8YO Jade asked this question, so we gave our office junior a ladder and and a tape measure and told him to go find out.

No, not Boothferry Park, the other, even older one. Our abandoned sports grounds correspondent Angus Young investigates.

It’s 25 years since Hull City Council briefly became the most cash-rich local authority in the country by selling a 55 per stake in its wholly-owned telephone company Kingston Communications. The resulting £255m windfall was subsequently spent on new heating and double glazing in 25,000 council properties, carrying out a citywide programme of repairs to schools as well as building a new one in the shape of Endeavour High, laying new pavements in Spring Bank and Anlaby Road and contributing  £5.4m towards the construction of The Deep. However, the biggest headline-grabbing item on the spending list was the £45m redevelopment of West Park featuring a new state-of-the-art sports stadium for Hull City and Hull FC to share.

City’s previous Boothferry Park had been built by its chairman and owner Harold Needler, who also ran a successful local construction business. As well as Boothferry Park, he was also responsible for most of the housing in Sutton Park while, after his death, his family-owned company has gone on to develop Kingswood. But who was responsible for building the club’s first-ever ground on Anlaby Road?

A surviving section of the old ground could soon be unearthed if the volunteer-run Hull City Supporters Trust manages to secure a Heritage Lottery grant to help create a new attraction in the shadow of what is now the MKM Stadium. One end of an original terrace currently lies partially buried by an overgrowth of bushes and trees with some steps and a supporting wall still just about visible. Opened in 1906, City played there until the Second World War. In that period, the record crowd was 32,000 for an FA Cup tie against Newcastle United.

City fan and author Nick Turner charts those far off days in his excellent book Now Tigers! The Early History of Hull City. He discovered the ground – or at least the main stands and terraces  – was the work of G.H.Carr, a builder whose business was based in Alexandra Road, off Beverley Road. The premises is still in use today as a motor repair garage. An advert featured in a 1908 match programme found by Nick describes the company as a “house & ship joiner, builder and contractor.”

He’s also come across recent information suggesting some of the building materials used might have come from the construction of Hull City Hall, which was being built at the same time. Either way, the surviving terrace is thought to be the oldest surviving Edwardian football structure of its kind in the country. The trust recently launched a £100,000 fund-raising campaign. The aim is to provide match-funding towards a potential Heritage Lottery grant.

The Anlaby Road ground continued to be used by City’s A-team and for junior fixtures until the 1960s when British Rail created a new service loop between the railway lines running to Selby and Scarborough, effectively slicing the old ground in two. The new railway line opened in 1965 and since then Mother Nature has gradually hidden what remains of the club’s original home.

Ironically, because the site is wedged between railway lines it was largely untouched during the construction of the new stadium back in 2001/2. With sufficient funding support, the lost terrace built by G.H. Carr over a century ago could soon have fans standing on it once again.

Angus Young

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Wandering dangerously close to conspiracy theory territory, our ancient folk songs correspondent Angus Young may have been drinking.

“How about writing a Christmas special?” said Mr Curiosity as he took a sip of mulled wine before munching his way through yet another mince pie.

“Heard the one about a classic festive carol having a supposed link with Hull?” I ventured.

“Get writing lad!” he boomed through a mouthful of sweet mince and pastry.

In 1833 English lawyer and historian William Sandys published an anthology of traditional carols spanning more than 300 years which he had gathered from various sources, adding his own words to many. Among them was I Saw Three Ships which was first printed in the 17th century and is believed to be even older having started life as a sea shanty-style English folk song.

Still popular today, Sandys’ version tells the story of a fleet of vessels arriving in Bethlehem on Christmas Day carrying “Our Saviour Christ and His Lady”. However, it neatly skirts over the fact that land-locked Bethlehem is actually 26 miles from the nearest port. It also fails to explain why three ships were needed for just two VIP passengers. Sandys’ version is just one of many in existence. As fans will testify, one of folk music’s charms is the organic nature of many traditional songs featuring ever-changing lyrics over time.

Another version surfaced in 1895 as featured in A Garland of Country Songs, a book compiled by Anglican priest and folk song collector Sabine Baring-Gould. This one had been documented by artist Louis Davis, who provided the illustrations of the book, after hearing it sung by “the boatmen upon the Humber.” It’s not clear where or when London-based Davis came across these singing sailors but he reportedly had some difficulty understanding their local dialect. As a result, his transcript of the words refer to the ships carrying “three crawns (crowns)” and heading to “Koln on the Rhine”. As well as shifting the geography of the song to an unidentified port in Europe, it also ditches any reference to Christmas Day.

So what were the Humber boatmen singing about? One theory behind the song is that it refers to other characters in the Biblical Christmas story – the Magi, otherwise known as Three Wise Men or the Three Kings. Legend has it that having all conveniently died at the same time, their sacred bones were first kept in Constantinople and then Milan before being taken in 1164 to Cologne Cathedral where they remain today housed in a shrine. Back in the day a journey from Milan to Cologne would have either involved an arduous slog by foot over the Alps or a lengthy sea voyage via the Mediterranean and the Atlantic before entering the Rhine from the North Sea. If the latter happened, splitting the precious bones between three ships would have made sense from an insurance point of view.

As it was, this journey by sea seems to have eventually worked its way into traditional English folk music. According to legend, each Magi’s skull was topped off with a golden crown and these three crowns also feature in the coat of arms of the city Cologne. Sounds familiar? Yes, Hull’s official coat of arms also features three golden crowns having first been used here in the early 15th century.

One of several theories about their origin is the established trading links between Hull and Cologne in the Middle Ages leading to something of a copycat design being adopted for our own coat of arms. Did this connection also pave the way for a song to be passed down through the generations of local men of the sea?

Hull-born folk singers Paul and Liz Davenport included their own take on the so-called “Crawn variant” of I See Three Ships on their latest album Wait No Man. They even suggest the ships might have used the Humber to take shelter from a storm while en route to Cologne. If the ships did nip into the estuary, they didn’t sail into Hull as it didn’t really exist in 1164 although Hedon was a thriving port at the time and would have certainly provided safe harbour.

Now you might be thinking this is all a bit impossible to prove and you would be right. We’re talking about a 2,000-year-old Biblical story, an 860-year-old journey thousands of miles away and a 500-year-old folk song all being mashed together like a bad sherry trifle. Then there’s the late Alan Boyson’s epic Three Ships mosaic on the old Co-op store in the city centre. Now a Grade II listed structure and commonly believed to represent Hull’s fishing industry, is it really a re-telling the story of the Magi through one million cubes of coloured Italian glass?

Perhaps I’ve had one too many glasses of Mr Curiosity’s mulled wine. After all, when it comes to religion I’m firmly in the Monty Python camp. He’s not The Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.

Happy Christmas everyone.

Angus Young

Editor’s Note: Angus has been sent for a lie down.

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