The scan above is from the leaflet The Avenues/Pearson Park Conservation Area (s.p.b.) and shows a drawing of the original fountain at the ‘circle’ where Park Avenue and Salisbury Street cross.
David Neave describes The Avenues as ‘the most extensive area of middle class housing in Hull’ (‘Pevsner’, 2005, 554). The main financial promoter was David Garbutt, ship owner and builder who owned the land then known as the Westbourne Estate. Princes Avenue was surfaced in the 1870s with the four main Avenues laid-out in the 1880s. Initially, building developments across this large area were gradual although almost all properties seen today were there by the Great War. Bacon’s map of Hull, 1906, (s.p.b.) shows the Avenues with some completed buildings, including the Queen Anne style ones (see below), but with most of the residential development still having not taken place by 1906.
As most of the houses along the Avenues were large it has been increasingly difficult for single families to maintain these properties, and heat them, and being now over 100 years old maintenance costs loom-large. Therefore, many have been converted to ‘houses of multiple occupancy’ with the condition of the property very much hinging on the willingness of landlords to meet their obligations.
Most residential properties had medium to large gardens and the Avenues were/are tree-lined. This last fact represents an important point in that tree-lined roads and streets always look so much more inviting than those without, but if tree roots penetrate under house foundations it can have damaging results. Indeed house insurance companies can often view nearby trees with as much suspicion as houses standing on flood-plains.
In terms of focusing on individual properties within the Avenues both ‘Pevsner’ and the leaflet highlight the eight properties around the Park Av./Westbourne Av./Salisbury Street junctions, built in the late 1870s and designed by George Gilbert Scott junior. These large Queen Anne style residences had a chequered history in the late 20th century.
(to be continued).
Point of view 14 – A reason for being an agnostic rather than atheist;
(a) Although Prof. Brian Cox has been/is a brilliant figurehead for promoting the revolution in our knowledge of astronomy and matter in our generation the laws of physics do not explain everything. It seems that ‘black holes’ defy the laws of physics and how does an ‘infinitely expanding Universe’ become an ‘infinitely dense mass’ ahead of the ‘big bang’?
If physics could explain everything then Nature is the God.
(to be continued).