The extract above is scanned from the top-right-hand corner of Thew’s map of Hull, 1784. Robert Thew was a Hull based engraver, on this occasion commissioned jointly by Samuel Thornton, M.P. for the town and county of Kingston upon Hull and William Wilberforce M.P. for the County of York.
The map follows close on the heels of the building of the New Dock (now Queen’s Gardens), then thought to be the largest man-made dock in the world. The northern run of the medieval town walls had been finally demolished in the creation of the Dock, the New Dock then being in the parish of Sculcoates (the map doesn’t extend far enough north to show the site of the Georgian church, s.p.b.s).
This extract shows the site of the first residential buildings of the new suburb of Sculcoates, these along the north side of George St. and Charlotte St. and in the Trippett district (s.p.b.s). The ‘New Burying Ground’ is the detached burial ground for St. Mary Lowgate church (s.p.b.s), this urbanisation leading to the original ‘North Bridge’ over the River Hull.
The most curious feature of this map extract is the area shown north and west of the ‘New Burying Ground’, this shown as a series of formal garden plots with smaller rectangular plots between Princes Row and Charlotte St. The larger plots are shown as 20+ formal parterre plots with a w.n.w. – e.s.e. orientation apparently dictated by Princes Row along which no houses are shown. Hargrave’s map of Hull, 1791, (s.l.b.) shows no formal gardens in the same area so was this an early, short-lived botanic garden, the Linnaeus St. Botanic Gardens being opened to the public in 1821 (s.p.b.s some way back) and then the Spring Bank site later (now the grounds of Hymer’s College)? It is similarly represented to the ex-grounds of Suffolk Palace (s.p.b.s some way back) so it just maybe be somewhat cartographer’s licence.
(to be continued)
Point of view 5 – With the ‘lock-down’ places are less noisy with reduced traffic. Taking the dog round Pearson Park 9-30p.m. ‘dusk chorus’ provided the choir (actually asserting territory rather than serenading us) and this morning, awoken from a bad dream 5-15a.m., the ‘dawn chorus’ repeated the performance. Who needs the Metropolitan Opera House.