We’re building a map of stories and memories of Hull from 1945 to 2022 – and we need your help!
We want to collect stories of all shapes and sizes, from large-scale city developments like post-war estates and the Humber Bridge, to shops, public spaces, homes and neighbourhoods that are meaningful and memorable to you. We’d like to collect stories about all aspects of Hull’s history in the past 80 years, including Hull Fair, Chip Spice, Princes Quay, Holderness Road, Pearson Park, your first home, your grandparents’ workplace, your local bus, and more – we want the ordinary, personal stories as well as big historical moments like the Blitz.
You can explore some of the stories already added to our ‘Memory Map’ by clicking on the icons. Add you own stories to this map by using the Comment function below, or emailing us at halflifeoftheblitz@gmail.com. Your stories can be as long or short as you like, and you can send us photos too if you want to. We’ll only use first names on the map, but let us know if you’d like your story to be anonymous instead.
You can also simply suggest and request themes, moments and places you think should feature on this map by getting in touch with us too.
One of my most vivid memories was playing on the derelict buildings, probably aged 5 to 7 years old. (We called them “Bombed Buildings”) at the rear of my Grandma’s home @ 86 Humber Buildings on Madeley St, Hessle Rd. We used to find items amongst the rubble and take them in to show our peers. These were personal items such as Pipes, glasses, cufflinks etc, nothing of monetary value. It was a few years later that these “Bombed Buildings” had actually been “Bombed”. This would have been 1965 to 1967. I am now 60 years of age, and it still mortifies me to think we were climbing over the remains of someone’s home and bombed possessions.
Col
Thanks Colin, we’ve added this to the map!
In the 1950s/early 60s there used to be a ‘rag man’ behind the Bull pub on Beverley Road. If you look at a 1950s map you’ll see a place called ‘Stepney Mills’ behind the pub, that was probably it.
We’d gather up all the old (worn out obviously) clothes and take them there. He’d sort the wool from synthetic and give us a few coppers. Then it was straight into Beverley Road baths and enough for a bag of broken biscuits bought from a shop between Sculcoates Lane and Melwood Grove.
Thanks for your comments, Stu, we really appreciate you taking the time to contribute to the map. It’s amazing how much local knowledge we’re picking up from these memories.
I grew up in Sculcoates – 1957 through the 60s. I remember the rag shop behind The Bull. i think they took old newspapers, too.
That shop was Miss Dibbs (?). Sadly, I think she was later robbed and killed either during or as a result of a burglary.
AL
74 Beverley Road, directly opposite the old Strand Cinema used to be a schools clinic.
My mother took me there in 1961 (aged 10) for my polio vaccine sugar lump during the polio outbreak.