would only probably end up showing three or minutes of me but I don’t mind. Hopefully when people see the programme it will help shift a few of my books and allow a few more people to discover my secret genius!”

Dean watched the show on his settee at home in With, although he admits to not being Countryfile’s biggest fan. “I don’t really watch it very much,” he said. Was he nervous about the potential of suddenly becoming a national treasure after appearing on one of the BBC’s top-rated shows? “It’s either going to end up be the best thing I’ve ever done or I’ll never be able to leave the house again,” he said.

The Spurn episode on Countryfile is now available to watch on the iPlayer.

Angus Young