Even a late as the early 20th century the lower R. Hull estuarine lowlands between what in 1911 became Pickering Park to the north of the Hull – Hessle Road and Hessle village itself remained post-Enclosure fields, probably a mix of arable and pasture. South of the road – although alongside the road would have been fields (except for small plots of ribbon development, see, for example the mock-gothic houses fronting Hessle High Road opposite the western corner of Pickering Park), but nearer the Humber most of the fields had been bought-up by railway companies as a marshalling yard for goods trucks. The picture above, taken from Nicholson and Yeadon An Illustrated History of Hull’s Railways (Irwell Press, 1993, 98) shows part of this area which at its height had 75 miles of shutting rail-tracks, sufficient to accommodate 11,000 goods trucks. Both the North Eastern and the Hull and Barnsley Railway companies transported filleted fish from St. Andrew’s Dock after the Dock was excavated and opened in the early 1880s with, at one point, 11 trains per day transporting fish destined for markets across the country. In the above photo St. Andrew’s Dock warehouses may be seen in the middle distance centre right while the straight chalk path showing bottom right may lead from Dairy Coates Farm, another of the post-Enclosure farms of Hessle Common (see yesterday’s blog). By the late 1800s this model farm could only be accessed across a maze of railway lines. I’m sure that by the time of the photo above the farmhouse and farm buildings had been long abandoned and demolished.
The area being described here is the land north of Clive Sullivan Way form Sainsbury’s at Hessle eastwards including Summergroves Road estate and the retail park to its south, Gipsyville (south of Hessle High Road) and the Brighton St. Industrial Estate part of Dairycoates.
(to be continued).