Wrecking Ball

The City of Hull  in the later Victorian period was a mass of densely packed terraced housing, particularly within a mile of the centre.

These were arranged broadly under the term of smaller streets taking the form of off road pedestrian access Terraces, through-arch Parades and Courts, the more auspicious sounding Groves, fanciful Squares, pokey Lanes, multiple occupancy Buildings and the exotic sounding Villas.

Thanks to the coming into fashion of sanitation, the intermittent submerging under high tide flooding, localised but devastating fires, dodgy building collapses and much later the combined influence of the urban demolition experts of Adolf, Herman and Co and hapless Town Planners the vast majority of these communities and tightly knit clusters of housing have disappeared completely or with just a surviving glazed street name plaque on a gable wall on a street frontage announcing an empty space or pathway leading nowhere.

My wife's ancestors, emigrants from Germany and Sweden had a postal address of 'seventy one and a half' of a long lost street close to the Princes Dock area between the city centre and the River Humber.

The old urban maps are almost solid black in colour as an illustration of the packed and stacked houses with little open space or greenery. It is not surprising that old photographs of the main City Parks of the time show large crowds promenading around enjoying looking onto anything not resembling a brick wall. It is conceivable that the sun never penetrated to the dark corners of many of the back to back courts and squares and the sight of an open and bright sky on a weekend will have been greatly welcomed.

The main surviving type of smaller street in todays urban setting is the short pedestrian access terrace. This is typically set behind the street front building line and up until the 1970's the clearance between the two paralell lines of houses was fully open and ideal therefore to have continuous lines of washing, communal playground activities or the occasional street party to celebrate a Royal milestone or some sort of national victory.

Sensitivity to the perceived need for people to have boundaries and private space led to the creation of individual forecourt gardens for the houses served by a narrow central footway. There are, to my knowledge only a couple of the fully open arrangements left although invariably these are used for off road parking which makes the whole terrace look untidy. As for clothes drying this is very difficult in such circumstances.

The individual terraces were often the work of a single builder or developer, a small scale project with the houses being built for long term letting as was the dominant form of occupation in the Victorian period. One or more of the houses will have been reserved for the builder/developer and family members invariably the best ones in terms of floor area, external yard and orientation towards the sun.

Every larger street in front of the smaller streets will have been built to a certain informal checklist with the creation of corner shops and premises for tradesmens activities. The commercial uses usually plumbers,joiners, undertakers, coal merchants and builders were set through an archway with double gates or a wicket gate leading to a courtyard with workshops and stables.Many archway properties of sturdy construction remain either in some form of small scale business use or with development of the outbuildings and backland for residential occupation.

The old corner shops are still identifiable today although often heavily disguised behind residential frontages and modern infill brickwork. The retention of a corner shop as a going concern is very rare indeed, what is referred to as "The Tesco effect" being in play.

The urban demolition and clearance of much of Hull's oldest and poorest calibre housing really stepped up a pace in the 1960's and 1970's.

The streets south of Hessle Road, acre upon acre of dense terraced homes ,survive only now in the recollections of a name. The bustling communities whose livelihoods were dependant on employment on the Docks, aboard deep sea trawlers and in the fishing and processing related industries have been supplanted by a large commercial area which is abandoned and ghostly beyond business hours.

The displaced residents were mainly re-housed on the large sprawling and bleak Council Estates positoned miles away on the periphery of the city.

There were of course many benefit in terms of modern, dry, warm and healthy homes but at the loss of a sense of common purpose and community. However, only 30 years after being erected many replacement houses have themselves been demolished where faced with uneconomic repairs for latent defects.The use of timber frame, sectional construction, hung tiles and other more wacky systems have proven no match for good old red brick.

The west Hull area around Hawthorn Avenue was identified for large scale compulsory purchase for demolition and clearance as recently as 2005-2006. Many homeowners reluctantly took the generous package on offer and moved out and away before the area deteriorated significantly with boarded up and security shuttered elevations dominating the street scenes.

The regeneration project recently foundered in the recessionary conditions leaving a few single owner occupiers as the only residents in very depressing surroundings. New funding was discovered down the back of a sofa, somewhere in Westminster, allowing promises of relocation to be kept with the stranded and abandoned few. The regeneration that has taken place has included houses of striking appearance, three storeys, a gable balcony and glazed coloured brick panels. If these houses manage to remain standing for the same period of time as their predecessors they may be regarded with as much affection.

The former Quango behind the regeneration project did openly state that they had a policy of attracting a mixture of socio-economic groups to the new housing in the area so that there was an overall  improvement in the aspirations of the majority.

Sounds a bit like a form of social engineering through the back door, or more likely those rather neat and snazzy bi-fold doors.