27th May, 2020 Newland 6, Point of view 12.

Some further extracts from the Oak Road information board – ‘In the 1800s the Hull Cowkeepers and Farmers Association was formed with an office situated on Clough Road. The Association was disbanded in the 1970s. An annual dinner dance was held every winter at Beverley Road Baths when the pools were boarded over. There was always plenty of food, but they always ran out of milk!’ Incidentally underneath is printed ‘Copyright Keith Wade 20/01/2012’, the late Keith Wade was Chairman of the Georgian Society of East Yorkshire, a very nice person. The board-floor dances at Beverley Road Baths were, in their day, a significant event in Hull’s social calendar. The Beverley Road Townscape Heritage Scheme members were trying to get photos/memorabilia of those occasions.

The information board also mentions that along the west side of Green Lane ran Skidby Drain, dug 1785, and a bit further west the Beverley – Barmston Drain, 1799-1801, the former now filled-in. Hull Corporation always demanded that drainage channels have an outflow into the River Hull so that on an ebb tide there was as much water as possible scouring the River bed, this an aid to shipping. The ribbon development of industry north along the River’s banks (see blogs on Sculcoates) relied on deep-water access.

The area of Newland north of Clough Road and east of Beverley High Road was once known as Hull Bank, this being bordered to the north by Dunswell sub-parish.

The information board has another section on the ‘Potteries’, the ‘natural resource’ of the area being clay. In the early 1800s the Patent Brick and Tile Works was established, followed by the Kingston Sanitary Pipe Works. Later that century the Kingston Stone Bottle Works was established as was the Newland Pottery making chimney pots and flower pots. In the 20th century a builder’s supply company used the site where the Mecca bingo building now stands.

Finally the board tells us about Archaeology, in particular a ‘dig’ conducted in 1997. Hull Bank Farm previously stood where the derelict Kingston Rowing Club buildings still are. The excavation revealed evidence of a Romano-British farm/hamlet on the site as well as some medieval pottery shards and ‘evidence of agriculture of that same period’.

Despite stating ‘finally’ in a recent blog I still need to say something about the ‘Avenues’ and University College in the context of the Newland area.

(to be continued)

Point of view 12 – The relaxation of ‘lockdown’ is a potentially dangerous time, as my poor old mother use to say, long ago now, ‘give people an inch and they take a mile’. We have to see if the government manages the phased relaxation well and also the ‘test and trace’ strategy. The U.S.A. has taken a huge ‘hit’, all affected countries, not only U.S.A., should take action to not let China ‘off the hook’.