Hull Tour Guide Paul Schofield may rule the roost these days but, as our ancient archivist correspondent Angus Young reports, he certainly wasn’t the first.
When it comes to local history, tour guide and Curiosity contributor Paul Schofield certainly knows his stuff. Paul and his famous hat entertain thousands of visitors to Hull and Beverley every year with entertaining stories on his renowned walking tours.
But who was the first populiser of local history in this neck of the woods?
That accolade probably goes to William Andrews who was born in Kirby Moorhouse in Nottinghamshire in 1848 and came to live and work in Hull in 1872. In 1878 he became the editor of Hull Miscellany, a weekly literary journal. A year later he was one of the founders of the Hull Literary Society and acted as its secretary for a decade until becoming its president.
A man of words, Andrews established the Hull Press in 1890. From its offices in Dock Street, the company published and printed a large number of books, many of them written by Andrews himself. He wrote on a huge variety of historical subjects, drawing inspiration from his own personal collection of rare books, local guides, documents and ephemera.
In particular, he specialised in researching and preserving some of the stranger elements of British cultural heritage such as regional folklore, fairy tales, old religious customs and the staging of so-called ‘frost fairs’ on frozen rivers. In his book ‘Old-time Punishments’ he examines the use of ducking stools, pillories and whipping posts in the Middle Ages while in ‘The History of Dunmow Flitch’ he recounts his own experience of presiding over an ancient event held every four years in Essex in which couples are required to prove to a jury they are happily married with the winners being presented with a side of bacon.
Andrews wrote in a scholarly yet accessible style and readers lapped up his re-telling of forgotten stories and quirks from the past. If he was around today, he’d probably give TV historian Lucy Worsley a run for her money.
Typical of his narrative skills can be found in an eye-catching chapter called ‘A Fight Between the Lord Mayor of Hull and the Archbishop of York’ from his 1891 book Old Church Lore. In it, he takes the reader back to 1378 and a skirmish between the two men and their aides over who was entitled to receive duty on casks of wine being unloaded from ships on the River Hull in which “blood freely flowed” and the Archbishop’s ceremonial staff was broken into several pieces. “The place where the fight occurred was regarded by the superstitious as sacred, crowds of fanatics repairing to it to shed tears,” he wrote. “Not a little inconvenience was caused by their conduct, and their proceedings were stopped by a permanent guard being appointed to keep folk away from the place. After the death of the Archbishop, it was believed for many years that his spirit haunted the spot where the battle took place.”
A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Andrews was also a founder of the East Riding Antiquarian Society. In 1900, after retiring from the Hull Press, he became chief librarian at the Hull Subscription Library based in the Royal Institution in Albion Street. Founded in 1775, it eventually held a stock of some 80,000 books, including foreign and standard works together with serials, fiction and non-fiction.
He worked there until his death in 1908.