Hello again, old friend
Maritime Museum re-opens after a £20.4m facelift
One of my favourite buildings in Hull re-opens to the public this weekend after being closed for six long years.
Whether the £20.4m restoration and redevelopment of Hull Maritime Museum has been worth the wait and the expense will be hotly debated over the next few weeks as visitors are welcomed back inside the venue.
I was lucky enough to be invited on a preview tour earlier today and I’m going to post a few official images on here to give you some idea of the old and the new sights on offer.
The project has doubled the museum’s public space and with around 1,300 objects now on display there’s plenty to see.
In a nutshell, you’re taken on a journey of more than 800 years of Hull’s maritime history, telling stories of trade, migration, fishing, whaling, Arctic exploration and the development of Hull as one of the UK’s major ports.
At times, it’s a fairly brutal trip. For most of those centuries, men set sail from Hull to kill and plunder as well as to trade with other distant ports.
For example, while the hunting for whales is well-known, the industrial-scale slaughter of Arctic seals which went on at the same time is largely forgotten.
However, given the available contemporary technology, the perils of the high seas, extreme weather and the often appalling working conditions they faced, the museum is also a testimony to the bravery of Hull’s seafarers.
Even today, I firmly believe the salty spirit of seaborne adventure is still part of the city’s DNA.
Highlights include a 40ft skeleton of a North Atlantic Right whale, internationally significant scrimshaw collections, objects from Shackleton's Endurance expedition (five crew members were from Hull), a stuffed polar bear and the Sirius figurehead from the first steamship to cross the Atlantic.
As you might expect, the upgrade has introduced plenty of new interactive elements. If you’re small enough, you can now crawl under the whale skeleton, navigate using a compass, operate a steam engine model and lift the weight of traditional harpoon.
Projected schools of fish swimming along one corridor and will, I predict, become a huge hit with visitors.
There’s also a brand new feature in the museum in the shape of a small planetarium. A ten-minute show recreates the night sky above Hull and the Northern hemisphere, putting yourself in the shoes of generations of sailors who navigated by the stars rather than man-made satellites.
For me, the main interest during the tour was the building itself. It was like meeting up again with a long lost friend.
It was built by the Hull Dock Company and opened in 1871. If you’re looking for somewhere that symbolises Victorian commercial power and prestige it’s this place.
Architect Christopher Wray’s design was chosen ahead of 26 others in a competition held by the company as it looked to expand and move from its already impressive offices in High Street which are still there.
Wray sought to make the most of the triangular plot of available land at one end the company’s huge dock which had generated healthy profits for nearly a century. His curved building reflects the constraints of the site.
His brief was to create a new head office for the company - a corporate palace of maritime magnificence. I think he succeeded.
Everywhere you look both inside and out, the sea is all around you.
Decorative mermaids, starfish, river gods, sea horses, dolphins, anchors, tridents, scallop shells, mermaids, fishing nets, seaweed, pearls and waves are all present and correct in stone, plaster and glazed tiles on walls, ceilings and floors.
On each of the three massive domes there’s a cupola covered with over-lapping tiles mimicking fish scales while even the cast iron railings surrounding the building - designed by Wray himself and featuring hundreds of gold-painted tridents decorated with tiny dolphin heads - are a work of art in themselves.
In the stunning first floor Court Room, sculpted cherubs sitting high up above doorways and either side of windows hold heraldic shields.
The cherubs represent the Hanseatic League, a Medieval confederation of merchant guilds and trading towns in Northern Europe in which Hull played a leading role.
The Court Room itself is 70ft long and was originally called The Proprietor’s Court Room. It was used for hearings to settle trading disputes between business associated with the dock.
The room’s ceiling is worth a lingering look because of its design. It’s divided into three identical sections, each one with a central light originally known as a sun burner.
Each one was actually a cluster of gas burners providing both light and ventilation. They were meant to draw air upwards and were commonly used in Victorian theatres.
The main ground floor exhibition space housing the whale skeleton and overlooking Queen Victoria Square was known as The Wharfage Office.
It was where visiting skippers and shipowners would have their papers stamped, work assigned and pay any outstanding fees and charges connected with business at the dock.
Standing in these rooms today it’s still easy to imagine what was going on in them more than 150 years ago.
Higher up in the building there are a couple of new innovations.
An entire new second floor of galleries are wrapped around a new central atrium which casts fresh light into the interior. There’s also a sleek spiral staircase on the same floor which takes you up into one of the domes where there spectacular views of the city centre can be seen through the windows. From here you also get a closer look of some of the decorative roof top details, including the aforementioned fish-scale cupolas.
Inside this new viewing area, I met Claire Humphrey, a senior conservation architect, along with her colleague Owen Plummer, an associate partner at York-based Purcell Architecture.
They’ve both worked on the museum’s re-design from the start and for Claire in particular it’s been a very special project having been born and brought up in Hull.
She told me: “I remember coming here on school trips when I was kid so I’ve got lots of happy memories of it. To be able to actually work on this has been amazing because I know how much the museum is loved by the people here, including me!”
Wray’s extravagant building cost nearly £90,000, leaving the Hull Dock Company in serious debt.
However, it wasn’t the debt or the building that eventually sank the company.
It was originally formed in 1773 by Hull Corporation, Hull Trinity House and a group of influential merchants and was Britain’s first statutory dock company. An Act of Parliament passed the following year allowed it to raise £100,000 in shares and loans to construct what was initially just called The Dock.
The impetus for all this was twofold. Until then, the shipping trade in Hull was centred on the narrow tidal River Hull with its age-old problems of silt being washed into it from the Humber estuary.
Another issue was the many private wharves along the river operated by merchants. As well as the lack space, they also provided cover for the more unscrupulous trader to dodge customs duties and other fees.
The new dock - the largest of its kind in the country - would provide a ‘legal quay’ where officials could easily examine and weigh goods being imported and exported.
The company’s monopoly over the shipping trade lasted over a century and saw it build other docks, including Humber Dock in 1809, Junction Dock (later known as Princes Dock) in 1829 and an extension, Railway Dock, in 1849.
However, monopolies also tend to stir up resentment and rivalry and the Hull Dock Company certainly experienced its fair share of both in its frequent clashes with Hull’s mercantile classes.
Having been challenged by a rival company, it built Albert Dock in 1869 and an extension, William Wright dock, in 1880 but five years later a new company, the Hull, Barnsley and West Riding Junction Railway and Dock Company, broke the monopoly by building Alexandra Dock.
The move led to price-cutting competition between the two companies for dock charges and combined with a gradual move away by shipping using the original dock to the newer ones lined along the Humber with easier access to and from the estuary.
The Hull Dock Company started recording regular financial losses and in 1891 its shares and debts were taken over by the North East Railway company in an amalgamation process that ultimately required new parliamentary legislation.
Twenty years after the palatial offices were opened, they were also transferred to the new owners and they became the administrative nerve centre for the working so both the railways and the docks for the next 70 years.
When it fell empty in the early 1970s, the city council acquired it and re-opened it as the Town Docks Museum in a series of phases starting in 1975.
Today, as then, admission is free and I can honestly say a visit is great way to fill a spare couple of hours. There’s even a new cafe inside if you need a break halfway round
Opening hours are Monday to Saturday: 10am to 4.30pm; Sunday: 11am to 4pm.
What a great read Angus! Fish-scale roof tiles indeed. I'll definitely go when I'm next in the city. Can't wait!