"King's Town upon the River Hull " a Kingston upon Hull Travel Page by northeast80

Update - I am in the process of building all my yearly events tips of Hull into the General Tips Section. Coming up is the Jazz Festival, we had Dove House Day yesterday the Mela the day before that, the Humber Mouth last month and more to come this summer.

If you're on your way to Hull this year, be sure to check out all we're doing for the William Wilberforce/Slavery anniversary, "Wilberforce 2007" they're calling it.
Here's a link to Hull City Council, it lists the events that are going on-
HullCC The major event will happen on March 25th with the re-opening of Wilberforce House Museum by the Prime Minister of Barbados to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery.

Hull is a good to visit a place as a tourist, I've been back to places I've not been to for years such as the Transport Museum, Hull & East Riding Museum and the Whaling Museum, Ferens Art Gallery, all for free which is even better. We walked over the Humber Bridge to the new centre at Barton which is great, full of info on the area and all built of sustainable materials.

There's a great many shopping streets out of the town that are well worth a look; Chanterlands Ave- bakeries, library, two charity shops. Newland Avenue- I've build a tip on this in 'Shopping', Hessle Road, has great cheap food shops and a Boyes's. There's the great Walton Street car boot and market, again another tip in 'Shopping'. There's lots of places to go out outside of the centre; Beverley Road for the students, a few down Newland Ave and lots down Princes Ave.

I had not lived in Hull for 6.5 years and every time I went back something's changing, I've said it before Hull's on the up. Now I'm back for a little while whilst I sort my self out.

There's the huge development called St. Steven's Square where they are rennovating and restoring the train station, building a new bus/coach station, and building a huge amount of shops, cinemas, restaurants and offices, a new museum is being built, I don't think they expect the whole re-devolpment to be ready before 2009, of course some of it will be ready before then.
The old station was horrible, well the Victorian part was lovely (it was in the film Clockwise with John Cleese), but the 1960's-70's extenstion was dreadful. It will really make a good 1st impression as visitors come into Hull now.
We have/ had The Housemartins and the Beautiful South, Maureen Lipman, some of The League of Gentlemen, the actor Andew Lincoln was born in Cottingham, William Wilberforce was born here, playwrite John Godber puts on a lot of his plays here, Fine Young Cannibals, John Prescot as our MP (don't know if that's a selling point though....), Philip Larkin as the Uni librarian, oohh and so many more the list is endless ;-)

Some more Hull facts for you-
Kingston upon Hull is a Unitary Authority (i.e. classed large enough to be independent of the county)
Gained city status in 1897
We don't have a cathedral (just about all cities in England do), instead we have Holy Trinity Church, the largest parish church in England
Was originally called Wyke-upon-Hull but was changed to Kingston-upon-Hull in around 1293.
Between the 13th and 16th centuries, Hull was the second port of England.
Hull's maritime history is thought to have been a key factor in the transmission of syphilis: the earliest evidence of syphilis in medieval Europe is at the site of an Augustinian friary (destroyed 1539) in Hull.
In 1642 Hull's governor Sir John Hotham declared for the Parliamentarian cause and later refused Charles I entry into the city and access to its large arsenal. This series of events was to precipitate the English Civil War.
Our trade was Whaling until the mid 19th century and deep sea fishing until the Anglo-Icelandic Cod War 1975-1976, which resolution led to a major decline in Hull's economic fortune.
At this time it was the third largest port in the UK, the Wilson Line of Hull shipping firm was the largest privately owned shipping concern at that time.
95% of our houses were damaged in WW2, it being 2nd after London the most damaged city.
Much of Hull lies at or below sea level
We are twinned with-
Freetown, Sierra Leone
Niigata, Japan
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Reykjavík, Iceland
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Szczecin, Poland
We used to have the worlds longest single span suspension bridge, opened in 1981, now it is the 4th.
We do not have BT, we have cream coloured phone boxes ran by Kingston Communications.
We have the joint worst performing police force in the United Kingdom, alongside Northampton police.

I went to see a friendly between Hull and Aston Villa, of course we lost as we're in different divisions, but it was good to go and see a match. You can hear the music and cheers from my house, quite a few big names come and play, but none I've wanted to go and see yet- we've had people such as Blue, Eton John, Bon Jovi so far. The Jam are playing soon, but tickets are about £25-30, I can hear it from my garden anyway....