Form and Function

Humber Street, Hull. 

It is now quite a trendy place with a regenerated streetscape, old buildings in niche retail outlet use , arts and craft galleries, a Gin Distillery and a few eateries, bars and performance venues. My daughter is soon to open a pop up shop in Humber Street trading in contemporary print for curious people and it will fit in just nicely. 

Roll back just a few years and the street was the established Fruit Market District for Hull and Humber. It was a bustling place but only if you were there in the very early hours of the working day with wholesale merchants stacking their boxes of fresh produce for the attention and purchase by grocers, shop keepers and the catering sector. 

Everything was available from fare just picked and harvested from the East Yorkshire countryside to more exotic items such as kiwi and coconuts from the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere. 

Old black and white photographs from the post war era show Humber Street in full operation and yet, a passer by in the mid afternoon would witness nothing more than a ghost street strewn with discarded shoots, leaves and empty cardboard or wooden boxes. 

I had, in one of my first jobs in Hull,to inspect a deceptively large warehouse on the southern side of the street. It was a hive of activity as a storage and ripening facility for bananas for the global company Geest. It was not out of place. 

You would think that this dockside location had always played a role ancillary to trade and shipping in this way but step back a little further in time to the early years of the 19^th Century and you would be amazed at what went on in and around Humber Street. 

Take numbers 62 to 63 Humber Street. It was the one and same banana warehouse but is now the aptly named "Fruit" , a venue for music and gatherings and a good stock of craft beers. 

Back in 1810 this very spot was the location of the Humber Street Theatre or Theatre Royal as it was called. It was a grand and opulent entertainment establishment which opened in May of that year serving the wider population of the thriving Port City of Hull but also a dense housing area arranged in off street courts and alleys between the river embankment and Holy Trinity Church. 

At 125 feet deep and 60 feet wide the building will have stretched from its Humber Street façade and entrance through to Wellington Street. 

There are well documented records of what was certainly a Theatre in its classic form providing 2 galleried tiers on cast iron columns for Dress Boxes for around 800 people as well as middle and upper levels which curved around and accommodated a further 700. 

The emphasis of the décor was plush described as pink painted Etruscan borders, scarlet cloth lined boxes and French Grey painted panelling. The Proscenium was supported on pillars resembling yellow marble and capped with the distinctive arched top below which were crimson curtains festooned with gold fringes. 

The stage itself was some 54 feet deep and on the 1810 opening night saw a performance of “Tancred and Sigismunda” by the poet James Thomson. The play tells the story of a father, Tancred, whose widowed daughter, Gismund, returns home and begins a clandestine affair with one of her father's courtiers. He kills her lover and presents her with a gold cup containing his heart. She kills herself, and her father, stricken by grief and regret, does likewise, thereby extinguishing his kingly line. The Victorians evidently liked that sort of protracted but very predictable drama. 

The backstage area was well equipped to provide segregated dressing rooms, a Managers Office and hospitality area. 

The Theatre, built as a speculative venture appears to have done well and in May 1859 the daughter of the original builder put the premises up for sale as a going concern. There were no takers, perhaps down to a combination of what was now a mature building and some reservations about the location by prospective buyers. Hull was rapidly expanding in the mid Victorian period with, for example, at that time Zachariah Pearson was well advanced with his donation of Pearson Park and the new outer suburbs would be better suited for an entrepreneur or investor to consider a Theatre operation. 

Unfortunately at 7am in the morning  of the 13^th of October 1859 a fire was discovered. Within an hour the roof had collapsed and by midday the whole of the splendid structure was completely levelled. The building had been insured apart from the personal belongings of the Manager and costume wardrobe of a resident actress but the investigation did not discover the cause of the calamity. There was no apparent talk of an insurance scam. 

Reconstruction took some years and it was not until Boxing Day Night in 1865 that a new Theatre Royal reopened with a dual offering of “A wolf in sheep’s clothing” and a popular seasonal Pantomime “Hop o’ my thumb”. 

The venue was able to seat 2250 persons thanks to individual seat spaces eighteen inches wide. 

A reliance on an abundance of combustible materials for stage sets, furnishings and backstage areas did pose a significant risk of fire to Theatres in particular with very tragic events having occurred in the cities of Exeter and Glasgow in the 19^th Century. 

In 1869 the Theatre on Humber Street fell victim to yet another fire , this time breaking out in the props room after the evening rendition of a Robinson Crusoe Pantomime. In spite of brave efforts the building was completely destroyed. 

This second twist of fate marked the end to the association of Humber Street with performance and the arts until the arrival of "Fruit" just a couple of years ago. This has become a well patronised venue for live music, comedy, dramatic productions, cinema screenings, night clubbing, festivals, produce and vintage markets. 

It may be seen as a completely new direction for the street but it is just a glorious return to its traditional roots.