A window into a forgotten history of city housing and living conditions

CRAMPED: Martha’s Place, New George Street, was typical court-style housing

The Way it Was

By Neil Chadwick, librarian and archivist at Hull History Centre

One of the real treasures held at the Hull History Centre are the Local Studies Health Department photographs. Sometimes referred to as the Forgotten Hull images, the Health Department collection consists of over 1,700 photographs. They provide a window into housing and living conditions in the city from the late 18th century. They show tightly packed, dense, terraced and courtyard housing, all with very little light and almost no sanitation. All were eventually demolished, but it wasn’t until the inter-war period that real attempts were made to improve the living conditions for many of Hull's inhabitants.

History of Hull’s early housing

For centuries Hull was confined to its medieval walls. Housing, shops, and industry coexisted side-by-side. By the eighteenth century, industrialisation saw people move away from the countryside into the towns. As the population increased, towns like Hull required more and more housing to keep up with the demand, particularly during rapid population acceleration in the nineteenth century. With space a premium, and to meet demand, properties that fronted the street were knocked through to create ‘entries’, ‘alleys’ or ‘courts’. This allowed previously open space to be built upon.

SPACE AT A PREMIUM: Great Passage Street at the junction of Upper Union Street

Slum housing

With building regulations almost non-existent, the result was cheap, poorly built housing with little or no sanitation, and certainly no thought for their occupants. Enclosed by a ring of docks, Hull’s Old Town was up there with some of the worse living conditions anywhere. Houses here could be over three floors, packed into courts between four and nine feet wide, usually entered by an archway from the street. At the turn of the eighteenth-century Hull’s population was 7-8,000, by the end of the century this had increased to almost 22,000 which only served to exacerbate the problem.

As the 19th century progressed, Hull witnessed a massive growth in population, and with it housing sprang up beyond the Old Town. Sculcoates and Myton were the first areas developed. New streets were laid out. These included Sykes Street and Prospect Street to the north, Great Passage Street and Osbourne Street to the west, while to the east, Witham and the Groves also saw an explosion in poorly built dwellings to accommodate the towns expanding population.

NEW DEVELOPMENT: Newington Buildings in Southcoates Lane were built in 1931-32

The Groves area was particularly notorious for its poor living conditions. At Howards Row for example, there were twenty-four roomed houses with nearly 300 people living within. Courts and alleys off Witham were damp, dark and below the level of the street, which itself was below the level of high tides. Dirt could be scrapped off walls and the smells were described as unbearable for anyone coming there for the first time. Outside things were not much better. There was little in the way of sanitation. Sewers ran open. Streets and pavements together with the interior of court yards and alleys saw accumulations of mud and filth which made it impossible to keep clean. This was mirrored across the town. The streets of Hessle Road, for example, were reported to be comparable with foulest slums of Constantinople.

A time for change

The first catalyst for change came about because of the 1849 Cholera epidemic, in which over 1,800 people died. This led to the Local Board of Health introducing measures in the attempt to prevent Cholera, though outbreaks continued. Back-to-back housing was prohibited, whilst minimal requirements for court style housing was introduced. This allowed the Corporation at the time to get some grip on the mass of poorly constructed housing that had preceded before. This, however, did little to improve the quality of housing for much of Hull’s inhabitants. Hull’s population by 1871 had reached 130,000 and continued to accelerate, reaching 236,000 by 1901, many of whom were working-class.

It wasn’t until the inter-war period that Hull’s social housing development improved with what we see and take for granted today. It was under the then Prime Minister, Lloyd George, that a promise was made that the country shall have homes fit for heroes – those soldiers returning home from the First World War. This meant not only good quality housing, but also a better standard of living. The tightly packed courts and alleys style houses were demolished. Newly built housing included gardens, often at the front and rear. Outside privies or toilets were replaced with bathrooms and clean running water was to be piped to each individual property. Hull’s privately built Garden Village was very much leading the way in this philosophy, thanks to Sir James Reckitt.

Hull’s first large programme to replace its aging and unsanitary housing began during the 1920s. Hull’s population had by now risen to almost 300,000. One of the first areas to be redeveloped was around New George Street. Rebuilding began around 1927 and continued into the 1930s. The overall survey proposed that 3,500 houses should be demolished and rebuilt. A major expansion in the provision of housing continued between the wars with more than a third of house building carried out by Hull Corporation. However, there was still a shortfall of around 9,000 houses.

RAPID GROWTH: An 1853 OS map of Hull’s old town looking east towards the River Hull

The Preston Road Estate

The Preston Road Estate was Hull’s second inter-war housing scheme (the first being Gipsyville in the west of the city). The estate came about due to the continued shortage of properties prior to the outbreak of the First World War and the need to re-house those displaced by the clearances taking place at the time, particularly in and around Hull’s Old Town, including those residents displaced with the building of Alfred Gelder Street.

Two-thousand properties were built on land west of Marfleet Avenue, north of the Hull-Withernsea railway line. The first 200 properties were built between December 1921 and January 1923, with construction continuing into the second half of the 1920s and 1930s. Plans showed a living room, parlour, entrance hall, scullery, and larder on the ground floor. On the first floor was three bedrooms, a bathroom and toilet. Each property in 1924 cost just shy of £500 to build. Not far from Preston Road, Newtown Buildings on Southcoates Lane was built on Nanny Goat Field in 1931-2. 

Continued progress

This wasn’t the end for Hull’s housing development. The North Hull Estate was also built during the years between the wars. Further clearances and building programmes began in the 1960s. The development of the Bransholme estate, for example, began in 1966, while the clearances of Hessle Road had also begun. Many from Hessle Road moved east to estates like Bransholme, but also Longhill and Bilton Grange. But it was during the inter-war period that Hull began to tackle its ageing and insanitary housing. The Health Department photographs held at the Hull History Centre offer a snapshot into housing and living conditions endured by generations, which for some is still within living memory.