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Kingston upon Hull
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
| City of Kingston upon Hull | |
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| Geography | |
| Status: | Unitary, City (1299) |
| Region: | Yorkshire and the Humber |
| Ceremonial County: | East Riding of Yorkshire |
| Traditional County: | Yorkshire |
| Area: - Total |
Ranked 279th 71.45 km² |
| Admin. HQ: | Kingston upon Hull |
| ONS code: | 00FA |
| Demographics | |
| Population: - Total (2003 est.) - Density |
Ranked 39th 247,942 3,470 / km² |
| Ethnicity: | 97.7% White |
| Politics | |
| Hull City Council http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/ |
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| Leadership: | Leader & Cabinet |
| Executive: | Labour |
| MPs: | Alan Johnson, Diana Johnson, John Prescott |
Hull or Kingston upon Hull is a British city situated on the north bank of the Humber estuary. It is surrounded by the East Riding of Yorkshire, but is a unitary authority. The council is today called Hull City Council, and refers to the city as Hull.
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Unusually for a historic English city, Hull has no cathedral. It does, however, have the Holy Trinity church, claimed to be the largest parish church (by area) in England.
Hull has an extensive museum and visitor quarter which includes Wilberforce House, Hull and East Riding Museum, the Ferens Art Gallery, the Maritime Museum, Streetlife and Transport Museum, the Spurn Lightship, the Arctic Corsair and the Deep. It also features the University of Hull as well as a smaller campus for the University of Lincoln, and a large FE college, Hull College. Hull is the home of the Queens Gardens, the Hull Marina and is close to the Humber Bridge, the fourth-longest single-span suspension bridge in the world.
The city has a football team playing at national league level, Hull City, who play at the Kingston Communications Stadium.
The city has two national league Rugby League teams, Hull FC who, along with Hull City AFC, play at the Kingston Communications Stadium and Hull Kingston Rovers playing at "New" Craven Park.
Hull is the only city in the UK with its own independent telephone network company, Kingston Communications, with its distinctive cream telephone boxes. Formed in the 1910s as a municipal department by the City Council, it remains the only locally-operated telephone company in the UK, although now privatised. Kingston upon Hull has one of the most advanced computer networks in the world — a metropolitan area network.
The local accent is distinctive and noticeably different from the standard Yorkshire accent. The most notable feature of the accent is the strong "goat fronting"; a word like goat, which is [gəʊt] in standard (southern) English and [goːt] across most of Yorkshire, becomes [gɵːt] ("geurt") in and around Hull.
Hull's daily newspaper is the Hull Daily Mail. BBC Radio Humberside, Viking FM, and the University of Hull's Jam 1575 all broadcast to the city.
Transport within the city is provided by two main bus operators — Stagecoach in Hull and East Yorkshire Motor Services. A smaller operator, Alpha Bus and Coach, provides one of the three Park and Ride services in the city, whilst East Yorkshire and Stagecoach provide the other two.
Hull is twinned with Freetown in Sierra Leone, Niigata in Japan, Raleigh, North Carolina in the USA, Reykjavik in Iceland, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Szczecin in Poland. Hull, Massachusetts in the USA is named for this city.
History
The original settlement of Wyke or Wyke upon Hull was probably established by the Cistercian monastery of Meaux a few miles further up the River Hull to provide a port for the distribution of the abbey's wool. The strategic need for a Northern port sufficiently south of the Scottish border to be secure caused Edward I of England, fighting his campaigns in Scotland, to plant a new planned town on the site. This was the King's town upon Hull or Kingston upon Hull. The associated royal charter, dated April 1, 1299 remains preserved in Hull's Guildhall Archives.
In 1440, the former borough acquired the status of a city becoming a county corporate administratively separate from Yorkshire and having jurisdiction over an area extending west of the city known as Hullshire.
Hull was a major port during the Later Middle Ages and its merchants traded widely to ports in Northern Germany and the Baltic region and the Low Countries. Wool, cloth and hides were exported and timber, wine, furs and dyestuffs imported. Sir William de la Pole, a leading merchant helped establish a family prominent in government. Bishop John Alcock, founder of Jesus College, Cambridge and patron of the grammar school in Hull, hailed from another Hull mercantile family. Hull seems to have grown in prosperity and importance during the course of the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries. This is reflected in the construction of a number of fine, distinctively decorated brick buildings of which Wilberforce House (now a museum dedicated to the life of William Wilberforce) is a rare survival.
In 1642 Hull's governor Sir John Hotham declared for the Parliamentarian cause and later refused Charles I entry into the City and access to its large arsenal. He was declared a traitor and despite a parliamentarian pardon was later executed. (He was actually executed by the parliamentarians, not the royalists, when he tried to change sides.) This series of events was to precipitate the English Civil War since Charles I felt obliged to respond to the 'insult' by besieging the City; an event that played a critical role in triggering open conflict between the Parliamentarian and Royalist causes.
Hull developed as a British trade port with mainland Europe, Whaling until the mid 19th Century and deep sea fishing until the Anglo-Icelandic Cod War 1975-1976, which resolution led to a major decline in Hull's economic fortune. It remains a major port dealing mostly with bulk commodities and commercial road traffic by RORO ferry to Rotterdam and Zeebrugge on mainland Europe. The city remains a UK centre of food processing.
Because of its docks and proximity to continental Europe the city sustained particularly significant damage in bombing raids during the Second World War and much of the city centre was devastated. Most of the centre was rebuilt in the years following the war, but it is only recently that the last of the "temporary" car parks that occupied the spaces of destroyed buildings have been redeveloped.
Hull's administrative status has changed several times. It had been a county borough within the East Riding for many decades, but from 1974 to 1996 it was part of Humberside, and upon the abolition of that county, it was made a unitary authority.
Notable residents
- Andrew Marvell, poet and parliamentarian grew up in Hull and represented the town in Parliament. A secondary school is named after him in the Bilton Grange area of the city.
- William Wilberforce, the leading slavery abolitionist, was born in Hull 1759, baptised at Holy Trinity church and represented the City as its Member of Parliament until his death in 1833. A sixth form college is named after him in east the city.
- Joseph Malet Lambert, a British education reformer who proposed universal education as an economic stimulus was born in Hull in 1853. A secondary school in the east of the city is named after him.
- Thomas R. Ferens philanthropist, industrialist and Member of Parliament for East Hull from 1906-1918, proved to be one of the city's greatest benefactors, endowing among others University College, the Ferens Art Gallery, and East Park in 1927.
- Amy Johnson, the pioneering aviator who was the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, was born in Hull in 1903. A statue depicting her can be found near to the city centre's main Library.
- Though not born in the city, the notorious arsonist and serial killer Bruce Lee lived in Hull and committed his crimes there in the 1970s.
- Tom Courtenay, the highly respected actor, was born in Hull.
- Roland Gift, actor and singer with the Fine Young Cannibals, was born in Hull in 1962.
- Hull is also the adopted home of Paul Heaton, of The Housemartins and now The Beautiful South. The other members of the Beautiful South are all from Hull.
- BBC Weatherman Alex Deakin comes from the area.
- Kelly Bailey, singer, model and dramatic actress was born in Hull in 1981.
- Jon Culshaw, the impressionist and comedian, began his career as a DJ on Hull station Viking FM.
- Stevie Smith, poet, was born in Hull.
- Lionel Davidson, novelist, was born in Hull.
- Philip Larkin, poet and librarian, worked in Hull University.
- Douglas Dunn, poet, worked in Hull.
- Maureen Lipman, actress.
- Ian Carmichael, actor.
- Brian Rix, actor.
- Nick Barmby, footballer.
- Mick Ronson, guitarist with David Bowie's Spiders From Mars and musical partner of Ian Hunter.
- Reece Shearsmith, comedian, born in Hull
- Thomas Perronet Thompson, radical reformer, MP and advocate of universal suffrage was born in Hull in 1783.
Hull had a thriving music scene in the early eighties with bands such as The Red Guitars, Jane's Plane, Bushfire, The Housemartins, and Everything But the Girl (who took their name from a local furniture shop's advertising slogan). The Housemartins and EBTG went on to achieve international fame, and to a lesser extent, so did the Red Guitars. Bushfire moved down to London and became well known on the music scene there, while Jane's Plane, an all-women band of great local popularity, broke up. Later, the Hull band Kingmaker achieved moderate chart success. Roland Gift DJed at local nightclub Spiders and owned another nightclub in the city. The city currently has a moderately large hardcore punk and emo music scene.
The Music scene in Hull is thriving at present with over a hundred bands playing at various venues across the city throught out the week. Some bands have gone on to receive national recognition. Fonda 500 and Freaks Union are regularly playlisted on MTV and The Paddingtons have been signed by former Oasis mentor Alan McGee and have had two singles enter the UK's Top 30. The Adelphi is still probably the most famous of venues in the city having hosted the likes of Radiohead, Stone Roses and Oasis back in their formative years. Just recently in the last two years, The Sesh at Linnet & Lark has hosted weekly Live Music events with attendances averaging 300+.
Bands to take note of include Turismo, The Applewhites, Dirty Dreamers, The Bonnitts, Last People On Earth and the 59 Violets.
