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How Did Hull Light Up The Rest Of The Country?

With dark nights now firmly upon us, our cub reporter Angus Young tells how Hull pioneered street lighting.

The metal ring that held a whale oil light outside the Wilberforce House.

The next time you’re in the Old Town check out what is believed to be the last surviving physical reminder of when nights in Hull suddenly turned light. Built in 1656, Wilberforce House in High Street is now one the sparkling jewels of the Hull Museums service. But back in the late 17th century, and like buildings in surrounding streets, once darkness fell there was not much to see of it except flickering candles inside the front windows of the house. That all changed when Hull’s wealthy merchants borrowed an idea pioneered by their Dutch counterparts and started using whale oil to illuminate the town’s main streets.

Historically, the Dutch competed with British ships in the early hunting of whales in Arctic fishing grounds but by the time Wilberforce House was built, the Dutch had become the dominant player while whaling in Hull was in steep decline. However, imported whale oil continued to be shipped into Hull to be used as a lubricant in some early industrial processes as well as being burned indoors in small lamps as an  alternative to candles in some homes and businesses. When the Dutch started using whale oil for street lighting, news of the innovation travelled quickly across the North Sea and the first outdoor lamps started appearing in Hull.

By 1713 Hull had more street lights than any other town in Britain and was sending whale oil to other places eager to catch up, including London, Birmingham and Edinburgh. When Hull’s reputation as a major whaling port revived in the late 18th century, its capacity to produce its own whale oil dramatically increased. Oil was extracted from chopped blubber boiled in large open pots at what were known as the Greenland Yards in Bankside next to the River. For a couple of decades, street lamps around the country were burning processed whale oil from Hull.

The omnipresent nocturnal smell of burning fish oil must have been strong but it was presumably tolerated for the benefits this new form of lighting brought, from encouraging longer trading hours to reducing crime in what had previously been pitch-black neighbourhoods. A typical lamp featured a small glass dish of oil with two wicks suspended inside a larger glass globe. The globe would sit in a metal ring fixed to a frame. It would be lit by a lamplighter using a ladder to reach the oil. Each lamp would usually burn for several hours until the oil ran out. The globe would require cleaning at least three times a week because of the soot produced by the burning oil.

Back in High Street, a metal ring and supporting frame which once carried a globe full of whale oil still sits above the arched wrought-iron main entrance gate at Wilberforce House. A century of Hull being illuminated burning whale oil eventually came to an end in the 1820s with the arrival of gas lamps and their much brighter light.

Angus Young

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