I now realise that this has been a gross neglect, on my part, of its heritage, the individuals who have resided there and how its own story reflected those of the wider City of which it is part. It took its name from Samuel Walliker, a contemporary of Rowland Hill, social and Postal Service Reformer, and who became Postmaster in Hull from 1863 to 1881,
It is a short street, running from a junction with the main Anlaby Road corridor to the north and terminating at a pedestrian footbridge over the railway line that connects Hull to the rest of the country. It is of one way traffic with a dogleg offshoot along Arthur Street leading westwards.
My first experience of Walliker Street was in 1985 when, as a trainee surveyor, I had to visit a number of houses to assess their value as part of a possible demolition and clearance scheme. They were a mixed bunch of properties.
A few were abandoned and semi derelict, others small and palatial through the hard graft of their owners and one was operating as a brothel.
Reprieved from destruction but at the same time left unfunded for renovation the street remained in a sort of limbo. Owners came and went, landlords and tenants followed and in between there was round of speculative action by builders and DIY developers.
As a direct consequence of haphazard actions, the street became a mish-mash of different roof coverings, window styles, masonry finishes and paint jobs. The photograph below shows the eastern side of Walliker Street around 2016.
In the development and growth of this inner city area of Hull the street is amongst one of the earliest to have been built.
Archive maps from 1850 show open fields and where the houses on the photograph stand was part of Maiden Hill Farm which fronted what was little more than a track from Hull towards the hamlet of Anlaby.
The agricultural identity held out until 1881 when a terrace of two storey houses was built on the western side with, at that time, wide open unrestricted views to rural countryside and yet within half a mile of central Hull.
The only interruption to the idyllic scene was from the railway line which carried a constant flow of freight and passenger trains serving one of the busiest Ports in the country in terms of goods and also those passing through as immigrants heading to Liverpool for an onward passage to the Americas.
The block of houses in the photograph were built on the eastern side of the street some 14 years later in 1895. The tract of land was yet another venture by The Alexandra Land and Property Mortgage and Investment Company Limited whose activities were across the city in areas for new housing. They sold and conveyed the land to Messrs William and Fred Barnett who appear to have been building contractors.
The title deed stipulated what trades and businesses would be expressly prohibited from dwellings when built with the intention of keeping up residential quality and the neighbourhood. These included blacksmith, fish curer, soap boiler, lead smelter, fellmonger or the depositing of human soiling in the locality in the days before reliable foul drainage.
The photograph below is taken from the Anlaby Road end of Walliker Street in 1904 and shows a tidy, impressive group of working and middle class houses. Residents are more likely to occupy as tenants as outright purchase and owner occupation was only within the reach of the wealthy. Those living in Walliker Street in the 1890's included master mariner, chemist, butcher, accountant, marble mason, law writer and an examining officer.
In the right foreground is signage for Chas W Lewis, Cab Proprietor whose name and occupation appeared in the listings of occupants in the 1890's being typical of longevity of living in the street.
By the first decade of the 20th Century the surrounding area had been fully developed and there was a transition from semi rural to inner city for Walliker Street.
In the blitz years of the Second World War the street appears to have escaped serious bomb damage unlike large swaths of urban and suburban Hull which were flattened or in some way affected. This was remarkable given the proximity to a strategically important rail route and manufacturing areas.
The decline of the street will have begun in the 1970's as many former residents moved out to the new estates on the periphery of Hull to leave behind old, damp and costly to maintain properties.
At the time of my first employment in the City a two or three bedroomed house on Walliker Street could be bought for around £10,000 which in today's money sounds rock bottom although in the hierarchy of inner city housing in Hull it was about mid range.
The future of the street and wider Newington District was precarious for some years and it was only in the last couple of years that Walliker Street received grant funding for long overdue improvements to the housing stock including external insulation, new frontages and a uniformity in style and appearance.
The works were completed and the photo below was taken just a few days ago.
It depicts a remarkable return to the appearance of the street in its halcyon years.
The image is taken from the same position as the scene from 2016 with the styling achieved through the use of brick slips, render finished insulation and reconstituted stone effect for the door arches and window headers.
I believe that the original Victorian residents will have approved of the turnaround in the street.
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