Tag Archives: Football

Is Hull Really a ‘Crap’ Town? – Pt 3 Getting to Grips with Hull’s Maritime History

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Is Hull Really a 'Crap' Town? - Pt 3 Getting to Grips with Hull's Maritime History

In Pt 2, we saw how the monks of Meaux Abbey created a port on the River Hull enabling them to export their wool to places like Belgium and The Netherlands, and even though King Edward I later acquired it for military purposes, the port of Kingston-upon-Hull also benefitted from the improved transport connections that were needed for his campaigns against the Scots. Since those early beginnings, Hull’s fortunes became inextricably linked to those of the port, and in this post I want to show how important the maritime trade was to this enigmatic city.

The late Middle Ages saw Hull’s trade expand beyond the Low Countries as cloth took over from wool as the main export. In return, fish was brought in from Iceland and Scandinavia, and materials needed for the local shipbuilding industry, such as flax, hemp, timber and pitch, were imported from the Baltic. What all this meant, was that by the late 17th century, Hull had become the third busiest port in the country after London and Bristol.

The 18th century saw the town grow rapidly as the Industrial Revolution created a surge in exports: The steelworks of South Yorkshire were providing the raw ingredients for production of high quality cutlery in Sheffield, and the increased output from the woollen mills of Yorkshire and cotton mills of Lancashire meant that the wharves on the River Hull were being stretched to their limit. Something needed to be done, and the answer came in the form of a series of docks that became known as the Town Docks.

Below is a map showing the city before the building of the Town Docks. On the western side of the River Hull is the medieval wall protecting the city, and on the eastern side is the castle and curtain wall protecting the port.

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Originally posted 2023-10-11 15:34:07.

Is Hull Really a ‘Crap’ Town? – Pt 1 The Ride to Hell

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Is Hull Really a 'Crap' Town? - Pt 1 The Ride to Hell

In 2003, a book was published called Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places To Live In The UK. It wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, just a tongue-in-cheek look at some of the places that people regarded as dire. They weren’t all depressing run-down places that were still recovering from industrial decline either, because alongside them were boring Middle-England towns that had been in a state of slumber for so many years that they weren’t even considered for filming Midsomer Murders. It goes without saying that this book was right up my street, and it doesn’t take somebody with the brains of Stephen Hawking to work out that the town at the top the book’s list was Hull – or to give the town its correct name, Kingston-Upon-Hull.

So why isn’t it called Kingston-Upon-Humber? After all, it sits on the River Humber doesn’t it? Well, yes it does, but the settlement started out on the banks of the River Hull which flows into the Humber, and in the map below you can see the proximity of the city centre to the Rivers Hull and Humber. The featured image at the top of the page shows the River Hull just before it discharges into the Humber.

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Originally posted 2023-09-10 08:33:43.