It’s been offices, a nightclub, a pub and is decorated with a legendary ship, but what next for this significant building? Our heritage estates correspondent Angus Young reports.
Built in 1820, the new premises of the Hull Dock Company were intended to occupy a prominent spot in High Street. The building stood next to the lockpit between the River Hull and the entrance to what was originally simply known as The Dock, later to be re-named Queens Dock and eventually Queens Gardens. It’s a fine-looking red-brick late Georgian landmark complete with Doric columns flanking the main entrance door, an octagonal wooden cupola and lead dome topped by a weather vane in the shape of a sailing ship.
The vessel in question is a scale model of HMS Bounty, arguably the most famous ship ever to be built in Hull. It was constructed in the nearby Blaydes shipyard in 1784 as a coal-carrying cargo ship called Bethia before being acquired, re-fitted and re-named by the Royal Navy three years later. The weather vane is, however, a modern addition to the building having been installed in 2020 during wider refurbishment work.
After the Dock Company moved to much grander premises in 1871 when it opened a new headquarters in what is now the Hull Maritime Museum, the building in High Street became offices for an oilseed crushing and timber merchant as well as providing a base for customs officials and a mission for Finnish sailors.
In the late 1970s it was converted into a nightclub under the name Washington DC. However the venue would be eclipsed by its trendier rival The Waterfront and it was eventually changed to a pub called Mutiny on the Bounty, taking its inspiration from the HMS Bounty connection. The pub lasted for just over a decade before Hull College took it over as a student-only club but by the mid-2010s it was being used as offices again by a training company.
Now a planning application has been lodged by long-established Hull shipping firm Whitakers to convert the listed building once more for use as their headquarters. The company actually owns the building and the adjacent dry dock shipyard where the former deep-sea trawler Arctic Corsair is due to be berthed next year as part of a new visitor attraction. However, the proposed move is not linked to the Corsair project.
Instead, the site of Whitakers’ current premises on the other side of the River Hull in Tower Street forms part of a large strip of waterfront land earmarked for new housing as part of the East Bank Village development. Being able to move into the former Dock Office will free up the last remaining currently occupied piece of land standing between Drypool Bridge and Scale Lane Bridge, paving the way for this new residential neighbourhood. It’s a potentially neat solution and avoids any need for compulsory purchase.
Subject to the plans being approved by the city council, it will also see one of Hull’s oldest surviving maritime buildings once again being used by a shipping business.